Telling Mark's story of the passion.

The story of the passion is a very dangerous story. It is the culminating point of a gospel meant to free us, but often it has been used to keep the crucified peoples of our world, (1) particularly women, on their crosses. Many people have internalized a spirituality in which they identify their suffering with that of the crucified Jesus. This has given them the strength to survive immense suffering, but at the same it has fed attitudes of acceptance of abuse and oppression as normal rather than empower them to confront abuse and to mobilize energies for transformative action toward their well-being. Many women are taught from their youth that their whole purpose in life is to serve and to sacrifice for others, most especially their husbands and their children. They believe that whatever suffering they endure is God's will and is merited for their sins.

In this essay I aim to expose such interpretations as inconsistent with the gospel and offer interpretive moves for preachers, teachers, and catechists to tell the story of the passion in ways that liberate and that help believing communities conform their lives authentically to the crucified and risen Christ.

The distinctiveness of Mark

In the same way that believers conflate in their memory and imagination the differing infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke at Christmastime, there is a tendency also to meld the varying details and theologies of the four evangelists into one coherent version of the passion. While there are many similarities in the four accounts, there are also significant differences. The aim of the evangelists is not so much to tell what happened to Jesus as it is to help believers grapple with the question: What does Jesus' life, death, and resurrection mean for us? Each evangelist makes meaning of the events in a slightly different way.

Preachers, teachers, and catechists would do well to attend to the particular theological emphases of each account. In the 2005-2006 liturgical year it is Mark's passion account (14:1-15:47) upon which we reflect on Palm Sunday and Mark's version of the empty tomb (16:1-8) that we ponder at the Easter Vigil. Mark's story of Jesus' passion is distinctive for its stark portrayal of an anguished Jesus, deserted by his disciples and seemingly abandoned by God as well. He is the silent lamb led to the slaughter who opens not his mouth. I want to elaborate a few of the theological emphases that are prominent in Mark's passion account, warning of some of the pitfalls they present and proposing ways that the story can engender hope for believers today.

Crucified women of Chiapas

To illustrate how powerful, both for good and for ill, are interpretations of the passion in the lives of suffering peoples of today, I begin with a description of life for a typical woman in rural Chiapas. (2) As in many parts of the world, women in rural Chiapas belong to men in every way. Typically, a woman cannot voice an opinion, much less make any decisions about her life. From age twelve she is obligated to comply with all the demands placed on adult women. She is married off by her father with no consultation and is handed into the control of her husband as his possession. From her earliest days she is taught that her whole purpose in life is to bear children and to serve them and her husband. She is first to obey her father, then her husband and in-laws, especially her mother-in-law. Her husband may beat her and insult her whenever he wants, and she can only submit in silence. She has no right to speak up and has no opportunities to speak with other women. She has to ask permission to go anywhere, even to visit her mother, and her husband rarely grants it. Unable to read or write, she accepts that it is enough to know how to cook and sew. She bears the burden of all the housework and works in the fields as well--all without any recompense. Men can spend money as they wish, and many waste it on drink; women are completely dependent on what their husbands give them. Indigenous women carry the added load of racial discrimination.

The worst thing, as one woman remarked, was that women regarded this situation as natural. They believed that this is just the way things are, that nothing could be done about it. Women felt trapped; they never thought of themselves as having value in themselves, or of being capable and free to make choices and decisions about their lives. Sorrowful, solitary, silent, and enclosed: this was the reality of women inside their homes in their daily lives--lives that they did not choose and that they thought they had no way to change. In their prayer they would cry to God asking why he had determined this life for them. Their faith did not help them change anything; they believed that God had decided that it should be so. All the suffering they endured they accepted as their way of carrying the cross.

When asked the question "Why did Jesus die?" the most common response is "He died for my sins" or "God sent him to die." The notion of sacrifice is very strong for them: the sacrifice of Jesus is replicated in their own self-sacrifice for others. And their servile obedience to their fathers and husbands is related to Jesus' obedience to his Father. Many of the women spoke of how they identify their suffering with that of the crucified Jesus, especially the image presented in the Gospel of Mark of the silent, suffering servant, who utters nary a word of protest throughout his ordeal, having accepted the cup he is to drink as the will of the Father.

One need not travel to rural Chiapas to encounter such theological interpretations of the cross. Variations of such exist in most Christian communities. Is there another way that preachers, teachers, and catechists can tell the story that can help break cycles of violence and victimization?

Not my will, but yours (Mark 14:36)

As illustrated above, one of the most dangerous scenes is that of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane. After having celebrated a last Passover meal with his disciples (14:17-31), Jesus becomes "distressed and agitated ... deeply grieved, even to death" (14:33-34). (3) He goes apart from his companions Peter, James, and John and begins to pray, "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want" (14:36). Christians often understand this scene as a unique moment in the life of Jesus when his own will is pitted against the divine will. Frightening images of God and of Jesus emerge: God seems to will the death of the Son, despite his fervent pleas, and a docile Jesus capitulates in the end to divine desires. Abusers and victims can derive theological approbation for unjust patterns of domination and submission from this scene.

An alternative approach to this deadly direction is to recognize that throughout the Gospel narrative Jesus has been obedient to God's will, and God's will is clearly that no one suffer and that all be saved. Jesus expressly follows God's will as he heals, feeds, and teaches people, restoring them to wholeness, and leading them to faith that both heals and saves. That God's will is to save is especially clear in the stories of the woman who was healed of her hemorrhages (5:34) and the man who was cured of blindness (10:52). Jesus tells them that their faith has "healed" and "saved" them. The Greek verb sozein conveys both meanings. God's will to save does not change when it comes to the Gethsemane scene. God's intent is still to bring fullness of life to all.

Jesus' struggle in Gethsemane is real and intense, but it is not the first time that he has undergone such a trial. At the very outset of the Gospel story, he is tried (peirazein) by Satan (1:12-13), but he emerges victorious, clearly focused on his mission to proclaim the good news of the reign of God (1:14-15). In this first trial scene God's presence with Jesus is palpable: it is the Spirit who impels Jesus to go into the desert, and God's messengers (angeloi) minister to him during his ordeal. This assurance of God's presence is much less palpable in the Gethsemane scene.

Mark does not elaborate on what the specific trials were; Matthew and Luke relate that Jesus was tempted to feed his own hungers rather than attend to those of God's hungry people, and to place trust in false images of God, and to display flashy manifestations of God's power, and so convince people of his true messianic identity (Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). All of the evangelists agree that Jesus was fully human and experienced temptations as all people do (so also Heb 4:15). But it was not a struggle he overcame once and for all in those first days before the beginning of his public mission. The evangelists have telescoped into one episode what Jesus faced throughout his life. Like us, he had to make the decision to be true to God's will at every turn. He continually turned to God in prayer (Mark 1:35; 6:46) so as to be centered completely on God's saving will for all of creation. And so, in Gethsemane, the trial (peirasmos, 14:38, the same root word as in 1:13) Jesus undergoes is the culmination of a lifelong struggle to discern God's will and to be true to his prophetic mission to heal, teach, and preach good news to the poor. Having lived his whole life seeking the will of God and living it faithfully, he chooses to be true to this mission to the end.

What Mark does in the passion story is to situate Jesus' suffering and death within God's saving will for fullness of life for all. That is, Jesus' death does not occur outside God's saving will and God's power. Moreover, Jesus is not forced or coerced to "drink the cup," but he does so freely. He chooses to do so not because he seeks to suffer or because God wills his death, but as the means to life for God's people. The metaphor of "cup" was used often in the Scriptures to speak of the suffering of Israel (Isa 51:17; Jer 25:15; 49:12; 51:7; Lam 4:21). Jesus takes the "cup" upon himself and offers it to his disciples. At his final Passover supper shared with his disciples, all drink from the cup (14:23-25; see also 10:38-39). It symbolizes not only Jesus' death but also the ratification of a renewed life in covenantal fidelity, recalling the blood, the symbol of life (Deut 12:23), that Moses sprinkled on the altar and on the people (Exod 24:8) to seal the covenant.

Take up your cross (8:34)

In the first prediction of the passion in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus utters the famous saying "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (8:34). As exemplified in the stories of many women in rural Chiapas, this saying is the basis for passive acceptance of many kinds of abuse. What is lost sight of in such an interpretive move is that the cross, in the context of the Gospel of Mark, refers not to generalized suffering of all sorts but to a very specific kind of suffering. Historically, crucifixion referred to a Roman form of punishment, inflicted particularly on slaves, fugitives, rebels, and foreign captives. Jesus was executed in this horrendous form because he posed a threat to the religious and political authorities of his day. While some of his followers would also be executed in this manner, not all disciples face such a fate.

We must look, then, to the symbolic way in which every disciple must take up the cross. It is clear in the Gospel narrative that the cross refers not to suffering in general but to the suffering that is the direct consequence of proclaiming good news to the poor and to living in fidelity to the vision of the reign of God that Jesus embodied. Taking up one's cross refers to the willingness to remain faithful even in the face of persecution, in whatever form it takes. (4)

Likewise, to "deny oneself" means not that disciples should allow their identity to be obliterated in subservience and submission, such as the way that many women in Chiapas relinquish their own identity, and give no attention to their own needs or wants. Nor does it refer to individual acts of asceticism. Rather, "deny oneself" means to live in "a wholly selfless manner," (5) such that self-interest and one's personal desires are not central. (6) Only one who has a healthy sense of self-worth and giftedness is capable of choosing to live in such selflessness. Mark 8:34 is not a call to self-obliteration; it is an invitation to resist putting one's energies toward self-aggrandizement, and to place one's life in the service of another--of God and the people of God.

Silent suffering servant

In Mark's depiction of Jesus' trials before the Sanhedrin (14:53-65) and Pilate (15:1-5), Jesus refuses to answer and says not a word in his own defense. When the high priest asks Jesus directly, "Have you no answer?" Jesus "was silent and did not answer" (14:61). And when Pilate asks him if he is King of the Jews, he answers "you say so" (15:2). And after many accusations by the high priests, Pilate queries, "have you no answer?" (15:4), but Jesus "made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed" (15:5).

This portrait of Jesus differs greatly from that of the Gospel of John, where Jesus not only replies to Pilate but is the one who seems to prosecute Pilate, who fails to recognize the truth of who Jesus is. In Mark's account, Jesus' silence can be understood as his recognition that speaking truth would be a waste of his breath, since the stated purpose of the investigations was not to seek truth but to find testimony to put him to death (14:55). Or, Jesus' silence may be a deliberate refusal to cooperate in an unjust procedure. On a theological level, Jesus embodies the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:7: "He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

Such an image of Jesus is two-edged. On the one hand, it can be deadly as it reinforces silent, passive submission of abused persons, so that they remain victims of injustice. Breaking the silence is often the first and most dangerous step that victims of domestic violence need to take in order to begin to break the cycle of abuse and take action toward healing and wholeness. On the other hand, collective public silent protest of injustice can be a very effective tool to confront oppression. An example is the silent protests of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who have marched weekly for decades, demanding to know the fate of their disappeared husbands, brothers, and sons in Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s. Although they cannot bring back to life the 30,000 desaparecidos, their weekly march for human rights has been thought to be partially responsible for toppling the military dictatorship in 1982.

Failure and fidelity

More than any other Gospel Mark highlights the failure of Jesus' followers to understand him and his message. They don't understand the parables (Mark 4:13; 7:17-18) or Jesus' actions with the loaves (6:52; 8:21). They reject the notion of a messiah that suffers (8:31-33) and do not understand what "rising from the dead" means (9:10). They argue over who is the greatest (9:34) and seek places of honor for themselves (10:35-45), not comprehending that "whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all" (9:35). When Jesus commands silence, it is broken (1:44-45; 7:36), and when the faithful women are told to proclaim, they do not fulfill the command (16:8). In the account of the passion, disciples betray Jesus (14:10-11), are unable to stay awake with him in Gethsemane (14:32-42), and ultimately abandon (14:50) and deny him (14:66-72).

Yet, there is a counterpoint in the persistent theme of disciples who faithfully follow despite their fear and unknowing (10:32). The first episode of the passion account is that of a nameless woman who anoints Jesus for burial, correctly recognizing his kingly identity and his approaching death (14:3-9). Her action echoes that of a poor widow who gives her whole life/livelihood (bios) to God, as signified by the temple (12:41-44), an action that prefigures that of Jesus. At Gethsemane, although they are helpless either to prevent what is happening to Jesus or to be a source of consolation to their friend, Peter, James, and John (7) do accompany Jesus in his final trial (14:32-42). And while the other disciples all flee (14:50), Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome continue to follow Jesus to the place of the crucifixion (15:40). They, along with many other women, had followed Jesus and had been ministering with him during his Galilean sojourn and had come up with him to Jerusalem (15:41). Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses witness where the body is laid (15:47) and then, with Salome, bring spices to the tomb to anoint him (16:1).

Yet these disciples, too, out of fear, fail to proclaim the good news entrusted to them by the messenger at the tomb. In this Gospel there is no ideal disciple such as the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel. All struggle to understand, all struggle to follow. Yet it is to such that the mystery of God's reign has been entrusted (4:11). Moreover, Jesus remains faithful to his new family of disciples, no matter their failures.

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"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (15:34)

Mark's passion narrative brings to the fore the paradoxical fidelity of God to Jesus, even as Jesus experiences agonizing silence from the One who had previously assured him he was beloved Son (1:11;9:7) and object of God's delight (1:11). Jesus' cry from the cross is not one that questions the existence of God or whether God has the power to rescue him from death. Nor is Jesus abandoning hope. What he questions is God's silence in the face of his pleas. (8) The very fact that Jesus is praying witnesses to his continued trust in God. (9) And immediately following Jesus' prayer and his death, the centurion acclaims, "Truly this man was God's son!" (15:39), confirming that Jesus' understanding of his relationship with God was not mistaken.

Jesus cries out the opening words of Psalm 22, praying the prayer of one who has relied utterly on God since birth (22:9-10), yet experiences in the present moment the triumph of adversaries and the anguish of isolation as God seems unresponsive to his pleas. Jesus is not praying to be rescued from death, for that is the fate of all human beings. Nor is he asking to be released from the form his impending death will take; his ministerial campaign has set him on a clear collision course with the powerful, whose violent response was to be expected. Jesus is like the psalmist who does not yet see the concrete evidence of God's power to raise up the afflicted yet knows that God has heard his cries (Ps 22:24). What he has not yet experienced is God's answer to those cries.

Mark aligns Jesus' experience with that of the psalmist, who pours out his heart in grief but then lets go of his complaint and turns to praise of God's yet unseen deliverance (Ps 22:25-31). The psalmist has known God's lifelong motherly care through deathlike ordeals that bring new birth (Ps 22:9-10); just so, Jesus confides in this saving God whose present silence is excruciating. He dies without seeing the fulfillment of the reign of God to which he devoted his whole life in deed and word.

God's reply takes the form of an earth-shattering response as Jesus is resurrected from the dead and goes ahead of the disciples (16:7). God's fidelity to the divine will to save continues in the faithful witness of Jesus' fallible disciples.

A story of hope

The Gospel of Mark can be told in ways that reinforce deadly patterns of violence and victimization, as evident in the above description of the lives of women in rural Chiapas. But such interpretations are not true to the good news embodied in Jesus. With the help of women's Bible study groups that have focused on instructing women about their rights and their status as beloved daughters of God, many women in Chiapas have learned that God does not will for them to suffer abuse. Women have gained self-esteem and have worked with men to help them come to value the dignity of women. They have grown in their understanding that they have choices. They have gained ability to confront problems in their families and in the community and to look for the root of the problems. They analyze reality at the local, zonal, national, and global levels. They are working for changes toward a more just and equal society for women and men, as women's participation has increased in all spheres: social, cultural, political, economic, and ecclesial. They teach their children differently from the way they were educated.

For many, their understanding of the cross has changed. It no longer signifies every kind of abuse to which they must silently submit; now they understand it to mean the struggles and hardships they endure in order to learn and proclaim the gospel. These include things like having to walk six hours to attend the Bible study group or having to get up at 3:00 a.m. to prepare meals for their children and husband to eat while they go to the Bible study groups. Some endure the hardship of gossip and whispers behind their back: "Where is she going? Who's she meeting? What kind of mother leaves her household tasks to go study the Bible?" Their response is, "If Mary Magdalene could leave her home to learn the gospel and minister with Jesus, so can we."

One example of how domestic violence was stopped was told by a woman whose husband would frequently beat her after becoming drunk. One morning, when her friends saw her bruised face, they decided to act. Some thirty women came together to the house to confront the husband. These women had moved away from emulating the silent suffering Jesus of Mark and become a community of friends who were ready to lay down their lives for their friend. In this particular instance, the result was truly life-giving, as the husband began that day to give up drinking and never beat his wife again. (10)

As we tell anew the story of the passion of Jesus in our communities, it is important to attend not only to the image of Jesus we preach and teach but also to those of the women in the story. As we tell the story of the courage of Mary Magdalene who left her home to follow Jesus all the way to the cross and tomb, and to be the first witness to the resurrection, it gives courage to contemporary women to do similarly extraordinary things for the sake of the mission.

Mark's story of the passion offers profound hope even in the most seemingly desolate times. God's will is always to save. God is present and powerful even when the cries of the poor and abandoned seem to go unanswered. God continues to draw frail yet faithful disciples into greater conformity with the beloved Son, for the transformation of the world.

A resurrection faith perspective

It is important to remember that the gospel story, both as the evangelist relayed it and as we repeat it today, is told from the perspective of resurrection faith. This means not just that we already know the end of the story, like someone who sneaks a peek at the last pages of a novel to see how it ends before reading the middle. Rather, it means that in retelling the story of the passion, we are in a circular process that invites us ever deeper into the mystery of God as revealed in Jesus. Mark's Gospel is not a linear progression of narrated events but an open-ended, parabolic, puzzling story that invites those who hear it to return again and again to ponder anew the profundity of God's love expressed in Jesus and to conform their lives ever more completely to his. It is suspense-filled, not in the sense of not knowing what will happen in the story but in the sense that we do not know the surprising ways in which God will move us this time. We do not know how the presence of the risen Christ with us as we walk again with him through the passion will shatter our illusions about God and ourselves, opening our hearts to be converted more and more deeply to his way of life. (11)

Barbara E. Reid, O.P.

Professor of New Testament Studies Catholic Theological Union, Chicago [e-mail]

1. This expression is from Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino, "The Crucified People," in Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993), 580-603.

2. Thanks to a sabbatical from teaching and other responsibilities at Catholic Theological Union in the academic year 2002-03, and to a Faculty Fellowship from the Lilly Endowment sponsored through Association of Theological Schools, I was privileged to visit a number of Christian communities in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, as well as in Torreon, Mexico, La Paz and Cochabamba in Bolivia, and Lima and Chimbote in Peru. Many were composed of indigenous women of Mayan, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Aymara, and Quecha heritage. The majority of the groups I met were women who gathered regularly for Bible study. My intent was that my study of the passion and resurrection narratives be informed by the perspectives of women whose social situation and culture was significantly different from my own. Many with whom I spoke came from very difficult situations of poverty, violence, and abuse. I was also interested in the perspectives they offered from a strong cross-centered piety. Repeat visits in subsequent years have deepened our mutual learning and ongoing friendships, for which I am most grateful. The description that follows is loosely translated from Con Mirada, Mente, y Corazon de Mujer, published by CODIMUJ (Coordinacion Diocesana de Mujeres, Mexico, 1999).

3. Scripture quotations are from the NRSV.

4. See Joanna Dewey, "'Let Them Renounce Themselves and Take Up Their Cross': A Feminist Reading of Mark 8.34 in Mark's Social and Narrative World," in A Feminist Companion to Mark, ed. A.-J. Levine (Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 23-36.

5. BDAG, "aparneomai," 97.

6. See Morna Hooker, The Gospel according to Saint Mark (Black's New Testament Commentary; Peabody, MA; Hendrickson, 1991), 208; William Reiser, Jesus in Solidarity with His People: A Theologian Looks at Mark (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), 152-53.

7. These three are depicted as part of Jesus' inner circle of disciples. They are the first called (1:16-20); they are the only ones allowed in the house to witness the healing of Jairus' daughter (5:37); they are the ones present at the transfiguration (9:2), and they, along with Andrew, receive private instruction from Jesus about the end times (13:3).

8. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah (2 vols.; Anchor Bible Reference Library; Garden City, Doubleday, 1994), 2:1046.

9. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2:1049.

10. CODIMUJ, Con Mirada, Mente, y Corazon de Mujer, 134.

11. For further study see Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1994); John R. Donahue and Daniel Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina 2 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002); Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Hearing Mark: A Listener's Guide (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002); William Reiser, Jesus in Solidarity with His People: A Theologian Looks at Mark (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000); David Rhoads, Reading Mark: Engaging the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); and Bonnie Bowman Thurston, Preaching Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002).