Mark 9:2-10. Jesus and His Closest Disciples Ascend the Mountain, & He is Glorified in the Presence of Moses and Elijah.

The Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Lent is a passage from Mark 9:2-10. First Jesus ascends the mountain with his closest disciples, Peter, James and John. Then Jesus is glorified, or “transfigured,” and seen alongside two great men of the Old Testament: Moses and Elijah.

Ascending the Mountain

In this passage, Jesus leads his closest disciples up a mountain. This imagery parallels that of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1, where seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain. Any times that Jesus ascends the mountain, we can assume something important is about to happen. And usually, whatever happens on the mountain will underscore the Messianic claim that Jesus makes about himself.

In the Old Testament, to ascend the mountain was to encounter God. Consider Isaiah 2:3 - Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. In Isaiah, come let us go up the mountain of the Lord is expressed in the plural.  An even earlier account of an ascent up the mountain is the story of Moses and the seventy elders of Israel. They ascend Mount Sinai in Exodus 24:9-10, and Moses literally encounters God. Consonant with these Old Testament accounts, Jesus and his closest disciples ascend the mountain in Mark 9. The irony of the Transfiguration account is that, unlike in the Old Testament, God (in the person of Jesus) walks with the disciples up the mountain, rather than coming down from heaven to meet them.

"The Transfiguration." Giovanni Bellini, 1490. Naples.

Moses and Elijah

Why does this story feature Moses and Elijah, and what do they have to do with Jesus? Moses and Elijah are pivotal figures in the Old Testament who point to the liberation of the Israelites from bondage. Moses is the prophet who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt.  Elijah is the prophet who would return to announce the coming of the Messiah – the King of the Jews. In the Old Testament, the return of Elijah is spoken of in the writings of the minor prophet Malachi 4:5. Because Elijah is known to first century Jews as the prophet that would announce the coming of the Lord, Elijah is mentioned perhaps thirty times in the four Gospels.

Not coincidentally, Moses and Elijah are also two Old Testament figures who are believed to be taken up into heaven after their death. Jude’s epistle (1:9) tells us that the Archangel Michael fought Satan to recover the body of Moses. The book of 2 Kings 2:11 tells us that Elijah was swept up into heaven on a chariot of fire.

The Transfiguration

Some scholars argue that, in Mark’s Gospel, the Transfiguration is a spiritual high-point in the earthly ministry of Jesus. It is complimented by a low-point: the Agony in the Garden. In both cases, Peter, James and John accompany Jesus. As a spiritual high-point, the Transfiguration anticipates the post-Easter glorification of Jesus. According to Mark, his clothes became dazzling white during the Transfiguration. Oddly enough, Jesus is never described as being clothed in white in any post-Resurrection scene in the Gospels. Nevertheless, the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and the Book of Revelation consistently describe the angels or the elect as robed in white.

To further underscore the point that the Transfiguration anticipates the glorification of the body of Jesus, Mark tells us that the Lord stands next to two Old Testament prophets who are believed to have been taken into heaven after their death. Moses and Elijah are also associated with the Messiah in that Moses led the Jews out of captivity, and Elijah is the prophet who will announce the coming of the Lord.

He Set His Tent Among Us

In the first chapter of  John’s Gospel (Jn 1:14), the Sacred Author tells us that the Word made Flesh set his dwelling among us. And here in Mark’s Gospel, Peter the Apostle awkwardly suggests that tents be prepared for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. The grammatic structure in John and Mark is similiar. In John’s Gospel, Jesus literally pitches his tent among us: καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. This is an allusion to several Old Testament traditions. First, the House of King David is also known as the Tent of David (Amos 9:11; Acts 15:16). Secondly, King Solomon dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem on the Feast of Booths (1 Kings 8:1-2). Third, the Shekinah or Spirit of God dwelt in a tent, which was where Moses spoke to YHWH when he needed to consult with the Lord (Exodus 40:34-36).

In Mark’s Gospel, Peter proposes to establish three tents for the prophets. But nothing comes of his proposal, for obvious reasons. Jesus, with the Incarnation, has already set his tent among the disciples. On the other hand, Moses and Elijah have already been taken up into heaven. It is not for Peter to prepare a place for them on earth, when they have already completed their earthly journey and now belong to the Kingdom of God.

Mk 9:2-10

Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them;
from the cloud came a voice,
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone
but Jesus alone with them.

As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.

John 2:13-25; Jn 2:13-22. Jesus Drives The Merchants From the Temple.

In the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Lent, Jesus cleanses the Temple, driving the merchants and money changers from the Temple courtyard in Jerusalem.

The Temple Economy

Why does Jesus get so upset with the money changers in the courtyard? The Temple was built by Solomon around 950 BCE, destroyed in 587 BCE, and rebuilt between 538 and 515 BCE. The Temple itself was not really a public place of worship, but rather a place where the Levite priests conducted service and made “offerings” by burning grain or preparing a sacrificial animal, such as a dove or a lamb.  The Temple’s inner sanctum housed two enormous angels of olive wood, leafed in gold, that flanked the most important object in the Temple: the Ark of the Covenant.

"Jesus Drives Merchants From the Temple." Jacob Jordaens, 1650.

Over time, an economy grew around this sacrificial system of worship. 2 Chronicles 24:5 tells us that the Temple imposed on the people of Judah an annual levy to pay for the up-keep of the Temple. In Ezra 7:17, we are told that King Artaxerxes orders the Jews to return to Jerusalem and that he even facilitated the sacrifice of animals in the Temple on their behalf:

With this money be sure to buy bulls, rams and male lambs, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings, and sacrifice them on the altar of the temple of your God in Jerusalem.

Eventually, the tradition of bringing animals to the Temple in order to be sacrificed according to the Law of Leviticus became commoditized. By the first century C.E., Jews from around the Mediterranean (from Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria) would visit the Temple once a year. Most commonly, a good Jew would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Holy Week of Passover. A pilgrim would purchase an animal (for instance, a dove or sheep) that the high priest would immolate on the altar, on behalf of the pilgrim. Because a Jewish pilgrim could not bring the image of a false God into the temple, he or she would exchange foreign currency for shekels in the Temple. Thus, the “Temple economy” evolved into the rather crass sale of goods and money in the immediate environ of the Holy Temple itself.

The Passover

Today’s passage tells us that Jesus went up to Jerusalem during the Passover. This would have been a tourist “high season.” The Temple would have been packed with pilgrims from around the Mediterranean, who would have outnumbered the local inhabitants. Upon encountering the moneychangers and vendors, Jesus rather uncharacteristically loses his temper. He fashions a whip and drives the vendors out of the courtyard of the Temple. Keep in mind that the vendors were not in the Temple itself, as only the priests could enter the Temple.

Jesus exclaims, rightly, stop making my Father’s house a marketplace. He then says, somewhat figuratively, destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up. This seems to echo a Gospel passage from a weekday reading in Lent: the passage from Matthew 12 and Luke 11, where Jesus says no sign will be given to the people except the sign of Jonah. In these cases, Jesus anticipates his own Resurrection. He insinuates that his Resurrection is the sign of Jonah, and, in today’s passage, that his glorified body is the new Temple.

John 2:13-25

Since the Passover of the Jews was near,

Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
“What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.

While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
many began to believe in his name
when they saw the signs he was doing.
But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
He himself understood it well.

Mark 1:12-15 and Mark 1:9-15. The Spirit Sends Jesus into the Wilderness.

Our Gospel reading for the First Sunday in this liturgical cycle introduces us to the forty days of Lent, a time of preparation for the Resurrection of the Lord on Easter Sunday. Mark’s Gospel gives us a very abbreviated version of the account in Matthew 4:1-11, where Jesus is tempted by the devil three times. Jesus is also ministered to by his own angels in the wilderness.

Forty Years in the Desert

Matthew, Mark and Luke’s Gospel tell us that Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. This time period echoes back to the time that Moses and the Israelites spent in the wilderness of the Sinai, after the Exodus. Consider these two Old Testament passages:

Exodus 16:35. And the people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land; they ate the manna, till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

 Numbers 14:33. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. 

Note the difference in tone of the two passages. Exodus 16 tells us that the Israelites lived on manna (the bread of angels) for forty years. Numbers, by contrast, tells us that the forty days is a time of exile, where the Israelites shall suffer for their fathlessness. The forty years in the wilderness are also a time of preparation for the Israelites, before they enter the promised land of Canaan.

"Christ in the Desert." Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, 1680. Louvre. Paris, France.

Forty Days in the Wilderness

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus heads for the desert before he does anything else. As of yet, he has performed no miracle in Mark’s Gospel. Nor has he called the disciples. His first action is a trial or test, where he seeks the solitude of the desert and is tempted by the devil. Mark’s account gives us no details, but we are told in Matthew and Luke that the devil fails to entice Jesus. The forty days in the desert is a time of trial for Jesus, in the same way that the Israelites were tested before they entered the promised land of Canaan, or Israel. Similarly, Jesus’ “forty days” in the desert and the Israelite’s “forty years” in the Sinai also mirrors our own Christian life, which is a time of perseverance, before we enter the promised land.

All three Gospels tell us that Jesus was ministered to by angels. The word used in Mark to describe the work of the angels is  διακονέω (diaconeo) which is the Greek verb that means “to serve” or “to minister.” From this Greek term we get the term “deacon.” The Gospels are telling us that in times of temptation or trial, God will not abandon the faithful: he will send his angels to help.

Forty Days of Lent

The liturgical period of Lent is structure so that it too has forty days. The forty days include the four days from Ash Wednesday until Saturday, and then the six days for each week of the six weeks of Lent (4 days + 36 days = 40 days). Sundays are not counted among the days of Lent because each Sunday commemorates the Resurrection of the Lord, anyway. And for that reason, those who “fast” or who make a small personal sacrifice during Lent do not fast on the Sundays of Lent.

Mark 1:9-15

verses 9-11

It happened in those days that Jesus came from
Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized
in the Jordan by John.

On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens
being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove,
descending upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens,
“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

verses 12-15

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, 
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.

After John had been arrested, 
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Mark 2:1-12. Jesus and the Paralytic: “Your Sins Are Forgiven… Rise, Pick Up Your Mat & Go Home.”

The Gospel reading for the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time tells us of the paralytic who is lowered from the roof and brought before Jesus. The story has a parallel in Luke 5:18-26 and Matthew 9:2-8. Once again the Gospel of Mark tells us that the fame of Jesus was such that the people of Capernaum and neighboring towns came to Jesus. In this story, they gather in Jesus’ house to hear him preach. The crowd is so large it that it spills into the street.

Through the Roof

Four men are so determined to bring their paralyzed associate before Jesus that they ascend the roof of the house with their friend in tow. They break through the roof and lower the paralytic down into a room in the house. Upon seeing the determination and the faith of the paralytic and his associates, Jesus tells the paralytic, child, your sins are forgiven.

"Jesus Heals the Paralytic." Aertsen, Beuckelaer, Beukeleer. 1570. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium.

A Model of Faith

The words that Jesus speaks to the paralyzed man are somewhat unexpected. The paralytic wishes to be physically healed, yet Jesus forgives him of his sins. In Mark chapter one, we recall that a leper fell at the feet of Jesus and asked to be healed; and Jesus cured him. The leper is, for the modern reader of the Gospels, a model of faith. The leper approaches Jesus with humility, rather than arrogance. These Gospel stories seem to tell us that we ought to do the same.

The paralytic, like the leper, is worthy of compassion. Yet in the first century, it would not have been unusual for a Galilean or a Judean to believe that paralysis or leprosy were signs of God’s just punishment. If a person suffered from an infirmity, “then they must have done something to deserve it.” Jesus challenges this harsh interpretation of Jewish Law by healing the leper, and forgiving the sins of the paralytic, with no questions asked. Jesus simply acknowledges the faith and trust that the two men place in Jesus.

But in the paralytic’s case, the statement by Jesus, your sins are forgiven, seems bizarre, even insensitive, to the crowd. And the Scribes, educated as they are the Jewish faith, immediately challenge Jesus. The scribes ask Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?

Jesus, the Messiah Who Makes the Kingdom of God a Reality

As is often the case in the Gospel accounts, Jesus uses the irony of a situation to teach a lesson. A paralytic is brought before Jesus, yet Jesus says your sins are forgiven. And then the scribes object: Who but God alone can forgive sins? So Jesus sets about to demonstrate that he can forgive sins by performing a miracle in the presence of the crowd. More importantly, Jesus announces his intentions beforehand. Telling the scribes and the crowd in verse 10 so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins, Jesus then heals the paralytic. Jesus tells the paralytic to get up and walk, which he does. And Mark tells us how the crowd reacted to the miracle: they were all astounded.

What, exactly, is Jesus trying to prove by forgiving the sins of the paralytic, and then healing him? First, as the scribes state, only God can forgive sins.  By forgiving the sins of the paralyzed man, Jesus tells us that he operates with the same authority as God himself. In other words, he is making a Messianic claim. Secondly, as the story tells us, Jesus can heal the sick.  By healing the sick, the Sacred Author Mark tells us that Jesus offers proof of his Messianic claim, and in so doing, he also shows us that the Kingdom of God is at hand (Mk 1:15). Third, Jesus is communicating to the crowd that the Kingdom of God is about the restoration of the relationship between man and God. What was not perfect is made whole; where there was sin there is now reconciliation; and what was alienated from the community is now restored.

Mark 2:1-12

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days,
it became known that he was at home.
Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them,
not even around the door,
and he preached the word to them.
They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.
Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd,
they opened up the roof above him.
After they had broken through,
they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
“Child, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves,
“Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming.
Who but God alone can forgive sins?”
Jesus immediately knew in his mind
what they were thinking to themselves,
so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,
‘Your sins are forgiven,’
or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk?’
But that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth”
-he said to the paralytic,
“I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.”
He rose, picked up his mat at once,
and went away in the sight of everyone.
They were all astounded
and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

Mark 1:40-45. Jesus Heals a Leper… and The Messianic Secret.

The Gospel reading for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time comes from Mark 1:40-45. In this passage, Jesus heals a leper, and then asks the leper to be discrete about the healing.  Instead, the leper ‘proclaims the Good News’ of his own healing by Jesus. Mark the Evangelist then tells us that the fame of Jesus was so great that he could not move about publicly: he instead sought out “deserted places.”

Healing a Leper

Mark tells us that a leper asked Jesus to make him clean. Jesus obliged, and stretched out his hand and touched the leper. This would be somewhat scandalous, since Levitic law (Lev 13:1-16) considers a leper unclean. The authors of the Synoptic Gospels regard the “healing of the leper” to be such a pivotal story that it is recounted in all three Gospels: Mk 1:40-44; Mt 8:2-4, and Lk 5:12-14. In addition, Luke recounts a second story – the healing of the ten lepers (Lk 17:12-19). The frequency of the stories featuring the healed leper tells us that Christ’s mission is to spiritually and physically heal: to restore, and to bring back into the community those that are not whole. To quote Matthew’s Gospel: Jesus and the apostles are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, and drive out demons.

Models of Faith

Just as important, the frequency of these stories tell us that the leper is actually a model of faith. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us that when the leper comes before Jesus to be healed, he kneels or falls down before Jesus.In today’s passage, the leper came to Jesus kneeling down and begged him. Though the lepers are “unclean” according to Levitic law, their humility in asking to be healed moves Jesus to honor their request.

"Jesus Heals a Leper." (right half). Cosimo Roselli, 1482. Sistine Chapel.

The Gospel pericopes about the healing of the leper are, at one level of interpretation, purely symbolic.  Each person is made unclean by sin, and each person can only be forgiven and made whole by Jesus. The account of the leper reminds us that we, like the leper, should approach Christ with profound humility when we ask to be forgiven or healed. It would foolish to believe that we are, before God, greater or better than the leper. If the leper can, with humility, ask for healing before Jesus, then perhaps we can do the same.

Deserted Places

Surprisingly, it is Mark’s shorter Gospel that articulates a theology of retiring to the wilderness to pray… in a way that neither Matthew, Luke or John do. For a third time in Mark’s first chapter, we are told that Jesus seeks solitude.  Eremos is Greek for desert. In verses 13, 35 and 45, we are told that Jesus seeks out the eremos – the desert wilderness. In verse 13, Jesus is tempted by the devil and also ministered by angels. In verse 35, Jesus seeks the eremos to pray. In verse 45, he seeks the wilderness simply to be alone.

What Secret in Mark’s Gospel?

About a hundred years ago, the German scholar William Wrede published a book called, The Messianic Secret. The book theorized as to why Jesus repeatedly told those whom he had healed to tell no one anything. To someone who does not understand Scripture or Christian theology, the words of Jesus seem strange. Wrede, who is more of an agnostic scholar than a theologian, supposed that the Gospel author Mark concocted stories of the miracles of Jesus. For Wrede, the words “tell no one” are a Freudian slip. According to Wrede’s genuinely nut-ball argument, Mark knew that Jesus was not the Messiah, and Mark knew that Jesus did not rise from the dead. According to Wrede, Mark the Evangelist had to explain why the Jews did not understand Jesus to be the Messiah. Thus, Mark invents the “tell no one” pretext.

The problem with the messianic secret is that, as the Gospel of Mark tells us, the fame of Jesus spread over his own objections.  Mark tells us three times in chapter one that Jesus headed for the wilderness to avoid crowds, and to pray. Yet Mark also tells us, three times, that news about him spread quickly (verse 28), that everyone was looking for him (verse 37), and that the leper who was healed spread the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly… (verse 45). That Wrede does not appreciate the tension caused by the growing fame of Jesus – in chapter one of Mark – speaks to Wrede’s lack of any context or conventional  knowledge about Mark’s Gospel. When Wrede interpret’s Mark’s Gospel, he seems to be operating in an historical vacuum.

Realistically, Jesus asked those he healed to keep the news a secret because Jesus knew that reports of his healing would impede his ability to move about Galilee freely in order to preach, and that it would anger the religious leaders of his day sooner rather than later. There is no messianic secret in Mark’s Gospel, as Mark tells us repeatedly that the Good News was propagated by people who believed.  The propagation of the Good News did not require the express encouragement of Jesus, as Jesus was not someone who advertised himself. The Good News had a momentum all its own.

Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, 
touched him, and said to him, 
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning the him sternly, he dismissed him at once. 

He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest 
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.