Progressive reflections on the lectionary #32

Monday 26th August 2024

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 - Who's unclean anyway?

One of the main differences between the gospel of John, where we’ve been for the last few weeks, and the gospel of Mark to which we now return, is the way that the book is written. ‘John’ is highly schematic, it has styles and themes, and uses clever storytelling techniques.

Mark on the other hand seems more basic, less sophisticated perhaps, or maybe just less technical. It has more of the feel of an eyewitness account - even though that is, too, an illusion.

That’s not to say, though, that the writer(s) of Mark used no structure or had no agenda, and in this excerpt, or rather this trio of short excerpts, we get a glimpse of the way that Mark concentrates on particular groups, and seeks to differentiate them in his writing.

The three main ‘groups’ in Mark are the the Jewish leaders (Scribes & Pharisees), the disciples, and then ‘the unclean’. Each are quite distinct entities with their own roles to play in Mark’s writing. This particular passage deals explicitly with the first two groups, and then looks at the concept of being ‘unclean’ - which will come into clearer focus through characters later in the same chapter.

To help understand what is going on in this passage it is useful to recognise that the handwashing the pharisees ‘who have come from Jerusalem’ insist on is a symbolic act. It’s not in the Torah, rather it’s a law taken from oral tradition and what it’s supposed to signify is the way that the Jews were to be separate (and thus ‘clean’) from the gentile world.

We might just note that reference to Jerusalem, it’s not incidental (Mark doesn’t really bother including things that are), Jerusalem is significant in Mark for various reasons, particularly in the way that it is contrasted with Galilee.

Fundamentally the writer(s) of Mark situate Galilee and Jerusalem as kind of opposites. Galilee, the ‘outsider’ place turns out to be the place where Jesus is followed and where he is proclaimed ‘Lord’. It is the location of most of the gospel stories and represents welcome of Jesus and his message.

Jerusalem, on the other hand, is the ‘insider’ place - where the temple is, where the priests are, where the pure bloodlines are, it symbolises ritual purity and national identity. It also represents hostility to Jesus, rejection of him, and ultimately is the site of his execution too, of course. In his entry to Jerusalem, though, he is acclaimed as the messiah - the Christ.

In other words here we have a dramatic clash between the exclusive attitudes and legalistic behaviours of the Jewish establishment, and the much more open and far less legalistic approach of Jesus and the disciples. The establishment are looking for a ‘Christ’ (messiah) who will cement that separation, and demonstrate that the purity of Jewish identity is what God has ordained, while the Galilean outsiders are looking for a ‘Lord’ (leader) who will take them beyond this legalism and into a new kind of political (and therefore religious) freedom.

It is certainly possible, and I think quite likely, that Mark’s gospel originated in Galilee. It may in fact have been written within, and for, a Galilean community who, after the dramatic death of their leader, now found themselves working out their identity as outsiders, or marginals. Here we find them working out this identity in a discourse on what it really means to be clean and unclean, an exploration which will continue on into the chapter and beyond.

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