[Reflections
based on the Gospel of Mark
originally shared in the NCCI consultation at Sahodaya]
I
was frequently attending the Sunday worship services at St. Nikolai Church, the
University Church of the University of Goettingen, Germany, during my doctoral
studies. One fine Sunday the pastor of the Church gave a good homily based on a
piece of paper found in the prayer/offering box, and it was read: “Lieber Gott,
ich glaube nicht an Dich, Amen!” (Trns. “Dear God, I do not believe in you,
Amen!”) The preacher, assuming that the statement came from a student, expressed
his concern for the young people of Germany who cut off their relationship with
the Church for various reasons. He also convincingly affirmed that the assertion
“Dear God, I do not believe in you, Amen” was a clear reminder for the Church
to care for the young people who were going away from their faith.
The
care and concern for the young people spoken in that homily was indeed
laudable. At the same time it opened up new sets of questions. When I heard the
assertion “Dear God, I do not believe in you, Amen!” I could not resist exclaiming
“what an honest and brave affirmation!” On the other hand, I started
questioning my own affirmation that I have been taught to affirm right from my
Sunday-school days: “Dear God, I believe in you, Amen!” I wondered (and am
still wondering) how one can possibly assert so affirmatively that he/she
believes in God? Do we really mean what we affirm? Is this not an absolutist
affirmation? Are we absolutely clear about what we believe? Are our
faith-affirmations so unambiguous? Are we afraid of affirming the ambiguity of
our faith?
The
opposite of faith is not unfaith but the fear of affirming the ambiguity of our
faith at a fearful time, and the challenge for the followers of Christ is to
transcend fear even at a fearful time. This invites us not to be phobic even
when we are seized by terror of the Empire. Today the identity of the religious
minorities in India is under threat. The very existence of Christians and
Muslims in this country is seized by terror of the Empire of Hindu nationalism.
The faith and freedom of these communities are disturbed. Therefore, one needs
to ask the pertinent question repeatedly, what does it mean to affirm our faith
in freedom in the midst of the reality of hatred, intolerance and violence?
Should we pretend as if all is well? Or should we boldly affirm our reality
that is fear-ridden and full of ambiguity?
Mark
16:08 – “So they (women) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and
amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were
afraid.” These women whom Mark lists among the multitude were aware of the
ambiguity of their faith. This awareness enabled them to transcend fear even at
a fearful time and to become witnesses to the Risen Lord, the counter-Empire.
These women were chosen to pass on the good news of freedom. They were seized
by terror, a very obvious emotional state. They didn’t pretend to be otherwise.
Ambiguity of their faith was affirmed and thus they became the channels of
God’s irreversible freedom – freedom from Empire, the empire that waged a war
of conspiracy to seize the Truth and Life of the multitude, that is Jesus
himself. Mark very impressively discerns the imperial signs of his time and
propagates an alternative Empire through Jesus, the crucified and the risen.
Keeping
this insight in mind, let us explore the Gospel of Mark to converse with the
similar signs of our time. Let us together raise a few issues: 1. The challenge
of Empire, both in the time of Mark and in our time. What is to be our response
to the Empire of our time? 2. The locatedness of the people of faith, the multitude
and the people who caused fear in the lives of the multitude. Where do we
stand? 3. Jesus between multitudes and empire. How are we challenged by Jesus?
The Challenge of Empire
Scholars
generally agree that Mark’s gospel account is the earliest of the three
synoptic gospels. Mark seems to have written his account sometime between 64
CE, the end of the persecution under Nero, and 75 CE before Mathew and Luke
wrote their gospel accounts. It was a time of tension between the Christian
Church and the Roman Empire. It was in such a context Jesus proclaims the
Empire of God as an alternative.
The
reality and terror of Empire was prominent when Mark wrote his gospel account. It
was indeed a fearful time. In this situation Mark calls for a form of costly
discipleship that should break through, confront and even transcend the reality
of fear of the Empire.
In
taking this position Mark reflects what Jesus would have meant in speaking of
the basileia of God. It was a direct
confrontation of the Empire of Rome and therefore Jesus’ alternative was the
Empire of God. Jesus deliberately took a political concept to express ‘the good
news’ of freedom that spoke of an alternative empire. This alternative empire
of God invited the multitude, the people of faith who were filled with fear and
offered them a different kind of peace, that guaranteed freedom of
proclamation, in other words, freedom of confessing and professing an
alternative belief.
In
our time in India today the predominant challenge is the reality of Empire. The
imperial power of Hindu Nationalism through political wing BJP and its allies
such as RSS, Sangh Parivar, Bajrarang Dal and too many Senas are attempting to
reorder the nation. ‘Fear’ occupies a significant place in the everyday reality
of the minority in this country. In this situation we too feel helpless like
the ‘ochlos’, the multitude, the sheep without a shepherd – to whom Jesus held
out the promise of the Empire of God as an alternative. We are in a situation
of crisis that calls for a change in perspective – an epistemological shift –
and its consequent praxis. In the face of Empire we are called to make a shift
by following the way of the Suffering Servant who proclaimed the Empire of God
as an alternative that holds out the promise of freedom for all: that includes
freedom of religion/belief, freedom of speech and freedom of reclaiming one’s
own alternative empire.
The Locatedness of the People
Now,
the second issue we need to raise is: how Mark locates the idea of freedom
promised to the multitudes, the people of faith at a fearful time. Mark uses
two sets of characters to set out this. On the one hand there are Jewish and
Gentile authorities. These have status, power and security, but are essentially
insecure. They are afraid, because their authority and power are not
necessarily legitimate. They are the tenants of the vineyard who are even
willing to kill the son and heir to keep what they have wrongfully acquired
(12:1-12). They will do anything to protect their self-interest. In their
effort to protect themselves they are always in fear.
The
religious and political authorities in Mark show fear (12:12). They were afraid
of Jesus and the multitude. They were afraid of Jesus because he was popular
with the multitude, and he spoke of what the people knew to be true but were
afraid to say to the face of the empire.
On
the other side are the ordinary people, the ochlos,
the multitude. Mark makes very creative use of this term. It is interesting
that he avoids the term laos used very
frequently by the Greek Jewish Bible, the Septuagint. ‘Laos’ occurs only twice
in Mark: in 7:6 which is a quotation from the Old Testament and in 14:2, in the
mouth of the Jewish authorities.
Why
does Mark prefer the term ochlos? In
CE 70 with the fall of Jerusalem and the persecution in Israel, people had lost
their identity and were driven as sheep without shepherd. As the ochlos begins to take shape in Mark
certain characteristics begin to appear. Unlike the authorities, who are too
selfish, self-centered and self-righteous, the ochlos make enormous attempts to help others. They bring a
paralytic to be cured by Jesus (2:3). They bring a hearing and speech impaired man
and beg Jesus to cure him (7:32). They bring a blind man and beg Jesus to touch
him (8:22).
Here,
Mark establishes an idea of commonwealth among the multitude. Through the
notion of ‘life in common’ Mark proposes a political project of the multitude
to initiate an ethics of democratic political action within and against Empire.
It is a democracy that invites everyone to share and participate in the
commonwealth. This fosters the capacity to live the countless voices, and
especially with the dispersed multiplicity of non-voices and non-identities.
Through this Mark proposes an ethics of freedom for living in our common world
and articulate a possible constitution for radical democracy in the context of
Empire. To fight against Empire is to search for a life in common.
Jesus the Counter-Empire
Third
issue – Jesus between multitude and empire. Jesus stands here as the Messiah of
the Multitude. In proclaiming the ‘Empire of God’ Jesus opened up avenues of
hope for the multitude. But for Rome that was sedition. The life of Jesus was
under threat for this reason. Yet he took the side of the powerless multitude.
He proclaimed and prophesied the fall of the Empire, and demanded the freedom
of the multitude to profess their faith even at a fearful time.
Mark
13:14-23 – Mark uses an apocalyptic language borrowed from the Jewish Bible,
especially from Daniel and Maccabeus. In the context of war, hatred,
intolerance and violence the apocalyptic language was used as a powerful
mechanism to counter the Empires. Mark in his own context of intolerant empire
uses this language and presents Jesus within a political agitation. The words
of Jesus in 13:14 – “when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it
ought not to be” and Markan commentary to it – “let the reader understand”
should be understood within such a socio-political struggle. What does
desolating sacrilege mean here? For Daniel, it referred to Antioches Epiphanes
IV. Epiphanes, the Hellenistic-Greek emperor attacked Jerusalem in BCE 168. And
in Mark it refers to the Roman Empire. Jesus, discerning the signs of his time,
invites the multitude that followed him to react to the Empire, and demands not
to stand passive. Desolating sacrilege is a threat to the freedom of the
multitudes to live in manyness. As a globalizing Empire it demands homogeneity
from the multitude.
Jesus
did not stand on the side of the Empire that threatened the very life of the
multitude. Rather, he stood by the side of the Common people. Verses 15, 16, 17
– the ones on the housetop, the ones in the field striving hard for his daily
bread, the one who is pregnant and dreaming of the future of her offspring –
they are the concern of Jesus. Here the invitation of Jesus to flee does not
demand a mechanism of escapism, rather he invites the multitude not to
surrender to the power of the Empire at any cost. Mark demands his readers to
contextualize their faith by using such an apocalyptic language and hence it
should demand our attention to the universal contextuality of it.
Hans
Weber, a German Biblical scholar equalizes the metaphor of desolating sacrilege to the empire of Hitler and draws the
implication that it was an invitation of Jesus to the Jews in Germany during
the time of Hitler to flee away and not to surrender to the Empire. Today we
need to ask who or what that desolating
sacrilege in our context is. We may have to see the growing Empire Hindu
nationalism in India as the desolating
sacrilege which threatens the manyness of Indian multitude. The religiously
fundamentalist empire in India attempts to erase the beauty of being different
by inscribing ‘oneness’ on the docile and fragile bodies of the multitude in
India today. Jesus cautions us from falling into the trap of either being
phobic of Other in a multireligious context or of being occupied by the forces
of homogenizing Empires.
In
our context of growing power of religious fundamentalism in India we need an
epistemological shift to understand the gravity of the multifaceted network of
the Empire. Religious fundamentalism and the aggressive nationalism are growing
as an Empire in India today. This Empire is a network of power that includes
political ideologies, dominant transnational institutions, capitalist
corporations and other powers. For example, the network of power within the Hindutva
Empire. Starting from a tiny student union within a school or college like a
unit of ABVP to a mega political party like Bharateeya Janata Party, the
network of power works very systematically. In this imperial network of power
not all powers are equal, yet they maintain the order intact so as to keep
their positions within. Empire exists by creating conflicts and violence both
within and outside. Such conflicts are not exclusively ‘political’ but loop
within and beyond socio-cultural boundaries producing and reproducing a docile
multitude.
Multitude versus Empire
While
reading Antonio Negri, an Italian Philosopher, in the face of Empire, Y. T.
Vinayaraj makes this affirmative analysis: Empire is a political ontology. As a
constituting power, Empire has no exteriority. It is an ontology which has no
outside. Empire is a condition in which all of us are located within. There is
no ‘outside’ or ‘escape’. Both domination and resistances are located within a
unified space. The resistances do not exceed the boundary of Empire. As Negri
himself states, “terrorism is not to deny Empire but to control Empire.” That
does not mean the end of resistance. It is the process of doing away with the
borders that invokes a new global democracy of the multitude. Thus multitude is
a radical, anti-imperial, political subjectivity that resists Empire within.
We,
the religious minorities in India, are the ochlos,
like those women near the tomb, utterly powerless in the context of hate, murder,
violence and threats. But we are invited to believe that the risen lord is
still with us, with the ochlos
enabling us to continue resisting the Empire. We are challenged not to be phobic of the ‘other’ but to be the
powerful witnesses of God’s transcendental freedom. We are invited to affirm a
necessary ambiguity of our faith, avoiding absolutist claims of rationality. It
is in ambiguity and complexity we resist against all the absolutist claims of
the Empire. And in such ambiguities alone we may be able to affirm our faith in
God beyond our Christian world-view and to include our common “Other” with whom
we are ought to establish a commonwealth relationship.
