Abstract
The practice of an experimental Christian café-centre in inner city Sheffield provokes reprise with Mark’s multi-faith and multicultural narratives. The dramatis personae, the street-level exposées, and the cultural clashes of Mark 5 evoke spontaneous but complicated reactions from Jesus. Contemporary disciples today find them “working out” for themselves and their attempts at Mission.
Keywords
“Crossing Over”
The drama of Jesus’ crossing to the other side of the lake (Mark 5.1) has rich but fearful implications. Once you get out of your comfort zone, your geography gets confused. “The place where you get Gerasenes” is probably what Mark wrote, as it is the most difficult reading, though he did not know how far Gerasa was from the Sea of Galilee (Collins, 264,266). Mark is not too bothered. The Ten Gentile Cities - the Decapolis - was “some foreign place”, in his eyes, like “the Inner City” today.
The multi-faith character of the urban villages of Galilee in Jesus’s day has been evoked by recent scholarship (Thiede, Horsley). Though Mark was probably a Jew, Gentile contexts and readership of Mark are generally believed (Collins, 6). But the concentration of elements hostile to Judaism in this chapter, such as the demon’s cry of v.7, the legion of v.9 and the pigs of v.11, leave the “crossing over” still as a significant movement into an alien scene.
It is a radical move for Jesus from the West of Galilee to the East. It’s familiar in the mythology of regions and cities. In Sheffield, to move from the West to “cross over” to the East is to move from affluence, university, middle-class and Pennine foothills in the West, over into poverty, non-achievement, multi-culturalism and industry in the East. In the words of our nineteenth-century forebears, you made your money in the East and went to live in the West. The floods of 2005 cut off the two parts of the city from each other. The East is all very much a “far country”, where indeed the temptation is to join in eating what the pigs are consuming (cf. Lk.15. 16) - or rather not! They both have their own separate worlds. A great gulf is set between them. Neither can those who wish, come over to them, nor can they go over to the others (Lk 16. 26).
This year, in Burngreave in the East, local primary schools have children with 39 different languages. The naive preachers and politicians from outside who come and dip their feet in it who say “What a glorious multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-coloured, multi-faith world this is” do not even understand that what each one of these labels describes are separate worlds. They are only there together because they cannot be “integrated” into the normal society. When outward movement for one ethnic group’s upwardly mobile takes place, a fissure opens up for another ethnic group to move into. The new group brings a new world, with new language, culture, customs, and rules of acceptable life, which now has to strive to continue its existence and “values” alongside those already there.
Mark 5. 1-20
The Gerasene Demoniac
Burngreave, like many inner city areas, has big old houses where men and women who would previously have been in asylums or long-stay secure institutions are now housed in small home communities. Their endlessly frustrated and often infinitely persistent carers frequently come out into the streets looking for their charges, who have taken themselves out into the community, where their behaviour is “challenging” - that is, not the social norm that the authorities and health professionals would accept in their own residential areas.
So we have Dan (not his real name), who accosts us and others on the street, threatening to kill himself. He is an alcoholic, who in rare moments of sanity conducts an intelligent conversation. “Father, father” he calls out to me. “I’m going to top myself. What can you do for me?” But if one tries to do anything for him, he ends up swearing and shouting and performing socially unacceptable acts.
He was even violent with someone in a nearby project, and was sent to jail for it.
So we did not usually let him into our shop/café for fear of what he might say or do to others, and perhaps especially to our volunteers, who are often vulnerable, frail or “on benefits”.
When we read the demoniac story, as we do, we know all about it. Reading it doesn’t solve anything, but we say, “it kind-of helps”. The Gospel descriptions are just all too familiar, and give us a secret feeling that there must have been others who as Christian disciples felt that Jesus would know the stuff they had to go through, trying to minister to such people, because he had done it himself.
Beyond this, the social reality and the political reality are parts of it all.
The Social Reality
The demoniac had been cast out of the city. He has stayed alive, possibly, because people have fed him. But because of his violence, they have tried controlling him in chains, but they had failed (5.3-4). This suggests an ongoing saga involving other local people. Do they bind him sensitively, not too strongly, so that he can break out again? And is this an instance of what Girard calls “a cyclical pathology”?
The context and the people of the context can tolerate an annoying but familiar anti-social phenomenon which they can almost deal with. What they cannot tolerate is a total reversal of their control and management systems that cater for it, which continue the status quo and preserve the semblance of normality. The old demoniac they know. But this preaching convert (5.20) they neither know nor want. Better the devil you knew!
Interpretations of the demoniac story have seen reflections there of Isaiah 65. Certainly some of the people of the street are like those.
Who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places, Who eat swine’s flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels (Is. 65.4, NRSV)
Well, they call it multicultural cuisine today, using up pieces of animals that westerners discard. As in the dozen ethnic shops/cafes on Spital Hill. One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Non-western cultures merely remind us that Britain has always been a place of irreconcilable cultures. My predecessor in my first ministry on the housing estate at Wythenshawe passed on the advice:-
Begin at the bottom, And work downwards.
Now perhaps, it’s parallel worlds, rather than, or as well as, one world above another, with a “trickle down” to the bottom. Either way, “working downwards” is still a Gospel call as well as a social and cultural necessity.
Christians calling for us to be “counter-cultural” have much upon which to reflect in all this.
The Political Reality
In a recent lecture at the Sabeel Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem, Ched Myers comments that someone being brought to be “in his right mind” (5.15) might mean coming to see the political realities of oppression.
In political terms, this portrait attests to the power of the state to suppress opposition through fear. In psychological terms, it reminds us that those who are co-dependent on addictive behaviour will usually resist changes in the dysfunctional system. Personal or political, liberation has a cost, and there will always be those unwilling to risk it (124).
Yet, at any rate, the ex-demoniac himself becomes a sign of the possibility of liberation as he “goes to proclaim the good news to all held captive by the practice of the imperial body politic (5.20)” (124).
Myers (125) concludes with “aspects of following the Jesus of the gospels” today, which ends with these:
The gospel is supposed to represent “good news for the poor” and a challenge to Empire. We Christians should socially relocate accordingly.
We must discern what it means to go after “big fish” and “legions” today.
Our latest experience of this was that we discovered the need on Spital Hill for more accommodation for homeless and asylum seekers. So, in 2012, we ended up with 9 single men from many nations and backgrounds. But no room for the few but essential “people like us” who will keep the whole show going, and be there with long-term help, as needed. Suddenly, a 3 bedroom house almost opposite became available, and we scraped out Ashram Community Funds, and twisted a few arms, and got the money to buy it. In August 2012, two of our Community moved in, to help support our multi-national community opposite.
At least, we cannot now be told to leave the area, as Jesus was told (5.17). At best, we have dug ourselves more firmly in.
Mark 5. 21-43
Jairus and the Woman
The Inner City practice for our contemporary Christian Communities indicated by the Gerasene demoniàc suggested directions, motivations, methods and expectations for Multi Faith Christianity today. Similarly, the practice indicated by the Woman with the Blood and Jairus’s daughter holds out at least three elements that call forth and cohere with contemporary Inner City Mission - the priority of the street, the primacy of hands-on ministry, and the redeeming particularity of the private.
1. The Priority of the Street
Just as the fruitfulness for us of the drama of Mark 5.1-20 derives in no small way from its location within alien, strange and demanding - “challenging”, as we say - territory, and people, so Mark 5.21-36 presents itself as a model for locational attention and concentration on the street.
Mark 5.21-36 is in its immediate impact and in its theological depth a story - or an intermingling of stories - taking place in the open, in the public realm, amidst crowds of others. Jairus thrusts himself embarrassingly before Jesus as a desperate, even pathetic, suppliant, regardless of the presence all around of those to whom and for whom he must be the keeper and the provoker of the Rules and Customs of the central focus of the neighbourhood’s religious orthodoxy. Yet he appears in the story as powerless, tragic, without self-respect or self-regard. And the woman, with her terrible secret, her malady of exclusion from normal human relationships, and her exclusion from the possibility of religious acceptance or wholeness, also here appears in public grabbing for herself a healing in the unacknowledgeable agony of her involuntary self-exhibition, now with a chance for radical change, can she but grasp it. And it is all done on the street, with people of the street.
2. The Primacy of Hands-on Ministry
Jesus says to the man with the withered hand (3.1): “Stretch forth your hand” (3.5). The result is that the hand is restored (3.5). So, here, the woman with the issue of blood comes up secretly to be beside Jesus, and holds out her hand to touch him, saying “If I but put my hand on his garment, I will be healed” (5.28). Jairus beseeches Jesus, “Come and lay your hands on her” (5.23), which Jesus does not actually do, but rather “takes her by the hand” (5.41). This touching is what Jesus describes as faith (5.34). Indeed, Mark comments that “mighty works are wrought by his hands” (6.2). In Nazareth, where he could do no works of dynamis, yet he “laid hands on a few sick people” (6.5), and later “as many as laid their hands on his cloak were healed” (6.56). “The Stammerer” besought him to lay his hand on him (7.32). He took the blind man by the hand, and laid his hands on him (8.23), and placed his hands upon his eyes (8.25). He takes the convulsed boy by the hand (9.27), and lays his hands on children (10.16). At 9.43, if your hand causes you to sin, better lose it. Finally, Jesus is betrayed into the hands of sinners (14.41), who lay hands on him (14. 46).
Fernando Belo attractively suggests three ways in which the practice of Jesus is to be replicated in the practice of disciples:
The practice of the hands, or charity, which transforms bodies and economic existence. The practice of the feet, or love, which transforms places and human relationships. The practice of the eyes and ears, or faith, which transforms domination and human orientation (244-52).
3. The Redeeming Particularity of the Private
To go into the hostile, dark, unsanctified, unholy, stigmatised depths of the Gentile world with all their demons has the same value and significance as the two incidents which follow it. First (5. 21-24a) the situation of death itself in the person of Jairus’s daughter. Then (5. 24b-26) the woman with the issue of vaginal blood.
In both cases, Jesus breaks a 12-year curse. The flow of blood dries up (5.26), and the death is reversed, after the child has been declared dead (5.35).
In all three cases, it is a story of a hideous physical malfunction being corrected by the physical activity of Jesus. In each case, the details of the taking over of Jesus by the supplicant intruder are given with clinical elaboration: the prostrate, clawing, begging demon-possessed man (5.5-10), the prostrate, desperate, pleading Jairus (5.22-23), the haemorrhaging, poverty-stricken, bold, self-precipitating woman grabbing hold of him by his clothes (5. 26-28).
Comparing the haemorrhaging woman with the Syrophoenician woman, “equally bold (7.27-28)”, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon comments:
While the leper and Jairus demonstrate deference to Jesus and express faith in his healing power, these two women supplicants show a bolder approach and assume a knowledge of the availability of God’s power that surprises even the Markan Jesus (84).
Feminist interpreters have rejoiced to find here a confirmation and embodiment of the feminine instinct for intuitive and emotional action, over against the masculine tendency for analysis and rational action. Though Mark’s male supplicants display similar traits.
Out there in the inner city, alongside many alternative religious practices, and mediums and spells and tarot cards, Jesus is taken as a possible way through impossible and unacceptable stuff, like the rest. So William Placher comments that neither Jairus nor the unnamed woman articulate any belief about Jesus. Was the faith superstition?, Placher asks. Certainly “a desperate gamble” (84).
“Being Taken Over”
The “Crossing over” of Jesus leads to a “Taking over” of Jesus. Jesus had crossed the lake with his disciples presumably to carry his Kingdom reality and message into a liminal area, outside of home territory, only to be totally diverted by the demoniac and his healing’s consequences. After this, Jesus returns by boat to the western shore, and prepares to deal with “a great crowd once more gathered round him” (5.21), only to be apprehended by the intrusion of Jairus, who persuades him to go off with him instead (5.24). Jesus proceeds as quickly as possible to get to the child “at death’s door” (5.23), only to be stopped by the bleeding woman getting herself cured without permission or intention (5.30-33).
In each case, gospel reality is extracted via the available but non-intentional dynamis present in Jesus. The project of Jesus is totally taken over by three individuals, for their own personal benefit. Jesus even complains of it: “who touched me?” (5.31) “power (dynamis) has been taken out of me” (5.30).
Having a clear Mission Strategy, as we are told we need, seems less important than being in a hostile place and being vulnerable to whatever comes. Throughout this chapter, Jesus is “taken over” by people in great need, by people who grab him and hold on to him until they get out of him what they want - the demoniac setting on him (5.6-7), Jarius obstructing his way (5.22), the bleeding woman grabbing hold of his coat (5.27).
For us, this is about not knowing for whom we are, or what we should be doing, and even not knowing where we should be. Our residential community for asylum seekers at Spital Hill began when we found asylum seekers sleeping on the pavement in Hallcar Street, and we opened the cellar to them, and laid out a few blankets. The local Anglican church now has a night shelter where overnights are provided.
How did it all turn out?
Our Gerasene demoniac? Dan finally got institutionalised. Liberated from the street, he was in a place of security. He died after three weeks there.
Our Mission on the other side? We couldn’t get enough volunteers, or enough coffee-drinkers, to keep the New Roots Café open. Se we now run a Burngreave Banquet for anyone who needs a meal on Wednesday evenings, open the Café when we have groups in, and have a monthly evening sponsored charity meal.
Our Mission to the non-believers? We have a Multi Faith Chapel and Library, with a couple of dozen coming for midday seminars. A few people even come from the West - but fewer now they have set up their own one.
And the theology needed or possible? My multi-faith context confusion at how far I must or may or should speak of Jesus rather than God is not helped. Jesus instructs the demoniac to go and report on “what God had done for him” (5.19), but he did not in fact do so, but “went off to proclaim in the Ten Cities how much Jesus had done for him” (5.20a). So?
And the strategy? Maybe we have fellowship with some early disciples, who, faithfully following, yet do not perform mighty deeds, but like Jesus in 6.5, have to be content to just minister to others with our hands. At least, at the impulsore Christo within, an imitatio Christi has led to small but tangible vestigia Christi out there in the world.
Philo - Annotated Bibliography
David T. Runia (ed.), Philo of Alexandria: An Annotated Bibliography 1997-2006 (VigChr Suppl 109; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012. €155/$212. pp. xxv + 492. ISBN: 978-90-04-21080-6).
This volume continues the excellent work of the International Philo Project, which has previously seen two similar volumes of annotated bibliographies covering the years 1937-1986 and 1987-1996. Philo is of interest and significance for specialists in many different fields; for such scholars, well-edited bibliographies are an indispensible resource, and this is a particularly fine series of its kind due to both the arrangement of material and the quality of its content. Part One offers annotated bibliographies of bibliographies, editions, translations, anthologies, commentaries, indices, lexica, journals and internet sites (the comments on Wikipedia were interesting!); Part Two, which is the bulk of the book, summarises critical studies; Part Three corrects and extends the previous volume; seven separate indices are offered, including authors, reviewers, biblical passages, Philonic passages; subjects; Greek terms, and contributors. The format reflects profound care and attentiveness that have gone in to making the book serviceable; possibly the numbering system would be easier to handle if there were punctuation between the two components that make up each number – its year and its position in the list, i.e. ‘200/01’ might be easier than ‘20001’ to indicate the first listed book from the year 2000, and ‘203/131’ easier than ‘203131’ for the 131st in 2003. The quality of the contributions lies in their lucidity and concision; the commitment to accuracy and accountability; and the growing emphasis on breadth. In this volume, as in its predecessor, no restriction is placed on the original languages of research publications; however, the editors confess that coverage remains severely restricted in many languages, especially non-European ones. The advent of the internet over the years since this volume began has changed the conditions for such a project; the editors discuss this in their introduction, but its most welcome consequence was still only an aspiration when that was penned: this book is now available electronically as a searchable PDF, via Brill Online!