9. The Disciples Faith Still Need to Mature

The center of the Gospel according to Mark is Peter’s profession of faith. We find it narrated in chapter 8 and precisely in verse 29. The evangelist places this central story after the first part of the narration, where the evangelist showed the path of the deaf and blind disciples, unable to comprehend who Jesus is. This constitutes the summit of the first part.

Jesus is outside the traditional borders of Israel, in the north, in the region of Cesarea Philippi and there, together with his disciples, he asks what the opinions of the people towards him are; the outsiders, the distant ones, who know Jesus in a superficial, external way: What do they say about him? The disciples mention the current opinions, opinions that recycle something that has already happened. They say that Jesus could be John the Baptist, or a prophet, one of the past, one like many others.

The second question that Jesus asks concerns the individual opinion of his disciples, they who lived with Jesus, who saw him work, heard him speak, shared his life. What opinion they made of him. Peter replied: “You are the Christ.” Unfortunately, many have the habit of merging the Gospels and to the question, “What is the profession of faith of Peter?” It is generally answered with the formula present in the Gospel according to Matthew. But now we are reading the Gospel according to Mark, and therefore, it is good to learn to observe the differences.

We must not reconstruct a hypothetical fifth Gospel by putting together the four canonical ones; we must respect each of the canonical stories and enhance the details, the particularities of each. If in Matthew, the profession of faith of Peter says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Mark does not report it so. Rather, Mark intentionally distinguishes Peter’s profession of faith at the top of the first part, compared to the profession of faith from the Roman centurion’s profession of faith at the top of the second part. Peter says, “You are the Christ.” The centurion truly recognizes this man was the Son of God.

At the beginning of the Gospel, the first verse, which is somewhat the title and the summary of the work, speaks of the origin of the good news that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God. There are two truths to be recognized in Jesus. They are two important but distinct titles. Christ is a functional title, the messianic function of a king, legitimate successor of David. To this, the disciples arrive in the first phase.

The episode immediately preceding the confession of Peter is the story of the healing of a blind man in two phases; A story that shows that the disciples, and many others, reach the Good News through a slow process. After the first healing intervention where the blind man says he has the impression of seeing men as trees walking, he cannot see well. He just begins to have a glimpse of something. There is a need for a second intervention to allow him to have a clear vision that truly corresponds to reality, as it happens to the disciples, who have come to recognize that Jesus is Christ, the Messiah, but this is not the summit of faith because it was not clear what kind of ‘messianism’ they understood. What the messiah had to do.

In fact, each one had his idea. The numerous movements in Israel, at the time of Jesus, had different ideas of a Messiah. In any case, the Greek term ‘Christ,’ that corresponds to the Hebraic ‘Messiah,’ is a political term that indicates a king, and therefore, to a civil-administrative claim that can be used in controversy against the Romans, who are, in fact, the masters of the situation at that time. Jesus never explicitly presents himself as the Christ, does not claim to be recognized as the Messiah because he knows that this title is ambiguous and misleading. It is, but to say, it creates more problems than revelation.

In fact, Jesus reacts to the statement of Peter by telling him: “Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him” … With severity, Jesus forbids the disciples to repeat their belief of faith, not because it is wrong, but because it is ambiguous, equivocal, it can create confusion. Immediately after, the second part of the story begins. And in fact, we find an explicit verb: “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.”

This is the first prophecy of the passion. The narrator has left a trace of his pattern: “He began to teach.” It is a new beginning. This time, Jesus does not begin ‘to announce’ but ‘to teach’. These are the two shades that the evangelist gives to the two phases of the mission of Jesus. The first is a public announcement, technically called ‘kerygma’; it is the moment of the proclamation of the kingdom, with the great signs with which Jesus wants to make his announcement credible. On the other hand, the second part is didactic. It is the moment of the catechetical teaching of the formation of the small group that was formed around him, of those who recognize and accept him as Messiah, but they are the ones who need further training because they must understand that the Messiah's task is to die. Unimaginable.

None of the movements present in Israel at the time of Jesus supported such a thing. They dreamed of a military Messiah, conqueror, good political governor, social administrator, reformer of religion, prophet capable of explaining well the new rules… but that the fundamental task of the Messiah which is to give life was not part of any human plan. And here is the shocking revelation.

Jesus uses the term ‘Son of Man’ to speak about himself. It is a term that says little to us, or rather, it risks saying the opposite of what it means. Son of Man does not mean man… it means superhuman figure because it refers to an Aramaic term used by Daniel, a book of the Old Testament, in which, as opposed to four beasts the symbolic figure of a ‘son of man’ is presented, to whom God, in the ancient of days, hands over all power, glory and the kingdom.

The ‘son of man’ is a glorious, transcendent character, one who comes on the clouds of the sky, a character from the other world, therefore glorious, powerful. It is paradoxical, however, that Jesus says: ‘The Son of Man’ - that is I, must go to Jerusalem and be killed. The son of man is a glorious character who comes on the clouds of heaven, cannot be taken, arrested, rejected and killed. Jesus began to teach that the Son of Man, of the apocalyptic tradition of Daniel, identifies with the suffering servant of the prophetic tradition of Isaiah.

In the very person of Jesus, these ancient words are realized. Jesus is a character of the other world, glorious, he is the Lord, even if he is truly a man. And he is the Messiah of Israel but his job is to be rejected, i.e. he knows very well that this announcement that he is bringing, this full and mature revelation of God will not be appreciated by religious authorities who will do everything to silence him. Jesus knows that his preaching will be hindered and that if he does not change, they will suppress him. He could remain in Galilee and create an autonomous movement, but instead, he wants to go to Jerusalem; he must go to Jerusalem. He must confront reality. He does not flee; he does not isolate himself, he does not create anything alternative on his own.

He concretely confronts history with those in charge, and wisely realizes, by foreseeing that this encounter will become a confrontation that the authorities will not accept him, they will reject him. The goal is not to die. The goal is to truly announce the Word of God, but Jesus realizes that this announcement will not be accepted and that this will lead to a tragic death. Jesus could change his mind. He could change his mind, retract, moderating his words, avoid going to Jerusalem, make a compromise with those in power to properly fix the situation. He could have thought of many reasons, but none was consistent with the plan of God.

And Jesus is the Son, transparency of the Father, and does not accept compromises. He totally trusts God, even if he knows from the start that this will cost him his life. This is the meaning of the prophecies. Three times during this itinerary, Jesus explicitly repeats his awareness that a tragedy will happen in Jerusalem; it will be a disastrous event. He clearly announces to the disciples that in Jerusalem they will eliminate him, they will kill him, but always adds also the prophecy of victory. “On the third day,” that is, after a very short time, the Son of Man will rise.

Still, in the mind of the disciples, the prospect of the resurrection was not clear. They could imagine what the death of the messiah meant, but they could not imagine the resurrection. But they memorized this fact very well. Jesus insistently reiterated this. The second part of the story of Mark, starting precisely from 8:31, can be structured in three distinct moments.

In chapters 8, 9, and 10, the journey to Jerusalem is narrated and this section is marked by three announcements of passion, each of which is followed by a hint of misunderstanding to underline how the disciples struggle to accept the perspective of Jesus. And therefore, Jesus does a formative catechesis. It is a moment in which he teaches the disciples what is the way of God, what is the style of the Messiah since they believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They are right, he is the Messiah, but the Messiah has these characteristics that they do not understand. It is a formation of the mentality.

At the end of this itinerary, we arrive in Jerusalem. Chapter 11 narrates the triumphal messianic arrival of Jesus in the holy city, which is followed by some episodes of dialogue with the authorities in the temple; an encounter that becomes a polemical clash and culminates with the exit of Jesus from the temple and the eschatological discourse that announces the end are chapters 11 to 13. The third section of this second part of the Gospel contains the stories of the passion, chapters 14 and 15, and the announcement of the resurrection, the fulfillment. Things happened as Jesus foretold.

The second summit is that of the Roman centurion who at the foot of the cross recognizes Jesus as ‘Son of God,’ more important than Messiah. He is a Roman, of the same race as the recipients of the Gospel, of those catechumens of Rome who listened to the story of Mark. One of them, seeing Jesus die in that way, recognizes his divinity. It is a great catechumenal catechesis that leads to baptism, to the full profession of faith of the Christian who recognizes in Jesus, dead and resurrected, the Son of God. Not only the Christ of tradition, the king, the Son of Man, suffering servant, who died and rose again. By believing in him in this way, the believer is identified with Christ, is baptized, dies and he, too, rises, and the formative itinerary proposed by the evangelist Mark reaches its fulfillment.