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| Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice |
Mark 1:35-39 is an incredible passage. It affords a glimpse of the empirical Jesus that two thousands years of Christian piety has increasingly obscured and even denied. One, Jesus had just spent, according to Mark, a long day intensely involved in peoples' sufferings. Jesus believed that he'd also confronted demonic powers. So, the next morning he went off to a lonely (TEV) or solitary (NIV) or deserted (NRSV) place. Mark doesn't say a word about fatigue, but the sense of it is there. Two, this human Jesus prays. It seems significant that Matthew doesn't report this incident at all and that in Luke (4:42-44) Jesus doesn't pray. A Jesus who prays contradicts the view of high christology, which may already have been current in Luke's time. If Jesus was divine why would he pray to the divine? The way Mark's author treats Jesus, as we've noted before, places Jesus in a position clearly subordinate to God and emphasizes Jesus' human qualities. Three, another difference between Mark and Luke is that in Luke 4 the crowd pursues Jesus, but in Mark 1 it's Peter "and his companions" who go looking for him. This seems more plausible historically. They knew Jesus and probably guessed where he'd gone off to. It suggests that the disciples had a somewhat complex role, and that they sometimes acted not only as Jesus' representative to the people but also as spokespersons for the people as well. They also appear somewhat insensitive to Jesus' personal spiritual needs. One has the feeling that they broke in on his prayers. There's even a bit of an accusatory tone here, as if Jesus shouldn't be wasting his time off by himself when there was so much need to be met. You can almost feel the pressure on Jesus, not only from the expectations of the populace but also from those of his friends.
