Mark’s Eschatological Instruction and Hope

The attitude of life is that of waiting, the spirit is that of hope, the duty is watchfulness.1

Today, Sunday December 3, 2023, signals the beginning of the Christian liturgical season of Advent. This season of waiting, of expectation, receives its name from the latin adventus, coming or arrival, from the Greek parousia, referring theologically to the notion of the christ’s second coming.2 We do not need to be personally committed to the idea that the christ will return to discuss the eschatological view that many did and do hold that the christ will return. In other words, analyzing the concept does not mean that we hold the concept to be true. But I think studying the concept, we should and must. We may find there an ancient value that is true, even if these ancient stories happened this way or not.

I have been really excited to share with you what I worked on for today. From a text critical perspective, the Markan author, today’s assigned text is Mark 13.24-37, arranges a beautiful and compelling tapestry of texts from Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms, to create an engaging picture of the christ’s role to play in ushering in the eschaton that would resonate with a first century audience. There is beauty in the rhetorical mastery, and understanding the text that underpins the text, if that makes sense, is a lesson in gospel composition.

But listen, I don’t seek only to treat the text; I call us to holy action, and I think the holy call of today’s text is hope. Indeed, hope is one theme of Advent, and hope characterizes the Jewish expectation for a messianic age of peace, equity, and completeness: In short, shalom.

Hope, as the saying goes, is not a strategy, but it is an attitude, and I think it is an attitude the sacred texts call us to hold. The key to understanding my analysis is not, as I’ve said, in holding messianic predictions to be true; instead, what I hold to be true is that interpretive communities are licensed to negotiate and repurpose the texts to bring continued life to them in our context. If authority is grounded in the ways interpretive communities deploy the sacred literature, let’s deploy the literature in a way that doesn’t betray its core setting but also does not betray the values we locate in the text. Because I take the texts to be human authored, when confronted with a reading that risks harm to others, I will happily side-step rigid adherence to that reading, in favor of affirming and uplifting a person. As it’s been said in a number of ways: The Bible doesn’t need my protection, but people do.

Today and anciently, people suffer. How might we cultivate hope?

End Times in Situ

We have the understanding of what a proclaimed messianic figure would say by appeal to the gospel accounts. While we hold in mind that the gospels are later narrative constructions that build stories around preserved material from the Jesus Movement and draw from the Scriptures of Israel to proclaim their good news, combining the Pauline epistles with the gospel accounts, we may recover at least some sense of the theological commitments of this first century apocalyptic cult.

Regular readers could write today’s post for me! Exploring the Jewish apocalyptic literature commensurate with the gospel composition is a recurring topic here. Don’t blame me! This is the thrust of the Jesus Movement! Salvation, in the first century, meant a true salvation, here and now, not a concern with eternal reward. While concepts of afterlife reward and punishment began developing within apocalyptic literature around the same time as the composition of the gospels, calls for Hosanna, Gd save us, were a present petition. A call for deliverance from oppression and wealth inequality at the hands of a militarized occupation. That is the condition through which hope must bloom—modern similarities are not hard to find.

Following a short-lived period of autonomous rule in Jerusalem following the Maccabean revolt in the second century BCE, Rome installed the Herodian dynasty and Roman occupied Judea was the historical backdrop for the Jesus Movement. Rome ensured peace through military might, and the Second Temple was allowed cultic operation under a tense and authoritarian Roman governance that allowed the Priests to continue operating the Temple so long as they maintained order and paid their tribute to Rome. This historical reality is vitally important for many reasons, not least of which is understanding that any rhetoric about the Priests wanting to kill Jesus, a gross, anti-Judaic trope perpetuated by Christian communities for centuries, has its roots in the need for Temple authorities to remain order, unless the Temple be shuttered by rome. Of course, Rome did sack the Temple in 70 CE, slaughtering thousands of Jewish men, women, and children in the process.

This week’s assigned reading finds the Markan author placing words in Jesus’ mouth to anticipate the Temple’s destruction and hope for the imminent end time. We cannot understand today’s text divorced from Roman occupied Judea and the destruction of the Temple. We cannot understand today’s passage divorced from suffering.

The Text

The following summary of Mark 13.24-37 shares details that are salient to today’s post. Feel free to follow the earlier link to read the passage in its entirety. The case that I will build toward in my analysis of the text argues that each major component of the passage is drawn from the Scriptures of Israel that would be familiar to the audience. Unlike how we may read these words as a blank slate, the first century audience would be filled with imagery and themes that would supplement the words on the page with a wealth of contextual understanding that would resonate with the audience.

“But in those days, after that suffering,” the text begins with Mark 13.24. The suffering to which the verse refers is the destruction of the Temple–a prophecy retrojected back into the text by Mark’s author. Whether Jesus made this prediction we cannot be sure, but we do feel confident asserting, by the theory of Markan priority, that at the time of writing, Mark’s author was aware that the Temple had been destroyed.

“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” This imagery would be familiar to the audience from two sources, the book of Daniel and Psalms, namely, Psalm 68.4:

Sing to God; sing praises to his name;

    lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds—

his name is the Lord—

    be exultant before him.

“Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” These four winds conjure Daniel 7.2-3:

I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.

Then Daniel 7.13-14, that cloud imagery is back!

As I watched in the night visions,

I saw one like a human being

    coming with the clouds of heaven.

And he came to the Ancient One

    and was presented before him.

To him was given dominion

    and glory and kingship,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

    should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion

    that shall not pass away,

and his kingship is one

    that shall never be destroyed.

These ideas of all nations streaming toward the Ancient One (Gd? The “father” who imbues the “Son of Man” with authority?) recalls Isaiah 2.2:

In days to come

    the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains

    and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

Culminating in the oft-quoted end times prophecy of Isaiah 2.4:

He shall judge between the nations

    and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares

    and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation;

    neither shall they learn war any more.

“Truly I tell you,” Mark’s author continues, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Here we see the Markan author tapping into their preferred language to discuss Jesus’ contemporaries, and the Markan author does this by appeal to the Scriptures. Consider, first, the author’s use of generation from several chapters earlier, Mark 8.38:

“Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

And consider what the author likely has in mind, first Deuteronomy 32.20, Gd speaks:

He said, ‘I will hide my face from them;

    I will see what their end will be,

for they are a perverse generation,

    children in whom there is no faithfulness.

Here Gd is angry with Israel for their lack of loyalty and worshiping of idols. The theme repeats itself in the Prophetic text of Jeremiah 3.1-5, with a warning against the “youth” who call to “The father,” but they have “done all the evil that they could.” What evil? Like a bride who has been unfaithful–Israel is often characterized as Gd’s bride–Israel has prostituted itself with many lovers. Lovers? This is Jeremiah’s author warning against idol worship, thematically related to the Deuteronomy transgression.

Back to Mark, it is placed in Jesus’ mouth, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.”

Here, the apocalyptic tradition of remaining awake and alert is present, take, for example, an apocalyptic text that we’ve treated before, the Apocalypse of Ezra, also called 2 Esdras, specifically 4.52, discussing signs of the end time:

He answered me and said, “Concerning the signs about which you ask me, I can tell you in part, but I was not sent to tell you concerning your life, for I do not know.

Putting it All Together

I want to present the narrative arc for this passage, and I want to present this in two ways: first, by the major plot points we’ve rehearsed, and second, by the underlying scriptural allusions.

The story progresses in this way:

• Coming on clouds represent Gd’s presence, and the Son of Man is the emissary of the Ancient One ->

• Jesus observes this generation is far from Gd’s way ->

• Jesus gathers the elect and all nations, a requirement for the end time ->

• The end time is a time of peace and abundance ->

• We cannot know when the time will arrive, so we must stay alert

Now consider how the underlying Scripture references operate in this passage:

• Psalm 68, continues to be used in Jewish liturgy

• Deuteronomy 32, would be read in synagogues, then and now

• Jeremiah 3, a major prophet whose writings were familiar to the Jesus movement as rooting Jesus’ proclamation in the prophetic accounts

• Daniel, a book so popular that multiple scrolls including the text were discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls maintained by the Qumran community; a potential association with John the Baptist

• Isaiah, another major prophet whose writings were familiar to the Jesus movement as rooting Jesus’ proclamation in the prophetic accounts

• 2 Esdras, developed somewhat concurrently with the gospels, similar to Daniel, integral in the development of Jewish apocalyptic literature

I invite us to exercise our moral imagination and embody–in our limited way–the life of a first century Jesus follower. Maybe you are Jewish, maybe you are gentile. You are aware that the Temple was just destroyed by Rome in the single largest catastrophe in the cultic life of Israel since the Babylonian exile 500 years earlier. Thousands have been slaughtered by Rome, and the Jewish community is fractured and in diaspora. Several Jewish sectarian groups are trying to recover Jewish life. The Sadducees and Essenes are no more. The Zealots have either already been struck down in revolt against Rome or they continue to plan revolts–both violent and nonviolent; none will be successful. The Pharisees have taken to the synagogues in Jerusalem and in modern-day Iraq to compile the rabbinic writings that would govern Judaism moving forward, in homes and synagogues, not the Temple with sacrifices at the altar.

Uncertain about your future, reeling from loss, afraid of Roman military occupation, some staying in Jerusalem to form a mission to the gentiles, no one has heard from Paul the Pharisee since before the Temple was destroyed. Last we knew, he was in Rome, where he was likely put to death.

Maybe you’re only now finding out about Jesus of Nazareth who some proclaimed to be the long hoped for Davidic messiah, but all that the messiah was prophesied to accomplish had not come to pass: uniting all nations, establishing the Third Temple, instantiating an era of peace and abundance. You hear that the death of this christos does not rule against his status as the davidic messiah, but this is actually support for it! Some leaders have explained that this Jesus was the suffering servant referred to in Isaiah. Besides, didn’t you hear that he was resurrected and promised the general resurrection for all of us?! The messianic prophecies are filled with predictions of resurrection.

Maybe you’ve been a Jesus follower and escaped with the Lukan community to the transjordan or you’re in the school for disciples established by the Johannine Community. Maybe you are settled with the group in Jerusalem.

You hear that a new message, a word of good news, euangelion, a gospel, according to Mark, was issued from Rome. There will be a public reading, and you recognize the themes of the message immediately. If you are Jewish, these words sound like many that you heard at the Temple: Is this from Psalms? We used to chant this at the time of the Temple. Is this Deuteronomy I hear? We read from the Torah regularly in the synagogue, and I know I’ve heard this before. The Jesus followers are often quoting from the scrolls of Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Isiah as evidence for Jesus the Christ, and I recognize the language. We are reminded that our generation had strayed from Gd, is this why Jesus was always calling for repentance, for t’shuvah?

“But in those days, after that suffering,” you hear the cantor read, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” You begin to feel that this message is for you, for us. “Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

In the suffering, fear, and distress that you feel, here you have found a message to persevere. You look around the room and you think of the messianic age. With such loss that you’ve experienced, these words help you develop an attitude of hope.

In these days, in this suffering, when the sun is darkened with the smoke from fires and the heavens are shaken with explosions of ordinance, may we keep awake. Let us transform our weapons into implements of farming and never may we know war anymore. May we cultivate hope for peace. Ken Y’hi Ratzon, may it be so.