Sometimes it's fun to do some redaction and source criticism of our favourite writers. Yesterday I read an essay by Richard Hays, one of the most astute New Testament scholars of my generation. The essay was exploring the Gospel of Mark, and especially the significance of Mark's portrayal of the cross and discipleship in the narrative structure of Mark. The title is 'The Crucified One', and it can be found in Cruciform Scripture. Cross, Participation, and Mission, a volume of essays in honour of Michael Gorman.
Hays displays all his characteristic precision in a close reading of Mark, analysing how the Cross is hinted at from the beginning, and then increasingly emphasised in more explicit words of Jesus. The disciples are not only slow to understand, they seem incapable at times of believing Jesus is serious about his destiny. That slowness of understanding linked to the call for disciples to bear the cross and follow after Jesus, drives the narrative towards its conclusion in the passion of Jesus, the resurrection, and the call to disciples to walk into an unknown future with all its risks and costs.
The later part of the essay analyses Mark's use of the verb "to hand over", usually translated into English as to betray, particularly when Judas is either the agent or the one described. The word expresses the passivity of Jesus, a willingness to be "handed over". The resolute walk to Jerusalem, the anguished wrestling in prayer in Gethsemane, the matter of fact account of the trial and crucifixion are an enacted kenosis, the self-surrender of Jesus to the Father's will. The word that describes that surrender, that "handing over", is freighted with a profound theology of the passion as kenosis, expressed in obedient sacrifice and self-giving love.
As I read the essay I recalled two books I had read as a young minister, a long time ago now – Following Jesus. Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, by Ernest Best and The Stature of Waiting by W. H. Vanstone. I took Best's volume on a week long retreat, something I'm not sure the author would ever have envisaged given it was published as a scholarly monograph in the fledgling JSNT at Sheffield University Press. Twenty years later, at the British New testament Conference, I sat at breakfast with Professor Best and thanked him for a book that deepened my understanding of Mark, and challenged me at levels considerably deeper than exegetical learning.
To my knowledge, Best was amongst the first to focus on Mark's theme of the obtuse disciples presented as exemplars of how hard it is to take up the cross and follow. Here is a summary of Best's book, demonstrating how technical analysis yields practical interpretation:
They show many failures in understanding, but that is not the whole story, for they are on the road and it is to them that the task of mission and the task of cross-bearing are entrusted.
The cross and resurrection of Jesus are behind them, but their own cross (and resurrection?) is very much ahead of them or actually with them in the suffering to which they are called. The cross is always calling for the denial of self and the search to serve others; it is always calling for a community in which commitment and openness are not opposed to one another but two sides of the same fundamental challenge which is also an opportunity.
Jesus is not to be
imitated so much as obeyed and followed on the road which he alone has made possible by his act of ransoming in the giving of his life. (Prof. Robin Barbour, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1983, Vol.36 (1), p.107-109)
Vanstone's book, The Stature of Waiting, I read on the back of his still remarkable first book, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense (1977). It remains one of the most telling practical theologies of kenosis in pastoral life. The Stature of Waiting is a full pastoral exploration of "to hand over" as it is used of Jesus in the Gospel story. His exegesis highlights the kenotic significance of both the word itself, and the actions in the Gospel story that it signifies. His aim is to apply it to our all too human experiences of suffering, loss, and disappointment, using Jesus' acceptance of his own suffering as a lens through which to view our own human responses to those situations and circumstances that overtake all of us at some time or other.
I find it intriguing to discover such parallels between a highly suggestive essay written a few years ago by a leading New Testament scholar, and two books from almost half a century ago. One was written by an obscure Anglican priest, the other by an Irish Presybterian minister also a NT Professor. What I know of Richard Hays from his books is that he was an alert listener to Scripture. Some of his most influential books are excavations of the text looking for precursors of thought, and listening closely to hear intra-textual echoes of Scripture, and using his sharp recall of the text and its world to identify allusions which might aid interpretation.
The point of this post is to recognise that process of echoes and allusions, not only in written texts, but also in the intellectual and spiritual traditions that make up the atmosphere of biblical studies as they filter into our own theological thought and spirituality. I doubt Hays read Vanstone, and if he read Best it was probably decades ago. The common tradition of what we learn and live, what we retain and what had its time and then was gone, what still pulses with significance for us and drives us to dig deeper, think harder, and practise more faithfully – that shared environment of scholarship is one of the sustaining gifts entrusted to the church. I am grateful to those who keep adding to that tradition, bringing forth things old and new, for them let us give thanks – for me, that includes an appreciation of Richard Hays who taught us to appreciate the surprising complexity and contemporaneity of the text before us. It was good to remember him in the reading of his essay, 'The Crucified One.'
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