Precious, inevitable scandal: theology of the cross in Mark

Of the four canonical narratives we call "gospels," only Mark identifies itself as "good news," or, more accurately, "the beginning of the good news." Ironically, the story of Jesus that Mark tells proceeds more like a rapid descent into tragedy. Especially to those who read or hear the gospels for the first time, Mark's account must seem a message of bad news rather than good when measured against the other three. True, the hero dies in all four, but in the other three he reappears long enough to enjoy a few moments of vindication and to offer both assurance and direction to his tentatively faithful followers. As Mark's tale closes, the women at the empty tomb find their beloved Jesus as absent from them as God had seemed from Jesus himself on that terrible afternoon two days earlier. "You will see him, just as he told you," the young messenger at the tomb declares (16:7), sounding suspiciously like the voice that promises to the battered faithful such things as "Those who love me, I will deliver.... I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation" (Ps 91:14-16).

In the shadow of the cross, how does anybody believe either promise? With what shreds of hope should the frightened women at the tomb proceed to Galilee?

Another absence seems to haunt the earliest and briefest of the canonical gospels. Matthew's narrative might qualify as proclamation of good news because it finds a way to show how Jesus' death worked forgiveness. Indeed, two Jesus figures play roles in Matthew's passion narrative: the one who gets released, never to be heard from again, and the other whose blood is spilled and ends up on the people who spoke against him (Matt 27:15-26). In this enactment of the ancient ritual of atonement prescribed in Leviticus 16, Jesus' death accomplishes the forgiveness of sins. Moreover, the cataclysmic events that accompany Jesus' death in Matthew (27:51-54) serve as signs that this particular crucifixion has triggered the sequence of God's salvific, end-time actions promised in prophecies such as Zechariah 14:3-5.

All roads lead to the cross in John's Gospel, too, from the moment John the Baptist identifies Jesus as "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (1:29). In this depiction, however, Jesus maintains tight control over everything and everyone involved in his dying. He gives orders to Judas (13:27) and to Pilate (18:37), both of whom comply. He questions those who would put him on trial (18:19-23, 33-38). In the end he cries out in victory and chooses the moment of his dying (19:30). Like Matthew, John weaves obvious soteriological themes into his account. By altering slightly the chronology of events common to the synoptic gospels, John introduces paschal imagery to the passion narrative and presents Jesus as the ultimate Passover lamb. (1) The fourth gospel's Jesus is no victim, however, and his death is not by any stretch a tragedy. "No one takes my life from me," Jesus declares (John 10:18). "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again." And so he does in John's telling. These themes, plus others in John's complex narrative, make of Jesus' death not only a saving event but a deliberate sacrifice that Jesus himself carefully orchestrated.

Scholars generally agree that Luke's Gospel does not develop a soteriological image or theory of atonement concerning the consequences of Jesus' death. Nevertheless, Jesus proceeds very purposefully in Luke's narrative, refusing to be dissuaded from setting his face toward Jerusalem and all that inevitably awaits him there (9:51-62). As the day of crucifixion plays out in Luke, it becomes an occasion for Jesus to teach "daily cross-bearing" to a disciple who walks in his footsteps (cf. 9:23 and 23:26-43). Jesus then dies calmly praying a portion of Psalm 31, which already in biblical times was counted among the evening songs. With that simple bedtime prayer Jesus rests himself in God's hands. Following his resurrection in Luke, Jesus goes back on the road (24:13-35) that had served as his place of vocation, until it comes time after several weeks to complete the journey that began back in Luke 9:51. At the ascension scene in Acts 1:6-11, we learn from the two men in white robes that the whole story has been one long "taking up." (2) Moreover, the men promise that the disciples will witness a repeat of the same scenario. In other words, the long journey to Jerusalem, and finally to the cross, is not what it may have seemed to the faithful who initially went home from Golgotha beating their breasts. Rather, Jesus' cross-bearing road serves as the means by which God "takes up" those who follow on that way.

When compared to these treatments of Jesus' death, how can Mark's grim narrative qualify as good news? What, if anything, could we say that Jesus' death accomplished or changed if all we had for clues came from Mark?