Mark 8:31-33

Finding Life by Losing Life (1) – Jesus’ Destiny

Jesus used Peter’s inadequate response as the opportunity to share with the disciples his own understanding of his role and person. The Galilean experience of general misunderstanding and deepening official opposition had no doubt led Jesus to reflect deeply on his own likely fate, and on his continuing role in the light of that probable fate. His movement out of Galilee into neutral territory had possibly given him space and perspective to think more clearly and to pray. His prayerful reflection undoubtedly happened against the background of his Jewish Scriptures. He allowed experience and tradition to throw mutual light on each other. 

Jesus shared his insights firstly with the disciples.

Mark 8:31-33 – Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection (1)

Many of the Galilean Pharisees had already rejected Jesus, as had some of the local scribes and others who had come up from Jerusalem. He had yet to encounter the elders and the chief priests, but their attitudes to him were fairly predictable. They had an even greater stake in maintaining the status quo.

What was of particular interest, however, was Jesus’ certainty that he would rise again after his death, and on the third day. Resurrection from the dead was an insight that had only recently gained currency in Jewish thought. Clear references dated back no more than two hundred years. 

Resurrection from the Dead

The Jewish people had come to terms with the slaughter and humiliation of their deportation to Babylon six centuries before Christ by seeing them as justly deserved consequences of their previous infidelity and wickedness. However, during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century before Christ, faithful Jews were cruelly killed precisely because of their faithfulness. This was a new experience, demanding deeper reflection.

At much the same time, Jewish consciousness developed a stronger sense of the uniqueness of each individual and the reality of personal reward (and punishment). Individuals were distinct from the nation as a whole, and individual destiny needed to be distinguished from national destiny.

The insight grew that God’s justice could only be believed if the unjustly oppressed were vindicated in a future life. Jewish leaders expressed this sense of rewarded future by the idea of resurrection. Before then, there were scattered references in Psalms and elsewhere to a belief that the dead went to some form of shadow existence in Sheol, but such existence hardly qualified as “life”.

Some Greeks had by this time developed a sense of the immortality of the soul. Their language and their capacity for abstraction allowed them to be at peace with a distinction between body and soul, and, whilst the body undeniably died, some believed that the soul continued in existence. Many diaspora Jews who were exposed to Greek thought and culture were comfortable with this idea, and expressions of it can be found in the Jewish Wisdom literature, written probably in Alexandria.

Homeland Jews, however, thought in much more concrete terms. (The Wisdom literature of Alexandria was generally unknown in Galilee in the time of Jesus.) They saw the human person as a concrete, unified whole, even though on occasion they did distinguish body, soul and spirit, which to them were aspects of the one undivided person. For them, future life was conceivable only in terms of the resurrection of the whole individual.

Clear references to resurrection could be found in the Book of Daniel and in the Second Book of Maccabees (both dating from late in the second century before Jesus) that referred to the martyrdom of the last of a series of seven brothers under Antiochus:

Belief in resurrection became part of the tradition of the Pharisees, but, since it was not taught in the books of the Torah, it was not accepted by the priestly caste or the Sadducees. Obviously Jesus believed in it, as did the disciples generally.

The trouble with immortality as the natural condition of the soul is that

a) it seems to make of a metaphysical explanation of the human person a description of its actual nature: the person is a composite of body and soul, the soul being the essential element. This can lead to a dualistic view of the person.

b) Jesus does not speak of the resurrection of his body, but of his resurrection as a human person.

c) Resurrection is entry into a whole other way of being alive, a direct gift of God. Immortality of the soul seems to refer more to a mere necessary continuation (and no longer with a body) of what has been.

Jesus’ talk of rising after three days can be understood possibly in three ways. 

• It can be taken literally: Jesus said it and meant it - though in the light of the resurrection narrative of Mark, it is more accurately seen as “on the third day” (though possibly not necessarily more than about thirty hours: from late afternoon on Friday to some undisclosed time before the women’s visit early on Sunday).

• The detail of three days can also be interpreted as an editorial reading-back into the narrative in the light of the actual event of Jesus’ resurrection – making explicit what may have been a more general reference by Jesus that simply reflected his confidence in resurrection without clearly saying when. (The brothers mentioned in the Book of Maccabees believed in resurrection but had obviously not [as yet] experienced it.)

• It is also possible that the term “three” can be understood symbolically as referring to the day when God intervenes to vindicate the just. The prophecy of Hosea speaks in these terms:

In speaking of his coming death and resurrection, Jesus referred to himself quite clearly in terms of the prophecy in Daniel about the Son of Man. 

The title Son of Man was clearly the fruit of Jesus’ pondering the Hebrew Scriptures. It provided a useful category to explore the meaning of his role: 

• it referred to suffering and persecution resulting from fidelity to God; 
• it spoke of resurrection (not explicitly but in terms of on-going life); 
• it referred to the fidelity and integrity of the Son of Man as the criterion for the judgment of the world. 

It was also, of course, a quite inadequate title, but its very lack of clarity made it a more appropriate title than Messiah, the one chosen by Peter. Its inexactness invited further reflection by the reader.

Perhaps Jesus found it hard to come to terms with own insight into his eventual destiny. It may indeed have been one element of the testing by Satan referred to during his time in the wilderness.

As noted above, the word translated as reprimand in this context was the same term translated earlier as sternly ordered. The same word had been used by Jesus to cast out the unclean spirit in the unnamed man in the Capernaum synagogue at the start of the narrative (1:25).

Peter obviously found it hard to come to terms with the idea of Jesus’ suffering and execution, especially since his sense of Jesus as the Messiah involved triumphant victory and glory. He tried to talk Jesus out of what to him seemed a defeatist mindset.

Peter’s rebuke of Jesus was met by an even stronger rebuke by Jesus. Surprisingly, he referred to Peter as Satan. (The meaning of the word Satan is “one who tests or tempts”). If Jesus saw the suggestion as a temptation, obviously he felt tested and vulnerable. It is hard to understand otherwise the vehemence of his reply. The prospect of suffering tested his courage, his trust in his Father and his commitment to his mission. It tested them, however, not just in the sense of probing his fragility but also in the sense of leading him to touch into his depths to take hold more consciously and deliberately of those values that he was already living.

His command to Peter to get behind would figure again soon in an opposite context. It had a second meaning, namely to follow, that is, to be disciple in the proper sense. Jesus called Peter to fall into line behind him and to pursue the difficult path of discipleship.

Next >> Mark 8:34-9:1