Note on Mark 14:53-15:47

Reflection on the Mystery of Jesus’ Death

Who was guilty? Who was ultimately guilty of Jesus’ death? There is no single answer. The effective determined push came from Jewish authorities. Early in his ministry in Galilee some Pharisees had sought to find ways to have him killed, and called on Herod’s civil servants to help them. Nothing came from that quarter initially. The successful move came from the alliance of parties comprising the Sanhedrin. A small determined group probably engineered a majority assent in the Sanhedrin. Consensus of any big group – and the Sanhedrin comprised about three hundred members – takes time. People who have taken part in large meetings know that people can be manipulated. Most members of groups do not all think exactly the same. They can have a broad spectrum of ideas and attitudes. A respected, determined and outspoken group can often carry the day when the majority of others

• either do not necessarily agree with each other but have not had time to hear each others’ reasons and opinions,
• or have not had time to get organised, 
• or may not feel strongly one way or the other, 
• or may have been intimidated by those in charge. 

Mark said that the whole Sanhedrin agreed. Experience cautions against taking his assessment at face value.

Of itself the Sanhedrin could not have legally executed Jesus. They needed the order of the Roman governor, Pilate. Pilate did not consider Jesus to be guilty of any capital crime, but for political reasons he acceded to the demand of the crowd. 

The crowd was obviously Jewish, because the trial took place in Jerusalem. The crowd, however, was by no means representative of general Jewish consent to Jesus’ death. Most Jews were no doubt totally ignorant of what was happening at the governor’s headquarters. 

Members of the Roman guard carried out the sentence. They acted under orders, that they did not consider questioning.

The disciples were not without blame. Had they presented a united front with him, Jesus’ own arrest may have been more problematic, even without threats of violence on their part. At least, had they been convinced of Jesus’ vision and opened themselves to the power of the Spirit of God (had they, in other words, genuinely and personally owned the reality of the Kingdom), they would have stood with him ready to face the same fate.

The Jewish people also bore some guilt. Some had responded enthusiastically to his message, particularly as embodied in his healings. Had their response been more whole-hearted, had it become a genuine mass movement, the moves of the authorities would have had to be much more cautious.

Why did people react as they did? As Mark presented the trials, in no way did he show Jesus’ death to be the crime of the Jewish people as a unanimous whole.

Why did the various groups react the ways they did? What can be learnt from a closer examination of Mark’s narrative? An adequate answer provides a commentary on the potential to sin in every human heart.

Those bearing most guilt were probably the small but fiercely determined group of Jewish chief priests organised under their leader, the high priest. Their action was pre-meditated and deliberate. Their motivation seemed to have been the perceived threat to their authority and to the temple-based religious system that they controlled. They probably acted out of self-interest, though they may also have been driven by a mistaken religious fervour, closed to criticism and to any need for change.

The other members of the Sanhedrin, though possibly caught on the wrong foot, colluded in the sentence of death out of undue deference to those in authority and unwillingness, from lack of courage, to dissent from a judgment that was obviously unfounded. Some may have agreed in principle with the thinking of the leading group, without actually wishing to go as far as execution. Any agreement could have come from the same motivation behind the push made by the leaders.

Pilate, as is obvious from information from other sources, had little respect for human life. In other cases he had acted as a brutal bully. Mark showed him acceding to the pressure from the crowd out of moral weakness and contrary to his own better judgment. It was his order that directly led to Jesus’ death. 

The crowd acted the way it did, not from considered thought, but in the heat of the moment, stirred by patriotic fervour, and cleverly manipulated by the determined group of demagogues. They allowed Jesus to become the object of their irrational hatred because they were prisoners to their own unconscious drives. People not in touch with themselves need scapegoats onto whom they can project their own unfaced inner demons.

The Roman guard acted the way it did because military systems generally do not tolerate the questioning of orders from above. Their military training in many ways would have brutalised them, desensitising them to compassion. They went along with the system. It was their livelihood – but earned at the price of their true humanity. 

The disciples did not stand beside Jesus because they had held back, perhaps unconsciously, from his invitation to go deeper, to convert, to surrender their needs for greatness, to die to themselves. Though they had been strongly attracted to him initially, as time went on it was obvious that they could not make the leap of faith. As well, rather than learn to relate at ever more personal levels, they had allowed tensions, unaddressed criticism, competition and jealousy to grow among them. Under pressure they deserted him.

The Jewish people as a whole held back from his invitation into Kingdom life perhaps from a failure in imagination. They could not escape the comforting familiarity of the social/religious system, even though in so many ways they were its victims. They lacked faith. There was also a not-unexpected superficiality in their response. They liked the good news; they were not prepared to pay the price to realise it.

The range of motivations of the various groups echoes the possibilities in all human hearts. Their sin was the sin of humanity.

For whom did Jesus die? Did Jesus die for all people personally? Despite what popular devotion assumes, Mark gave no basis to believe that the historical Jesus knew every single person who has ever lived.  Depending on people’s theological view of the human/divine unity in Jesus, there is no need to assume what was humanly impossible for him. Yet, he died with his heart totally open in forgiveness. His love was bigger than the sin of the world and absorbed it. At the Last Supper he had said that his blood would be poured out for “the many”, that is, for all the unidentified, unknown, unlimited range of persons in need of his love. 

Things are different with the Risen Christ. He knows every human person and loves each one with the same love that was actualised in his human heart on Calvary.

A theology of redemption? Did Mark have a theology of redemption? What significance did the life and death of Jesus have for believers?

The clearest clue comes perhaps from his words at the Last Supper: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.”

Jesus blood was poured out for many. Indeed, Jesus had chosen to live his life “for many”, for people, for whoever came across his path. Motivated by love, he chose to dedicate all his energy to others, to their growth in life through openness and conversion to Kingdom possibilities.

Jesus’ death starkly and inescapably illustrated the thrust of his whole life. Whilst he could have backed down, softened his message and kept silence, he chose not to. To do so would have been to betray his commitment to love. He chose to go into death with a heart totally open to love, hope and forgiveness. The scope of his love was greater than any sin. There was no one, no thing, that he was not prepared to forgive. 

His life and death (his life encapsulated in his death) reinforced the message made by God repeatedly in the past: that God was a forgiving, life-giving God, constantly offering the deepest conceivable intimacy to people, despite their sin. Jesus’ blood illustrated the covenant of God with the world. Jesus did not call it a new covenant, though it was new – in the sense, not that God made some new offer of intimacy, but that humanity could see with a new clarity, reflected in the heart of Jesus, God’s constant offer of unconditional love. Jesus’ death draws people into new depths of relationship with God. To the extent that people open themselves to the possibilities, they experience the Kingdom. With their deaths the experience will become definitive.

Next >> Mark 16:1-8