Jesus Predicts His Death

I watched from a window as the riot police got ready. They looked like sportsmen preparing for a match, putting on pads and helmets, gloves and special outer clothes. Only this wasn't a game. It was real. They didn't know, quite literally, what was going to be thrown at them. They appeared quite calm, but they must have been tense inside. They were being called to go off to meet danger, including possible injury or even death. Many people in our world, such as fire crews and those who work in lifeboats, face similar situations every day.

I watched from a window as the riot police got ready. They looked like sportsmen preparing for a match, putting on pads and helmets, gloves and special outer clothes. Only this wasn't a game. It was real. They didn't know, quite literally, what was going to be thrown at them. They appeared quite calm, but they must have been tense inside. They were being called to go off to meet danger, including possible injury or even death. Many people in our world, such as fire crews and those who work in lifeboats, face similar situations every day.

Jesus' friends and followers were used to danger. It was a perilous time; anyone growing up in Galilee just then knew about revolutions, about holy people hoping God would act and deliver them, and ending up getting crucified instead. Any new leader, any prophet, any teacher with something fresh to say, might go that way. They must have known that by following Jesus they were taking risks. The death of Jesus' mentor, John the Baptist📷, will simply have confirmed that.

But this was different. This was something new. Mark says Jesus 'began to teach them' this, implying that it was quite a new point that could only be begun once they'd declared that he was the Messiah📷—like a schoolteacher who can only begin the next stage of mathematics when the pupils have learnt to add and subtract, or a language teacher who can only start on great poetry when the pupils have got the hang of how the language works. And the new lesson wasn't just that there might be danger ahead; the new lesson was that Jesus had to walk straight into it. Nor would it simply be a risky gamble that might just pay off. It would be certain death. This was what he had to do.

You might as well have had a football captain tell the team that he was intending to let the opposition score ten goals right away. This wasn't what Peter and the rest had in mind. They may not have thought of Jesus as a military leader, but they certainly didn't think of him going straight to his death. As Charlie Brown once said, winning ain't everything but losing ain't anything; and Jesus seemed to be saying he was going to lose. Worse, he was inviting them to come and lose alongside him.

This is the heart of what's going on here, and it explains both the tricky language Jesus uses (tricky for them to puzzle out at first hearing, tricky for us to reconstruct what he meant) and the strong negative reaction of Peter, so soon after telling Jesus that he and the rest thought he was the Messiah. Messiahs don't get killed by the authorities. A Messiah who did that would be shown up precisely as a false Messiah.

So why did Jesus say that's what had to happen?

So why did Jesus say that's what had to happen?

Mark will explain this to us bit by bit over the coming chapters. But already there is a hint, an allusion. 'The son of man📷' must have all this happen to him, declares Jesus; only so will 'the son of man come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels'. Only so will the kingdom📷 of God come—and some standing there, he says, will see this happen.

This dense and cryptic way of talking is like someone today who peppers their speech with quotations from Shakespeare which only make sense when you think about what's going on in the play at the time. (Why would anyone do that? Well, perhaps because they knew it was difficult to say it any other way. Sometimes poetry, perhaps quite old poetry, is the only way to say something really important.) Jesus is half quoting, half hinting at, themes from the prophetic books of Daniel and Zechariah. 'The son of man' in represents God's people as they are suffering at the hands of pagan enemies. He will eventually be vindicated, after his suffering, as God sets up the kingdom at last.

Jesus is both warning his followers that this is how he understands his vocation and destiny as Israel's representative (i.e. the Messiah), and that they must be prepared to follow in his steps. So important is this message that opposition to the plan, wherever it comes from, must be seen as satanic, from the Accuser📷. Even Peter, Jesus' right-hand man, is capable of thinking like a mere mortal, not looking at things from God's point of view. This is a challenge to all of us, as the church in every generation struggles not only to think but to live from God's point of view in a world where such a thing is madness.

This is the point at which God's kingdom, coming 'on earth as it is in heaven📷', will challenge and overturn all normal human assumptions about power and glory, about what is really important in life and in the world. Jesus thinks, it seems, that the kingdom will come during the lifetime of some people present. It has been fashionable to take1 as a classic example of misplaced hope, with Jesus and the early Christians looking for the end of the space-time world and the establishment of a totally different existence. But that's not what Jewish language like this means.

The coming of God's kingdom with power has a lot more to do with the radical defeat of deep-rooted evil than with the destruction of the good world that God made and loves. Jesus seems to think that evil will be defeated, and the kingdom will come, precisely through his own suffering and death.

Why he thought that, and what it means for those who follow him, will become clear as we proceed. But this passage makes it clear that following him is the only way to go. Following Jesus is, more or less, Mark's definition of what being a Christian means; and Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk. Or did we suppose that the kingdom of God would mean merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives? New Testament for Everyone - Mark for Everyone.