Jesus and the New Community

Jesus and the New Community

A new section of Mark’s narrative opens with a summary statement of Jesus’ healing and teaching beside the Sea of Galilee, where persons come to him from all the places he will later go. This compact summary closes with the unclean spirits recognizing Jesus as “Son of God” (remember 1:1) and Jesus ordering them “not to make him known” (3:12). Scholars call this recurrent aspect of Mark the “messianic secret,” and various explanations of it have been offered—from the historical and redactional to the rhetorical and existential. One can at least ask what anyone in the story who told all that she or he knew at this point might tell—and whether that would that be enough to make Jesus’ mission clear. Moving from sea to mountain, Jesus appoints some of his larger group of followers to be “apostles,” those sent out to do what he has been doing, preaching and casting out demons. Twelve men are named, but two narrative signals warn us to take the story more symbolically than historically. The “mountain” brings to mind encounters of Moses and Hebrew prophets with God on mountains. The number twelve brings to mind the twelve tribes of Israel. Although Jesus has more than twelve followers, including women and men, these twelve men function as a symbolic core of a new community of faith…