Unlike the Scribes

Then they came to Capernaum and on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!” The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. All were amazed and asked one another, “What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.” (Mark 1.21-28)

There are many things to say about the gospel of Mark, but one thing is sure. The evangelist tells the story of Rabbi Jesus at a quick pace, compressing stories and providing no lengthy sermons. His narrative is like speed dating, fast clipped and revolving faces. As a result, it is the shortest of the four gospels, but that does not mean it carries the least weight. In fact, the tightness of the text means each episode is packed with importance.

The same can be said of the brief passage that is presented to us today. At this point, we are only halfway through Chapter 1 and we already have seen Rabbi Jesus baptized by John, tempted in the desert by demons, and followed by a few fishermen from the Sea of Galilee. Now, in these verses that we hear, he moves from Nazareth to Capernaum, teaches in the local synagogue, and heals a possessed man. He is a man on the go, or, better stated, a man with a mission.

As passengers in this high speed car driven by Mark, we look out the window and get fleeting images, the landscape and the people along the road disappearing into the rear view mirror before we have time to really focus on them. With that in mind, it might be good for us to take a break at a roadside rest area, walk around a bit, and look closely at the surroundings. If we do, we’re going to see a lot more than if we continue at the breakneck speed Mark sets for us.

When we do that, we see several very interesting things in the seven verses that Mark gives us today. Perhaps the most important is that Mark puts before us in these few verses the protagonist and the antagonist of the story that is going to develop in the pages ahead. The protagonist is obvious. It is the one called Jesus of Nazareth. He will be front and center for the remainder of the book.

The antagonist may appear less clear at this point, but Mark subtly points in that direction. How so? He tells us that Rabbi Jesus enters the synagogue in Capernaum where he teaches the people who are gathered there for the Sabbath service and who respond very favorably to the Teacher because, as Mark says, “he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”

Ah-hah. Shrewdly, with those words, Mark introduces us to the antagonists of the story, namely, the scribes. Right here at the start, Mark makes a contrast between Rabbi Jesus, who taught with authority, and the scribes, who do not teach with the same authority. With that information, Mark tells us where this story is going. It is going to be a story of conflict between Jesus of Nazareth and the Jewish scribes.

So, just who were these scribes? They were the tenured teachers of Judaism, Ivy League scholars, so to speak. Their days were spent in study of the Hebrew scriptures, resulting in prescriptions and proscriptions that they taught to the people at large. Experts in Mosaic Law, they were adept at finding the many ways that people failed to comply with the rules and regulations.

As we might expect, their expertise afforded them especial treatment and elite status. They got the front row seats in the synagogues and, much like our courtrooms today, everyone stood when they entered a room. They were addressed by the Hebrew title, “Master,” which was translated as teacher or rabbi when it made its way into Greek.  

Not only did they sit in the front seats, but also sat on the seats of power. Since Judaism was more than just a religion, but also a way of life, the scribes were power brokers, their influence felt far and wide. And, as we know, people in power rarely like to share it, and the scribes were no different. They guarded their status and they held tightly to the status quo, since, after all, it kept them in the catbird seat.

All of this background is both essential and consequential, particularly because the scribes are set in the role of the antagonists of Rabbi Jesus, made clear already at this point in Chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel when he says Jesus “taught as one having authority and not as the scribes.” We can expect that antagonism to grow as the gospel continues, as it does chapter by chapter, finally culminating at the end when Jesus is abducted from the Garden of Gethsemani and is led away “to the high priest and all who were assembled with him, including all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes.” 

Then, after setting up a kangaroo court with a stacked deck against Jesus, the elders and the scribes bind Jesus and drag him to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate, for his part, finds nothing blameworthy about Jesus, recognizing in short order that the prisoner had been delivered to him “because of envy.” Still, when put to a vote, the same religious leaders moved the people to choose a murderer for release rather than the Galilean.

It all begins in Chapter 1, the stage set and the final verdict already assumed. Nor should we rush by the healing story that occurs in the synagogue after Jesus finishes his teaching there. Mark tells us that a man with an unclean spirit cries out in the middle of the crowd, shouting, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth.” 

It is important that we hear what the unclean spirit says next when he says, “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” This is important because, once again, Mark is setting up a split screen. On one side, a demon recognizes who Jesus is. He is the Holy One of God. On the other side, the scribes refuse to recognize Jesus as the Holy One of God, finally accusing him of blasphemy when he tells them who he is. Their blindness grows stronger with each page of the gospel.

Again, the contrast between Jesus and the scribes is clear, not only in their divergent teaching, but in the way they live. Jesus is the holy one; the scribes are not. And because the scribes are threatened by his teaching and by how quickly his fame grows in the region, they collude and calculate until they can get him crucified on a cross, in this way the status quo unshaken and their personal status undisturbed. 

Unlike the scribes, Rabbi Jesus habitually backed up his teachings with actions. Hence, we see his healing the man with an unclean spirit immediately after he has taught in the synagogue. That dyad–word and deed–will continue throughout this gospel. The Galilean offers teaching and then buttresses it with a healing. His authority comes from action, not just from words. So the crowds in Capernaum say, “What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”

In hearing a story such as this one, it is second nature to point fingers at the bad guys, berating them for their blindness, criticizing them for their cruelty, distancing ourselves from their depravity. But there is a danger when we do that. The danger is that we conveniently remove ourselves from their circle, putting ourselves in the camp of the good guys, and, in the process, we fail to do due diligence on ourselves to see if we really belong with the guys wearing the white hats.

For the sake of argument, a sense of fair play, or most importantly, out of a desire for moral clarity, can we scrutinize ourselves through a more objective lens to see if we cross over into the other camp with enough frequency to compromise our certainty on belonging in the company of Rabbi Jesus, however loud our oath to the contrary? Simply stated, do our actions support our words?

Do our own actions indicate that we do not prop up ourselves with our positions, with our power, or with our prestige, all the while looking down on those without a claim to any such position. Is retaining our status or our state more important than doing the right thing or seeking the just thing? Are we so afraid of making waves or upsetting our like minded friends that we never dip our toe into a deeper discussion or open ourselves to a different way of looking at things? 

Like the scribes, do we hold onto the status quo, fearful of change, finding anything new or different a threat to our way of life? Do we castigate those who think differently, look differently, speak differently than we do? Are we chained to the past, fearful of the future, unable to break loose of what was in order to have what might be? 

Can we be wrong? Apparently, the scribes could not be. Can we open ourselves to another person’s perspective? Apparently, the scribes could not. Can we walk in the poor man’s street-worn shoes for enough steps to see how soul weary he is? Apparently, the scribes could not. Can we find the face of God in the homeless, in the hungry, in the hounded? Apparently, the scribes could not.

The problem for the scribes, it would seem, is that they were incapable of crawling out of their comfort zone, unable to challenge themselves to welcome something new, inhospitable to a future that was not under their control. When Rabbi Jesus stepped out of the Jordan and into his public persona as the Beloved Son, the scribes remained stalwartly unconvinced that he was anything but a charlatan, accusing him of breaking the rules and leading astray the people.

Their modus operandi, of course, was to call for a blind obedience to the rules that they themselves had formulated, dressing these man-made rules in the finery of divine writ, insisting that others comply at the risk of condemnation or damnation. And while they themselves might miss the mark on complete observance of the regulations, they did not hesitate to crucify others who did the same.

For our part, have we also conflated or confused our rules for living with God’s rules for living? Have we become demagogues or demigods, deluded by our own ideas, deceived by our own self-importance? Have we judged others harshly for failing to fulfill our expectations of right behavior or moral rectitude, and yet, turn a blind eye to our own inability to live a good and righteous life? These are the questions that we want to ask as we study the behavior of the scribes, with whom, truth be told, we often bear an uncomfortable and uncanny resemblance. 

At this point, it might be good to recall something that Benedict of Nursia, a wise man of the fifth century, a saintly man tested and seasoned by the corruption he saw in his contemporaries who resembled in many ways the scribes in scripture, made this observation about such people when he said of them, “That which they like, they call holy. That which they don’t like, they call unholy.”

His statement–short and succinct–is the same that Mark the Evangelist is saying today when he presents the scribes to us, setting up for us a dichotomy between them and Jesus of Nazareth, a man whom even the demons recognized as the Holy One of God, leaving us to conclude that the scribes were anything but holy, in spite of what they said or thought.

–Jeremy Myers