FORMULACIÓN DE LAS PRIMERAS PREGUNTAS

As has been noted, the use of exousia in relation to Jesus indicates his sovereign freedom and magisterial authority (Liew, 1999:14).The term denotes Christ’s divinely given power and authority to act, comprising the aspects of both right and power. The term reveals the element of freedom in his authority and shows that Jesus’ power is universal. An overview of the usage of this term will shed more light.

Exousia is used ten times in the gospel of Mark. It occurs twice in the context of the crowd responding to the teaching and actions of Jesus as one with authority (Mark 1:22, 27). Twice Jesus gives his disciples the authority to cast out demons (Mark 3:15; 6.7) (Edwards, 1994:218). In Mark 2:10, Jesus

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claims the authority to forgive sins. In an interaction between Jesus and the religious leaders in Mark 11:27-33, the term is used four times as the leaders question Jesus’ authority after the cleansing of the temple. Jesus shows his authority in the confrontation without directly answering their questions. A final occurrence of the word occurs in the parable of the man on a journey in Mark 13:34. The man leaves for the journey giving each servant authority over some part of the household responsibilities until he returns.

But other times, the authority of Jesus is much more implicit, arising more from His actions than His words and hiding in the background of His evaluations of present-day Judaism and the established Roman systems. The implicit ways that Mark does so is all over the gospel. The examples of Jesus’ actions that perform this function include: His healings, His utterances, His exorcisms, His restoration of the dead, His various clashes with Jewish Law coupled with His subsequent reinterpretation, His ability to forgive, His power over Creation (wind, waves, material goods, etc…), and His connection with the Father (Mark 9:7) (Tolbert, 1999:12).

In Mark 8:33, Jesus unreservedly claims to “know the things of God,” unlike Peter, a definite claim to authority. There are two instances that appear to stick out in Mark. These are Jesus’ capacity to forgive sins and Jesus’ right to judge the religious system of the day (including the popular reinterpretation of the Mosaic Law). Though these two events are not the most common of all the examples – like the healings and exorcisms – they are the two instances

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where the authority of the religious leaders directly clashes with the authority of Jesus, and where the authority of Jesus is most questioned.

Whether implicit or explicit, in each use, the term exousia refers to that abstract notion of the right and power to act, to command, and to in some sense rule over people and circumstances. Jesus has this right to control and command, and to have power and authority because of who He is, and He gives His disciples the potential or resources needed to capably command in accord with his own intentions and purposes. As the one who has divine exousia, Jesus reorders social and political priorities, redefines Torah commandments, and claims prerogatives which are otherwise God's alone.

This uniquely Markan exousia can also be seen within the wider space of Mark’s intentions in building up the figure of Jesus. The construction of this Jesus’ exousia in Mark cannot be construed as innocent. Accordingly, and due to His authority, Liew (1999:14) rightly notes that in Mark:

Jesus can quote and modify scripture to justify his own actions and teaching whether it is about the Sabbath (2:23-28), the practice of speaking in parables (4:10-12), ritual cleanliness (7:1-8), responsibility to parents (7:9- 13), the acceptability of divorce (10:2-12), the assurance of eternal life (10:17-22), the operation of the temple (11:15-17), the credibility of resurrection (12:18-27), the first commandment (12:28-31), the relationship between David and the messiah (12:35-37), or the apocalypse (13:24-27).

Mark does not stop at this, he goes on to offer authorial comments that further blocks and silences any contrary thinking on Jesus’ authority from his critics. In Mark 11:18 and Mark 12:37, he points out that Jesus’ freedom in the use of scripture is recognized as valid by the crowd as well as the scribes.

Mark heightens this authoritarian figure of Jesus by taking his words and acts beyond any temporal imagination. In all this Mark appeals to one

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absolute authority, God. For this reason Liew shows that this ideological construct is buttressed by effectively positioning three scripts, one at the beginning of the gospel (Jesus’ baptism Mark 1:9-11) one at the middle (Jesus’ transfiguration Mark 9:2-8) and one at the end (Jesus’ crucifixion Mark 15:33-40) to declare Jesus as God’s son and thus “superimpose a script of divine approval and involvement of all Jesus’ activities” (1999:16). Tolbert (1989:259) also points out that presenting Jesus in such a manner gives Jesus an air of omniscience. Thus Markan Jesus becomes an authority in himself and his own authority. His directives become decisions without discussions. If “Foucault’s theory of power suggests that power is omnipresent” (Lynch, 2011:15), then Markan Jesus becomes the very embodiment of that omnipresence.

Doesn’t this reduce the authority that Mark embodies in Jesus as the will to do what one wills regardless of the contradictions involved? Yes, and much more. The fluidity of this kind of absolute authority is in the fact that Markan Jesus cannot even sustain its demands for himself. Since the minimum definition of impunity is refusal and inability to adhere to the rule of the law or to denigrate authority, Jesus can be seen as falling trap to his own absolute authority. Severally, Jesus cannot adhere to the demands of this absolute authority and He sometimes is forced to override the instructions that He himself gives others to follow. For example, while he rebukes the scribes for exploiting the livelihood of poor widows (Mark, 12:40-44), He allows an undistinguished woman to anoint him with a jar of expensive nard oil that

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could have been sold and money given to the poor (Mark, 14:3-9). He also faults the Pharisees and the scribes for neglecting their parents (Mark, 7:9-13) yet He himself justifies the reason for His decision to ignore and shame His mother and his siblings (Mark, 3:31-35).

Again, as Patrick Brantlinger (1988)11 has noted the disciples are reduced to playing ‘sidekick’ roles as the royal satellites or virtually ‘personified colonies’ of the messiah (1988:57). Thus, citing Hall, Liew notes that “apprenticeship or Mark’s discipleship is often just another name for slavery or Mark’s servitude in human history” (1999:19). This is how Mark builds his exousia, by reducing his disciples to extremely subordinate status. Further, Liew exposes that current studies on colonial discourse have alerted us to the realization that even language of the family may encode oppressive and dominating relations. In Mark, this may be represented by deliberate obstruction of the ‘fatherly’ authority. In Mark, 3:33-35, ‘father’ is conspicuously absent in Jesus’ definition of the new family. As Liew further observes, this should not be equated with the dismantling of authority or hierarchy for Mark goes on to reintroduce an authoritative ‘father’ in the person of God. Therefore, “Jesus’ definition of family does not automatically eliminate the interplay of power and subordination; quite the contrary, power always resides with the one who has the authority to define” (1999:20).

One last thing that needs to be noted is the inclusion of the ‘child status’ in Markan discourse (Mark, 9:36-37). This is the posture necessary for inclusion and continuing participation. Severally, Jesus out rightly refers to his

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disciples as children. Even if one understands ‘children’ as a symbol for something else, “infantilization is still an insulting form of patronization at its best, and an extreme form of victimization at worst” (Liew, 1999:21).

What can be noticed and cannot be redeemed in Mark’s Gospel is his obsession with the status quo. Mark wears an irredeemable hegemonic world view which can also be seen as stemming from his vantage of what Brueggemann terms the “dominant consciousness” (1985:80). Mark refuses to diffuse the thinking of the dominant community and moves alongside and uncritical of that thinking all along. His critical thinking is numbed by his obsession with the royal culture of the day which relied on the mainstream meta-narratives for their construction of the image of Jesus. Unfortunately, a Jesus who heralds ‘Good News’ (to eu)aggelion) and is meant to be a liberator employs the same tactic as the oppressor and ends up mimicking the Roman empire in inaugurating his kingdom.