At many points, the New Testament writers utilise the theme of reversal, and see it as coming to fulfilment in the events associated with the coming, suffering, death,
resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus Christ. From Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) to the New Song (Revelation 5:9-14), the gospel of Jesus Christ is presented as a message of impending (but inaugurated) reversal. It seems that the events of Jesus Christ were interpreted in the light of the reversal motif, and prompted a renegotiation of that motif.
Three instances of this christological adaptation of the reversal motif will be noted here: the parables of reversal in the teaching of Jesus; the use of psalms of reversal in Mark’s Gospel; and the attitude to “rulers” in Acts.
The Historical Jesus and the Motif of Reversal
The interpretative Christological motif of reversal goes back to Jesus himself. John Dominic Crossan35 points to a number of parables that he views as “parables of reversal” spoken by the historical Jesus, and suggests that “Such double and opposite reversal is the challenge the Kingdom brings to the complacent normalcy of one’s accepted world”.
Of course, the question of which parables fit this category might be debated. Related to this, the extent to which Jesus’ teaching claims an immanent or a deferred reversal (or some combination of the two) is not agreed upon among interpreters.
Interestingly, Jesus is depicted in Mark’s Gospel as explaining his use of parables with a quotation from Isaiah that itself hints at reversal (Mark 4:12): those who think that they can see will be blinded by the parables (while, presumably, those who know themselves to be blind will have their eyes opened). Perhaps Jesus is self-consciously taking on the role of the Isaianic Servant.
35
John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (Sonoma, Calif.: Polebridge, 1992), 73-74.
Jesus as the Vindicated Sufferer in Mark
Mark’s Gospel especially presents Jesus as the one who personifies the Davidic figure of the Psalms of royal lament.36 Mark 3:20-21 reports the reproach of Jesus’ family
concerning his mission, a motif of Psalm 69. In Mark 9:12 Jesus says that it is written that the Son of Man must be treated with contempt, arguably an allusion to the Greek version of Psalm 22:7. Mark 14:18 sees Jesus betrayed by one who eats with him, an evocation of Psalm 41:9. In Mark 14:34 “it seems that Mark takes a recurring phrase from Pss 41:6,12 [that is, 42:5, 11] and 42:5 [that is, 43:5] and weaves it into his story by putting it on the lips of Jesus”:37 the downcast soul of the Psalmist is personified in Jesus. The casting of lots for the divided clothing of the Davidic Psalmist in Psalm 22:18 is evoked in Mark 15:24, in the actual experience of Jesus. Mark 15:29-30 evokes the common Psalmic motif of the figure who is reviled by passers by, a motif utilised in relation to the Davidic persona in Psalm 22:7. Mark 15:34 brings this use of the Psalms firmly into the
foreground, with Psalm 22:1 heard from the lips of the dying Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And Mark 15:36 is reminiscent of Psalm 69:21, with the suffering figure offered vinegar to drink.
For Mark then, the identity and project of Jesus may be approached by hearing him as the speaker of the Davidic lament psalms, in this way identifying himself with Israel, as a figure whose sufferings cry out for divine vindication, and constitute a path for the community to follow.38 These Christians for whom Mark writes are summoned to express
36 Here I draw especially on two resources aside from the Gospel of Mark itself: Stephen
P. Ahearne-Kroll, The Psalms of Lament in Mark’s Passion: Jesus’ Davidic Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and A.Y. Collins, “The Appropriation of the Psalms of Individual Lament by Mark,” in The Scriptures in the Gospels (ed. C.M. Tuckett; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 223-241. My references are to the Psalms as numbered and versed in the Christian tradition.
37
Ahearne-Kroll, Psalms of Lament, 67.
38 Donald Juel rightly notes: “The Psalter played a critical role in the development of the
passion tradition. In all the Gospels, the story of Jesus’ death is narrated with features taken from Psalms 22, 31, and 69, to name the most obvious…. Nor is it surprising that Jesus’ followers turned to the Psalter to understand his crucifixion…. In numerous psalms, innocent sufferers bring their case before God in the form of complaints and
their incorporation into this Messiah of Israel by following him in the way of the cross, and crying out with him for divine vindication. They are to believe in his resurrection and look forward to the implied endpoint of this resurrection, the “final harvest”39 vindication of the Messiah and his community.
Earthly Rulers and Opponents as the Condemned Boasters in Acts
The book of Acts presents the apostles as interpreting present-day powerful opponents to be the scornful-but-condemned opponents foreshadowed in the Psalms and prophets.
In Acts 4 the Jerusalem church is depicted as quoting Psalm 2 in a prayer to God,
explicitly equating its doomed human “rulers” with Herod and Pilate, who opposed Jesus, and with the authorities who presently threaten the church itself:40
Acts 4:23-29
Master, you who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David your son, saying,
Why do the nations rage
And the people imagine vain things?
petitions”. Donald Juel, Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old
Testament in Early Christianity (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1988), 89.
39 Cf. the seed parables of Mark 4. Hays comments on the reception of the psalms of
lament: “Israel’s historical experience had falsified a purely immanent literal reading of the texts; the line of David had in fact lost the throne, and Israel’s enemies had in fact seized power. Thus, the promise that God would raise up David’s seed and establish his kingdom forever (e.g., 2 Sam 7:12-14; Ps 89:3-4) had to be read as having reference to an eschatological future. How, then, would the royal lament psalms be understood? They would be construed – by many Jews, not only by Christians – as paradigmatic for Israel’s corporate national sufferings in the present time, and their characteristic triumphant conclusions would be read as pointers to God’s eschatological restoration of Israel. Thus ‘David’ in these psalms becomes a symbol for the whole people and – at the same time – a prefiguration of the future Anointed One… who will be the heir of the promises and the restorer of the throne”. Hays, Conversion, 110-111.
40 Talbert is right to perceive this utilisation of Psalm 2 as eschatological, messianic, and,
specifically, “applicable to Jesus’ passion”. Talbert, Reading Acts, 46. Witherington’s addition, furthermore, is essential: “it is often taken to refer to events in the life of Jesus,
but the narrative here is about events in the life of the church”. Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 200;
emphasis original. The pivotal events associated with the Messiah, and their
programmatic influence on the church, are given common expression in the liturgical language of reversal.
The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers [οἱ ἄρχοντες] gather together
Against the Lord and against his Christ.
For, truly, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, together with the nations and the people of Israel, gathered together in this city against your holy son Jesus, whom you anointed, in order to do as much as your hand and your decision had fore- ordained would happen. And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and give all boldness to your servants, to speak your word.
In Acts 13, Paul is presented as quoting Psalms 2, 16, and 55, as well as Habakkuk 1, in order to prove the point that it was necessary for the Messiah to be raised from the dead in the face of persecuting, unbelieving scoffers – who would themselves perish. Once again, Pilate and the “rulers” are seen as fulfilling the scriptural role of persecutors and would-be destroyers:
Acts 13:27-30
For those living in Jerusalem and their rulers [οἱ ἄρχοντες], having failed to
recognise him or the words of the prophets that are read each Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And despite finding no grounds for a charge deserving death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had fulfilled all of the things written about him, they took him down from the tree and put him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead.
The present generation of would-be persecutors is warned that the trajectory set by their scoffing ends in their own condemnation (Acts 13:40-41).41
The early churches, it seems, heard the Psalms of their corporate recitation and the scriptures of their inheritance as expressing the story of Jesus, the suffering Messiah,
41 Of course, there are questions regarding the extent to which this represents a speech by
Paul or an apologia by Luke: see, for example, Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the
Apostles (SP; Collegeville, Minn.: Order of St. Benedict, 1992), 239. The early
whose persecution at the hands of worldly “rulers” had resulted in death, but whose resurrected vindication would one day reach cosmic manifestation with the condemnation and judgement of these rulers. The reversal motif has been renegotiated to express the “gospel” or kerygma of the death, resurrection, and deferred cosmic vindication of Jesus, the Christ.