Juxtaposition overload!

In an attempt to reach a broader audience, here’s some math: in the verses we keep talking about, Mark averages an instance of juxtaposition every 2.25 sentences.  Ok.  Enough of that.  Back to English. 

Why does Mark jam it all in there? Well, way back in “Mark Likes Sandwiches,” I said Mark is trying to indicate an undercover reality with his playful literary winks.  He is trying to draw in those who “get it” as followers of Jesus.  There’s more to “get,” though.  There always is.  Mark has a larger point to make beyond the story’s literal meaning, and he uses juxtaposition to signal us. We’re meant to think, “Gee, there’s more juxtaposition happening here than the last opposite day I endured with my small children!  Perhaps there’s something up!”  In this case, juxtaposition is a flashing neon arrow pointing to everyone’s favorite literary device: symbolism!  Simply put, symbolism is the idea that some things represent other things.  Here, the healings we’ve been discussing are not only about those who have been in front of us the whole time but also the entire community of God.  There’s great evidence to suggest these healings are “also symbolic of Jesus’ renewal of Israel” (Oxford Bible, 66).

Israel is the name God gives the people He begins a relationship with way back in the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  The Hebrew Bible tells the story of that relationship throughout many hardships including enslavement in Egypt and subsequent liberation. These stories of God’s continued faithfulness remain central to Jewish culture and religion now, and provided hope and strength then, as the Hebrew peasants resisted their oppressors.  At the time when Jesus appears on the scene, they would have “eagerly responded to prophecies that God was again about to liberate them from their Roman rulers and restore their community under the divine principles of justice” (Horsely, 1202). By making the healed ones symbolic of Israel, Mark is saying Jesus is this liberator, not just of the woman and Jairus’ daughter, but of God’s people Israel, and not just in the physical “healed” way, but, as Christians believe through the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection, in the “made well” way, too.

Literary device of the day: symbolism

I’m now hearing echoes from my senior year English class with the infuriating and beloved Mr. Johnson, also known as Larry Lit, grinning behind his podium.  Very rarely would a short story go by without a classmate crying, “How were we supposed to know that was a symbol?” which would only widen his sadistic grin.

Symbolism is certainly one of the trickier literary devices to detect.  There are a few clues, although honestly, I think there’s a fair amount of intuition that goes into it.  A favorite professor of mine says, “There’s just something there, there” to indicate that it’s time to sniff around for what’s not obvious. So, in this case, what’s there?  First, as I mentioned, all the juxtaposition tips us off.  Another clue is when something seems to have more significance than its literal reality suggests, often indicated by repetition.  In our case, elsewhere in the Bible, we learn there are 12 tribes of Israel and Jesus calls 12 disciples, indicating chosenness, like the chosen people of Israel.   As a 12-year-old, Jairus’ daughter is on the verge of womanhood.  If her period hasn’t yet come, it will.  It’s no coincidence that the woman has been bleeding for 12 years, the same amount of time this girl has been alive. So, we examine these repeated details: the number 12, womanhood, bleeding, throw in some Biblical context, spin around three times, and voila!  We see both of these characters are prevented by their uncleanness from producing life. Remember, we’re talking symbolically here, so while literally, we’re talking about physical health and having babies, figuratively, we’re talking about spiritual health and rejuvenation for Israel, which comes through Jesus and his life-giving touch.  

That was a very quick skim of a complicated topic.  If you want the particulars, Adam Kubis lays out an extensive argument regarding this symbolism including some of the above details and many others.  You’ll find his article in the Works Cited section. 

There’s one more note to make about this symbolism.  Symbols don’t have to be fiction. Mark applies devices like juxtaposition and symbolism to make his broader point about Jesus renewing Israel, but that doesn’t mean the literal healings of the woman and the girl didn’t happen. It may be helpful for you to compare this version with Matthew’s rendering in 9:18-26.  Matthew’s take is more straightforward without the juxtaposition or symbolism.  Reading it will show you Mark merely adds layers to the story, without making the base layer untrue.

Bonus device: merism

Mark’s juxtaposition supports one more literary device: merism.  A merism is a figure of speech in which opposing words are used to describe the entirety of the whole.  For example, “I love you body and soul” means I love every bit of you, and if I searched “high and low,” I really looked everywhere.  

In the conclusion of his symbolism article, Adam Kubis points out that the bleeding woman and Jairus’s daughter form a merism.  They stand at opposite ends of the Jewish religious system, one marginalized,  one connected, and thus together, the ones healed represent the “whole people of Israel” (Kubis, 383).  The juxtaposition of the woman and Jairus and his daughter in all their opposite ways supports Mark’s crucial point that when Jesus gives new life to Israel, it’s not just for a specific subset of Israel, but for ALL of the community of God: the women, the men, the poor, the rich, the marginalized, and the privileged.  And that’s the long and the short of it.

The sandwich to end all sandwiches

We’re going to briefly look at the verses that come before and after our story today because context is important and because Mark didn’t just make a sandwich here.  He made one of those freaking six-footlong party subs.  Let’s see if you can catch it.  In a minute, read Mark 5: 1-20, and Mark 6:1-6. You’ll find them conveniently located above. First, though, here’s what to look for when consuming the verses surrounding the story: 1. Where does the action in these verses take place? 2. What is said about Jesus? 3. Who ends up amazed? 

Did you notice more juxtaposition?  This Mark doesn’t quit. We can’t dive super far into these stories because space is limited, but we can answer the 3 questions I asked and talk about why they matter to the story we’ve been studying.  

Question 1: Where does the action happen?  The Before Story happens in the country of the Gerasenes,  a Gentile region, among the tombs, in a place of death and uncleanness. This region was foreign to Mark’s readers with Greek culture and religion. The After Story happens in Jesus’ hometown synagogue, a place of life, on the Sabbath, a holy day of rest. It’s as close to home as you can get.

Question 2: What is said about Jesus? In the Before Story, the Gentile man with an unclean spirit (I know, it’s bizarre) calls Jesus “Son of the Most High God” in verse 65.  Basically, he calls Jesus God.  In the After Story, those in the synagogue call Jesus “the son of Mary” and brother to a whole slew of siblings in verse 6:3.  They take offense at him because he’s the same Jesus they played baseball with as kids and he struck out just as often as they did!  They’re saying he’s really not God.

Question 3: Who ends up amazed? In the Before Story, everyone from the district of ten Greek cities who hears about the restored man ends up amazed (verse 20).  In the After Story, Jesus himself, because of the unbelief of his Jewish next-door neighbors, ends up amazed.  Some translations will tell you that in verse 6:2, those who hear Jesus in the synagogue are also amazed, but it’s not the same Greek word that describes the citizens of the Decapolis and Jesus.  The difference between the two Greek words is admittedly small, but if Mark the juxtaposition nerd made a word choice that supports another opposite pairing, I’m willing to bet it was intentional.  

To sum up, the stories pair a Gentile man with unclean spirits living among the tombs with Jews gathering in the Nazareth synagogue.  The Gentile man calls Jesus “God,” and Jesus’ Jewish neighbors call him “Mary’s kid.”   The Greeks from the Decapolis are amazed by Jesus, and Jesus is amazed by the people he’s known his whole life.

I know you know enough about juxtaposition at this point to realize these are no accident.  Mark carb-loads even more bread on his sandwich because he really wants us to get who’s included in this community of God.  He further broadens the merism so we see the welcome is even wider than we expected.  Not only is it not based on position or gender, or “proper behavior” (See exhibit A: the hemorrhaging woman,) it’s also not about ethnicity, culture, or where you’re from.  It is still about the meat of the sandwich.  It is about faith, about how a person responds to Jesus, and it’s clear from these stories that we can’t always predict who has faith and who doesn’t.

Mark is showing us a community of extreme people that includes the marginalized woman whose uncleanness would cause others to look away in disgust, and the privileged synagogue leader who’s profiting off the backs of his fellow Jews.  There’s also the foreigner with the unclean spirit, and the neighbors who gather in the synagogue.  In the spirit of merism, they illustrate the extreme entirety of God’s inclusiveness.  It’s tempting to leave it there and pretend everyone’s happy with the situation, but I’m not sure we are.

Honest question:  how do you feel about the extreme members of society?  When you walk past a person who is mentally ill and homeless, what do you feel?  Disgust? Fear?  Discomfort at your culpability in their situation?  How about when you hear of a billionaire or politician who is abusing their tremendous power?  Anger?  Hatred?  How many times have you invited either of these folks to dinner?  Me? Zero.  

I think Mark is trying to play it both ways with us, which is pretty typical of him and his love for irony. He provides details to evoke sympathy with the long-suffering woman and desperate Jairus, but we’re not meant to be fully comfortable with them.  Part of Mark’s point in choosing extreme characters to symbolize Israel is that Jesus liberates people most of us would ignore or condemn.  Humans make rules all the time about who comes in and who gets left out.  From social cliques to immigration, we all have our limits. But here’s what Mark’s literary devices say about the Israel Jesus came to renew: anyone can come.  Anyone, no matter what secrets need confessing, or what hatred needs releasing.  No one is outside the loving action of Jesus, and that should challenge us because we all have limits on who we extend our love to.  Rachel Held Evans sums up Mark’s message this way:  “The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget - that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in” (186).

Some of you have asked me what you should do with the information I’m presenting to you.  I haven’t felt a burden to decide that for you, because I think that’s between you and God.  But if I had to sum up my hope for this series, it would be that it helps us all be an inclusive community of God that can be honest with ourselves and each other.  I get that some of this information is challenging, but that’s ok because the name Israel is first given in Genesis to a man who injures his hip wrestling with God.  The community of God wrestles, questions, and doubts.  The community of God hangs in there, seeking God, together.

Works Cited

The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition. Edited by Michael D. Coogan, Associate Editors: Marc Z. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, Pheme Perkins, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001

Evans, Rachel Held. Inspired; Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again. Nelson, Thomas, Inc., 2018 p. 186

Horsely, Richard A. “Early Christian Movements: Jesus Movements and the Renewal of Israel.” HTS Theological Studies, 62(4), 2009, pp. 1201-1225

Kubis, Adam. “The Hemorrhaging Woman and Jairus’ Daughter as Representatives of Israel.  An Attempt at the Symbolic Reading of Mark 5:21-43” Biblical Annals vol.10, 2020, pp. 355-387