Good Trouble

Alexander Massmann

Biblical scholars famously describe the Gospel of Mark as a ‘Passion story with an elaborate introduction’. It appears to be a story full of trouble. However, in my copy of the Bible, Mark narrates the events of Holy Week on only four pages (Mark 14–15), out of the Gospel’s entirety of twenty-four pages. A lot of things take place before the Passion – certainly more than a mere introduction. How do those other stories figure in our account of who Jesus is? Can the cross, the classic symbol of the Passion, stand in for his entire life before Easter?

Although exaggerated, the view of Mark as a ‘Passion story with an elaborate introduction’ also captures a grain of truth. The story of Jesus has hardly begun, and already in chapter 3, Mark tells us of an outrageous scheme against him: the religious elites ‘immediately conspired … against him, how to destroy him’ (v. 6). In a quick burst of activity, Jesus had stirred up a lot of dust: he had exorcised a demon from a possessed person, healed four individual people and a smattering of others, including an unclean leper, and he delved right into dicey disputes with the keepers of the law. After his visit with a despised tax collector, the religious leaders see that trouble is brewing: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ (2.16)

Jesus throws our standards of social respectability into disarray: he attends to those whom we shun; his understanding of established rules is unusual and provocative; and he heals those ill people that society has written off. Jesus also presents himself in bold, extraordinary ways: he is the ‘bridegroom’ at the wedding feast of life, or the enigmatic ‘son of man’. Very often, however, the spotlight is not on himself but on the things he does. He presents his whole life in a nutshell with the words: ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!’ (1.15)

All of this is indeed good news. However, it is also ‘not the way things are done around here.’ Shake up the customs and unwritten rules of society, and you will reap trouble. Question the governing assumptions about who is ‘in’ and ‘out’ or who settles moral disputes, and people will turn against you. There will be conflict, so it is no coincidence that the ‘good news’ of God’s kingdom implies the call to turn our lives around (‘repent’). Yet many do not follow Jesus’ call, and we hear how a world of trouble will bear down on Jesus. The good news also means trouble.

So we must hold together two things during Lent: Jesus not only endured this trouble, but the trouble arose primarily because of the good news he had already brought. It is good trouble. With forgiveness, healing and the social inclusion of outsiders, things change in the way the community operates; something new is taking place. Jesus is a ‘physician’ who brings healing – socially, mentally and bodily (2.17). His healing benefits ‘those who are sick’: the ill and those considered dishonourable. Mark’s gospel highlights powerfully how God’s kingdom brings deliverance in Jesus’ words and deeds. The entirety of Mark’s gospel is then a passion story, narrating how Jesus remains faithful to this good news, although for him, it spells trouble.