In which Gospel writers mix politics and religion

I know politics and religion should be kept apart but what’s a chap supposed to do when the Gospel writers themselves insist they are inextricably linked?

At first sight, Mark’s placement of the story of the death of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29) looks like a bit of a filler, a ‘meanwhile’ to pad an interlude as Jesus’ disciples are sent out to the villages, as well as an update on John and explanation of his role in relation to Jesus. This much is true but the story seems a disproportionately long and detailed way of doing it, given Mark’s usual brevity. (Even Matthew keeps it down to 12 verses and Luke 3). This then is the first clue that something else is also going on here.

The second clue comes in the subsequent story of the feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:30-44) in the curious and seemingly superfluous detail in verse 39, that the people were instructed to sit on the ‘green grass’. Why on earth mention the grass colour? In the UK grass is pretty much always green but in Galilee mainly in Spring and some commentators explain that for some reason Mark wants us to know it was springtime. To me, this is not enough.

Add in some other details. The people are like sheep without the shepherd (v34), who by implication is Jesus. So your shepherd is making you recline to eat in green pastures by the waters of a lake.

Ding, ding! Psalm 23!

So this what Mark thinks the disciples didn’t understand about the loaves (Mk 6:52)

The feeding of the 5,000 is the enactment of Psalm 23, where Israel’s Messiah turns up in person doing what YHWH always did. This is the picture of what a proper king does for his people. It’s a poetic expression of the more practical advice about what a king should be like, found for example, in Proverbs 31:1-9 and in many a prophetic voice (not least John the Baptist’s) against the Groundhog Day tragedy of Israel’s experience of earthly kingly rule. It’s Mark’s more subtle version of St John’s ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ saying. The Messiah puts his peoples’ needs first despite originally planning for some R&R as so tied up in service were they, they didn’t have a chance to eat themselves (6:31).

And so Mark has served up a ‘compare and contrast’ exercise. The King Herod story is paralleled by Mark to the King Jesus feeding 5,000 people story: it's a tale of two meals. The length of the Herod story intentionally enhances that comparison by its excoriating detail.

Who is invited to the meals that Herod and Jesus put on? For Herod it’s the select few, the great and good, the sycophants, by invitation only; for Jesus, the many, poor and needy, anybody on their own initiative.

What’s the meal about? For Herod it’s about him, his birthday; only ever about him; for Jesus it’s about the people, speaking up for their needs, teaching and then feeding them.

What gets served up? For Herod through his own foolishness and the dysfunctional relationships he fosters, it’s a gory head on a platter; given to a now traumatised teenage girl whose undoubtedly sexualised contribution was further abused by her own mother, who puts satisfaction of her spite above her daughter’s mental well-being. In St John’s version of the story the young person’s contribution, the bread and fish, is valued and used constructively as Jesus uses it to serve up daily bread.

What’s left over? John’s disciples arrive to pick up a headless corpse. Jesus disciples pick up an amount of food in excess of what they started with.

It's hard to see how the comparison could be made more stark!

And Mark suggests that Herod’s guilty conscience (6:16) knows only too well that it is Jesus who is the real King here, as Mark goes on to demonstrate. For Mark the ‘King of The Jews’ inscription over the cross (15:26) was about the only bit Pilate got right.

For the early church the comparisons didn’t stop with Herod and nor should they now. If the story of a foolish leader, making stupid promises, surrounded by a dysfunctional court, obsessed with himself, leading to avoidable death and leaving others to address the peoples' real needs, sounds familiar, blame Mark, not me. Many Evangelicals in the US are in desperate need of the Gospel!

What is Mark trying to say here? His story isn’t exactly heading for Jesus as an earthly ruler or advocating a theocracy but it certainly reinforces the ancient Jewish claim that any properly constituted human leadership is consciously self-subjected to God’s authority (or at least the rule of Law). It’s political insofar as he details the abject, absolute non-divinity of merely human rulers (a frequently fatal political move at the time; less so now, in part thanks to St Mark) and, by doing it himself, Mark affirms the absolute right of the people to prophetically criticise those in power.

A government that fails these criteria and fails to mirror the Shepherd-King’s behaviour is not exactly one St Mark would support!