Kata Markon

[SCHunnicut AT aol.com]

In reference to the "glory of the Lord" posts.  I am thinking about Werner 
Kelber's treatment of the two boat journeys, and the healings that take place 
more or less on the shores of the sea of Galilee.  Kelber argues that 
geographic references identify these journeys as trips back and forth between 
Jewish and Gentile territories, with every miracle in one place balanced by a 
miracle in the other.  (The Kingdom in Mark)  If you understand the journeys 
in this way, it makes the discomfort  of Jesus' Jewish disciples in the boat 
more understandable, as well as the statement that "the disciples did not 
understand about the loaves, for their hearts were hardened," after the 
comment that they had "only one loaf."  Also compare the statement that Jesus 
was asleep in the boat in the storm with a similar scene in the story of 
Jonah and the whale, when Jonah has refused to go on mission to the Gentiles. 
 I am not looking up verses here, as I have a busy schedule this week.  But 
then, at the end of the gospel, Jesus returns "to Galilee", the place where 
he has told the disciples to meet him, and there is that open endedness as to 
whether the disciples will ever receive the women's message.  All through the 
story, fear is the issue.  Galilee seems to be the place where the door is 
first opened to the Gentiles, in Jesus' own ministry.  The disciples are 
there, and they are troubled. 
About the Ezekial passage, I will have to defer to others.  But if the "glory 
of the Lord" is where Jesus is, then Mark already has it breaking through the 
confines of the Jewish ethos and worldview, in the journeys of Jesus himself. 
 The disciples are clearly troubled.  All of this, it seems to me, would have 
been pretty understandable (and scandalous/ gracious) to "Mark's" 
contemporaries, even if it comes into focus slowly for us.
SusanHunnicutt
Leslie Congregational U.C.C.
Leslie, Michigan