Mark Buchanan leads us into an ancient marketplace — the kind frequented by Jesus — and I don't think you'll be the same when we leave it.
Find out how Jesus's behavior in the marketplace shocked the respectable people of his day. This may change who you want to see in the church crowd on Sunday morning. [Excerpt from Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down.] -Adam Forrest, Zondervan
A trip to the ancient marketplace
Ancient markets were dirty places. You stood cheek by jowl with a ragtag bunch of sneezing, sputtering, coughing humanity. Mobs with filthy hands, open sores, nasty contagions, jostled shoulder to shoulder. All handled the same merchandise. Ten people groped nectarines, dried figs, pistachio nuts, and the eleventh person bought and ate them. Twenty people, some whose bodies had not seen water in a fortnight, tried on sandals before one man finally purchased and wore them.
Tablefuls of crockery and basketry and jewelery, of fresh vegetables and dried peppers and ham hocks and bread loaves, of leather aprons and cotton jerkins, all were caressed by a hundred fingers that also grubbed gardens and swabbed counters and dabbled in places unmentionable.
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Everyone steeped in the broth of everyone else's breathing and sweating
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At the market, small pieces of the debris of each and all were swapped about freely. Humanity's earthiness was bartered along with its wares. Everyone steeped in the broth of everyone else's breathing and sweating. Everyone took home a little souvenir from everyone else's personal collection, a memento or three from the man who slopped pigs, the woman who cleaned latrines, the boy who caught rats...
How to stay clean in the market
The Pharisees were careful, well-bred people. They took many necessary and wise precautions whenever any one of them was reduced to a visit to the market. Picking up some bug — the sniffles, a lingering cough — was the least of their worries... Their codebook for cleanliness, Leviticus primarily ... dealt with a different kind of uncleanness: moral, religious, spiritual. An open sore wasn't just infectious; it was a token of sin and a threat to intimacy with both God and others. Certain kinds of food were not just writhing with parasites or teeming with cholesterol... they were despised things that put those who ate them at risk of sullying themselves and alienating God...
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Jesus' disciples ... are men without scruples.
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The Pharisees and lawyers are not offended ... because of the disciples' glaring lack of hygienic discipline; they're offended because of their conspicuous lack — indeed, their out-and-out defiance — of well-established and widely agreed-upon moral standards. [For example, see Mark 7:1-5.] Jesus' disciples are scofflaws. They flout tradition with recklessness. They trespass clearly marked boundaries and vandalize the no-trespassing signs on their way across. They are men without scruples. They are men devoid of good sense, good breeding, good manners. They are men who, if their rabbi can't restrain them, then sterner measures should be employed.
All's to say, this scene that Mark records should in no way surprise us. To give his non-Jewish readers a little orientation ... Mark inserts parenthetically a comment about Jewish protocol for visits to the market. This is not just for Pharisees; it's for "all the Jews." These scruples — flagrantly thrown off by Bartholomew and the two Jameses and Peter and Judas, that whole sorry mob — are to be the badge of the law-abiding.
[Jewish readers of Mark's story would] be on the side of the Pharisees against Jesus and his unruly disciples. That would raise the alarm.
The sick invade the market
Even more, what would alarm [Jewish readers] — or, more likely, send them into paroxysms of moral shock — is the scene where "[People] ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went — into villages, towns or countryside — they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed" [Mark 6:53-56].
Look what gets hauled into the marketplace, and look who goes touching it. This portrait of people openly, deliberately placing the sick in the marketplaces reinforces every scruple a good Jew has about such places: avoid them, and when you can't, take a good, hot, long shower as soon as you get home. For someone to openly, deliberately bring sick people into such places, and for anyone to openly, deliberately touch them ... is, well, scandalous.
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In Jesus ... holiness is no longer a hothouse flower that wilts on contact. It is a cedar of Lebanon.
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Mark no doubt juxtaposes these two scenes from the marketplace to set up a stark and sharp contrast, and to underline how radically Jesus changes the rules. In Jesus ... holiness is no longer a hothouse flower that wilts on contact. It is a cedar of Lebanon, the balm of Gilead, and even the edge of his cloak spills with healing. His holiness is not a delicacy to be primly guarded; it is an invading force that overwhelms resistance. It is a force to be reckoned with, not some keepsake to be safely stowed away.
How the market is like the church
What I want to emphasize here is that this is a template for the church. The market is a classic in-between place, where cultures and classes come together. Markets intersect the rich and poor, the old and young, the good and bad, the beautiful and sordid. It's everyone's world in general, and no one's in particular.
The way the traditionally religious inhabit such places is that they don't; they make forays into them, guarded, priggish, stealthy, squeamish, fleeting. In and out. They rush in, holding their noses, closing their eyes. They get what they need. They rush out, and try to scour any residue of the place from skin and heart and mind.
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[Jesus] is unstoppable with redemption. He is a holy terror.
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The way Jesus inhabits such places is subversively, massively, invasively. He comes with healing in his wings [Mark 6:53-56]. He moves toward those who move toward him, the kingdom of God on a collision course with a world half pleading, half defying. His arms are spread wide, to make more of himself, to gather more into himself, to pour more out of himself. He is large with compassion. He is unstoppable with redemption. He is a holy terror.
When the kingdom within him collides with the world as it is, the kingdom will break that broken world, break and break it until it makes it anew. The lame will walk, the blind will see, the mute will speak, the deaf will hear. The foolish will become wise, the cowardly brave, the stingy generous. Angry people will first taste peace, in their bones, and then start making peace, from their hearts. Bitter people will forgive. The joyless will become joyful.
This is, I said, a good template for the church.
- Mark Buchanan
Q: Does your church resemble an ancient marketplace? Why or why not?
Learn more about Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down.
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The Smell of the World that Jesus Died for via Margaret Feinberg
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