14 December 2022
As part of his pedagogical purposes, the author of the gospel of Mark develops his portrayal of the 12 disciples in juxtaposition to his presentation of the minor characters. At a fundamental level, the 12 disciples are portrayed positively, for they are the ones willing to completely follow Jesus while seeking to understand his teachings and actions. However, the reader finds a deep irony in the gospel: though one would expect these 12 to be the people who correctly respond to Jesus, time and time again, they are the ones who fail to understand Jesus, his purpose, and his ministry. In contrast to the 12 and their lack of understanding throughout the gospel, many of the female minor characters are portrayed as positive examples of followers of Jesus. As Malbon explains, the connotative value of these women characters is determined “by their relation to Jesus and their actions – either toward Jesus himself or in light of Jesus’ demands for followership” (67).
An example of a female character that is presented in juxtaposition to the 12 disciples is the woman suffering from a flow of blood in Mark 5:21-43. Operating as part of a Markan sandwich within another sandwich of unbelief, the woman’s story is framed by Jesus rebuking the storm then questioning the disciples, “‘Do you not yet have faith?’” (Mark 4:40). Despite her condition leaving the woman ritually unclean and socially excluded, she pushes through the crowd and past the purity barrier to touch Jesus, who then says to her, “‘Daughter, your faith has healed/saved you’” (Mark 5:34). By contrasting the woman with the disciples, Mark is able to develop the motif of faith in the narrative, with the woman functioning as a positive example of what obstacle-breaking faith should look like. Mark continues to juxtapose the woman and the disciples through their differing responses to Jesus in the narrative. After feeling power leave him, Jesus asks “‘Who touched my garments?’” (Mark 5:30). While the disciples fail to understand why Jesus would ask such a question, Mark uses the woman as a model for the correct response to Jesus: trembling in fear, the woman “came fell before him and told him the whole truth” (Mark 5:33).
Similar to the woman suffering from a flow of blood, the Syrophonencian woman in Mark 7:24-30 is also characterized by bold faith. Though she was an outsider, she showed initiative in a striking way, falling at Jesus’ feet and asking Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. Mark highlights the necessity of an active faith through this character, contrasting the continuous blundering and failure to trust exhibited by the disciples throughout the gospel.
Later in Mark 12:41-44, the reader meets a widow that serves as a foil to both the greed of scribes and the blundering of the disciples. In the narrative, Jesus observes the crowd putting money into the treasury, and he notices a poor widow that puts in only two lepta. Using language that finds resonance in Jesus’ giving of his own life at the cross, Jesus remarks that the widow “cast in all that she had, her whole life” (12:44). Jesus uses the widow’s actions as a model for discipleship and true Christian living, as he calls the disciples to tell them about the example the widow has set in her sacrificial giving. The reader finds that Jesus himself is unlike the scribes, but is like this widow.
An even more clear contrast between an exemplary woman character and the blundering disciples occurs in Mark 14:3-9, when a woman comes to anoint Jesus with expensive ointment. The disciples, who one would expect to respond correctly, vehemently admonish the woman, causing Jesus to rebuke them saying, “‘She has done a good work for me… She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And amen I say to you, where the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, also what this one did will be told in memory of her,’” (Mark 14:6-8). Despite Jesus sharing predictions with them about what is to come in the passion narrative, the disciples still fail to understand; it is instead the minor woman character who is positively portrayed. In “The Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8,” Lincoln describes how “her action anointing Jesus’ head had already shown more insight into his identity and destiny than the disciples who accompanied him” (Lincoln 288). As the chapter continues, the juxtaposition between the anointing woman and the disciples intensifies as the disciple Judas immediately sets out to betray Jesus in return for money. Though she remains unnamed, through her own gracious self-denial this woman becomes the only gospel character who is given the distinction of being linked to the good news of Jesus’ own gracious self-denial (Malbon 56).
Perhaps the most striking examples of women characters who juxtapose the disciples are Mary and Mary Magdalene. Following the narration of Jesus’ death, the reader discovers that though all of the male disciples have scattered and abandoned Jesus, Mary and Mary Magdalene were there “observing where he was placed” (15:47). At this climatic point in the gospel, their watchful presence at the tomb stands in stark contrast to the disciples, whose loyalty and commitment to Jesus faltered even at Gethsemane in Mark 14:32-42 when they failed to keep awake and alert while Jesus prayed. In Mark 16:1-8, the women return to the tomb with Salome to anoint Jesus, their trio mirroring Jesus’ core three disciples Peter, John, and James. The women exhibit the loyalty expected of discipleship, and they are entrusted with the duty of informing the disciples to meet the risen Jesus in Galilee. However, Markan irony appears again as the women fail to obey the command that contains in it the very promise that failure is not the end of discipleship (Lincoln 289). Here, the author gives the women the opportunity to demonstrate the same fallibility as the male disciples, bringing Malbon’s “composite portrait of the followers of Jesus” into view (47), where “no one is excluded from followership; no one is protected from fallibility” (67).
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