This text is an exercise in dealing with the received canon not merely through the lens of the Tao, by which I mean a lens which leaves a good deal up to the beholder, which does not obscure ambiguity, but also through the lens of creedal messianism. By creedal messianism I mean the process by which the initial impact of Jesus was modified in an effort to create a creed as a basis for a religion based on the worship of a creedal deity.
I believe the most significant contribution of this text is to show that even in Mark, which is understood to be intensely creedal, focusing on the end, there are key junctures where the actual intent of Jesus, which is to change humanity, is made clear. Such junctures also form a tangible contradiction to the notion that one is saved by a mere confession of faith. The radical reason for the execution of Jesus was his insistence that what had been the province of priests was now an accessible truth, a changing reality, an option for humankind.
In this, the Tao of Mark offers a stark contrast to the Tao — that amorphous but strangely coherent work which has been the subject of so many retranslations and commentaries. The fundamental difference lies in the nature of the seer — in the Tao of Mark the seer is the change agent, and the way things are depends upon response. It is an interactive and decision-centered reality.
In the Tao, there is a reality out there that embraces the attributes we might assign to an omnipotent (if mysterious and hidden) deity. To follow the Tao is to be aware of what works in the world, based on one’s grasp of the text. The Tao has the most resonance not with the text of Mark but with Matthew and Luke — or with the hypothetical Q document. Jesus’ sayings about not being anxious and his beatitudinal utterances are not distant from the Tao’s emphasis on seeming contradictions like the strength of weakness and the power of passivity.
I conclude with a selection from the above which I believe shows beyond any contradiction what Jesus considered his mission and aim to be:
The seer loved the sick and suffering
And touched them with the power of the way
Where faith was found their burdens became light
The power of forgiveness made them right
The seer saw the fate that was in store
A world unready for the way
Inured to patching over wrongs
Instead of turning
Making all things new
The seer saw beyond all sacred laws
And lifted high all simple human needs
Like hunger and relief from fear and pain
The keepers of the law were most displeased
The seer faced more enemies each day
They called the seer’s healing devil’s work
Under this threat the seer’s speaking changed
To speak directly would result in death
Under the charge of blasphemy
The seer did point out one truth
Deny the power to forgive
And your forgiveness will be lost
… more and more would come to see things plain
And all might know forgiveness finally
And then no further secrets would obtain
Religious leaders from the city came
And found the seer’s followers unclean
The seer showed them their hypocrisy
His words made him their enemy
Nothing from outside can defile
Only the heart shows truth aright
He told his followers to live in peace
He said that he was sent to them by God
That they should receive children in his name
And live pure and obedient without blame
His doctrine was not difficult to grasp
He spoke it plainly at the time
Faith in God can mountains move
When you pray you must forgive
If you remove your differences
Any differences you have will be removed
If you cannot forgive
You cannot be forgiven
He left them with the greatest commandments
To love the One God heart and mind and soul
And neighbor as self treated as you’d be
There’s no commandments greater than these two
He sided with the people and condemned
The scribes and priests who sought to do him in
The small donation of the widow low
Was worth more than the pittance of the rich
Since the time of my seminal work on messianism in the lare 1970s, I have held to the growing sense that Jesus was and is about obliterating the distinction between heaven and earth. We live in that sense between stasis and movement, but always the urging is toward the latter. The obliteration which Jesus sought is entirely consistent with the gradual obliteration of the power and influence of religion and its replacement by an ever more coherent and realistic spirituality based on the values of nonidolatry, tolerance, democracy and genuine helpfulness.
