First, the messianic secret and the christological misunderstanding. It is well known that Mark appears to be hiding the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. This conundrum disappears like a vapor when one combines Jesus’ command not to tell with the misunderstanding of the crowds about his person. He was well aware that they had misidentified him. Even Peter’s confession is full of misunderstanding else why would Jesus have rebuked him? He was talked about in such a way that would make the authorities uncomfortable. In short, they were blinded by the mimetic mechanism. They could only configure Jesus within the framework of the warrior-God/King. What other way was there for them to conceive him? The differentiation in their views indicates a thorough mimetic crisis. Jesus is this, Jesus is that, Jesus is yet another but they are all perceptions of the stream of thinking that ties God to violence. They are going to learn something new about God.

Second, setting aside the discussion of the ‘authenticity’ of these sayings, Jesus connects two figures from Jewish tradition, the suffering servant and the Son of Man. The suffering servant obviously derives from Isaiah 53 but the use of the term Son of Man is more problematic. Assuming some previous remarks we have made on the subject, the interesting element of both figures for our purposes is that they are both corporate figures, that is the one stands for the many. Corporate figures lend themselves nicely to the mimetic notion of interdividuality. There is a you, there is a me and there is the relationship we share. Just as you are real and just as I am real, so too our relationship has a reality. Corporate metaphors abound in the New Testament. The corporate figures of the suffering servant and the Son of Man are then, indications that something is occurring in Jesus’ life that has implications for everyone that has a relationship with him. Jesus’ knows that he has been misunderstood and that that misunderstanding will get him killed. This is not a unique experience. The victimage mechanism has already begun weaving its web of lies around who Jesus is, but Jesus dispels this interpretation and proceeds to affirm that no matter what happens to him, it will all turn out well in the end. It’s OK.

Third, the terrifying reality of Roman crucifixion rears its ugly head not just at the end but rather dramatically just half way through the story. Here is this healer, this conqueror of Satan, this extraordinary teacher and bada-boom, bada-bing, faster than you can say ‘honeysuckle’, Jesus is traveling a via dolorosa. This is terrible. He does not deserve the fate that awaits him, he knows this. But the crowds and the disciples identification of Jesus with warrior constructs, with a deus ex machina, will in the end, culminate in his death.

More than this, Jesus invitation to discipleship is fundamentally tied to the cross. Why? The cross (or our death) represents our ultimate surrender. To follow Jesus is to move in the opposite direction of violence and negative mimesis; it is the choice not to fight, not to engage in retaliation or vengeance or retribution. It is the recognition that when we fight our relationship suffers as much as we do. Our relationships are in a sense ‘alive and living.’ We really hurt ourselves when we hurt each other.

Rather than muddy the waters with debates about authenticity or Markan christology we prefer to interpret the text as though it actually said something significant about Jesus. To be sure, a triumphalist use of this text is out of the question whether done from pious devotion or academic rigor. Therefore we opt for an interpretation from the perspective of mimetic theory.

We favor those authors who see some aspect of corporate-ness to the figure Son of Man. Whether as an apocalyptic revelation, or as a circumlocution for ‘I’, or as a type of human, or as representative of the mimetic mechanism where the one stands for the many, the common element is the notion of corporateness. Whatever we may say about what Jesus perceived about himself, the fact remains, he saw his life in terms of the big picture.

As a result we do not feel compelled to reject the authenticity of many of the Son of Man sayings. When they are placed in the context of mimetic theory, rather than contradict one another, they complement each other. We conclude that Jesus could use the enigmatic ‘Son of Man’ precisely because it functioned the same way as the parables; it caused people to think and reconsider how they perceived God.

If we are able to suggest the corporate-ness of the figure Son of Man and its many possible antecedents (1 Enoch, Psalms, Ezekiel, Daniel, =’I’, etc), then it is plausible to see why Jesus was able to bring together the figure of the Son of Man with the Suffering Servant of Deutero Isaiah. Both are corporate figures.

As an aside, if we are to think scientifically about this we are aware of our interconnectedness in terms of modern physical theory. Experiments in Quantum Mechanics have demonstrated that on the sub atomic level, nature is ‘non-local.’ Or naturalists and environmentalists might speak of eco-systems., that is, there are natural systems that are all interconnected; to harm one is to harm all. Depth Psychology speaks of the ‘collective unconscious.’

Clergy can often feel like Jesus, wondering if their message is getting through. Has the Church so completely lost touch with Jesus that it is lost, wandering in the wilderness? Is this the end of Christianity as Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested? Or perhaps more correctly put, is this the end of Christianity as we know it? Or are we, perhaps, being transformed? The often forgotten promise in our text, “on the third day”, signifies for Christians today that by really taking the time to live and die like Jesus, we share in the gift of his Resurrection. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, but despised its shame, so we may also.