Book Review: Narrative Discipleship (Jeffrey Aernie)

What is the Bible? What are the purpose of the Gospels? If they are purely for historical information, then why do we need four? Why not just combine them into one? One problem would be that we don’t know the chronological order of each event (e.g., in which order did Satan tempt Jesus, cf. Matt 4:1–11; Lk 4:1–13). There is a wisdom genre in the Bible, but could we say that, at least to a degree, the Bible is a wisdom text meant to shape us into virtuous disciples?

Jeffrey Aernie—Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at United Theological College—believes this to be one of the gospel of Mark’s functions as he proclaims how the kingdom of God has broken into our world through Jesus Christ. His Gospel’s “narrative proclamation” of this event “seeks to shape the lives of its audience” (1). Jesus, as the crucified and resurrected King, has called us to participate in his kingdom as disciples who embody faithfully its reality in our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions.

The different characters in Mark elucidate how discipleship should look through how they speak and interact with Jesus, and particularly in how he responds to them. Aernie zooms in on eight women in Mark’s Gospel (more on who they are below), minor characters, to show how they represent “four essential components of Markan discipleship:”

1. Restored life (Mark 1:29–31; 5:25–34),
2. Kingdom speech (Mark 7:24–30),
3. Sacrificial action (Mark 12:41–44; 14:3–9), and
4. Cruciformity (Mark 15–16) (p. 42).

Aernie contends, “These women are exemplars of discipleship who serve as narrative representatives of the way in which God’s in-breaking kingdom renews creation and reorders humanity” (2). And he intends “to demonstrate how these eight women function together as a distinct character group within the Gospel narrative to extend Mark’s theological portrait of discipleship” (2). That is, how they create a portrait of what Aernie calls narrative discipleship.

Narrative discipleship (or embodied discipleship) is a combination of how Mark presents Jesus, his actions and words, and how others interact with him, creating a “narrative framework” where these actions and words take shape. Watching how the disciples interact with Jesus shows us something about discipleship. To spin it the other way, watching how Jesus interacts with the disciples, when he speaks harshly, when he comforts and corrects them lovingly, dying for them and then gently reaffirming that he has come back for them, goes a long way to showing us what discipleship looks like. Aernie shows how the matrix of these eight women, how they act toward and speak with Jesus, shows a narrative of discipleship worth modeling (42). The narratives of these women reflect what it looks like to be transformed by God’s kingdom and what faithful discipleship looks like in Mark’s eyes (5).

There are two parts to this book. Part One contains two chapters that explain the methodology behind this book. Chapter one surveys narrative criticism for the purposes of exegeting a text, without ruling out historical background information. Aernie understands Mark’s gospel to be a cohesive narrative with aretegenic (virtu-forming) value.

In chapter two first looks at how the twelve disciples are characterized. They start out well and are represented positively, but things begin looking shaky at the end of Mark 4. And while they are presented in an increasingly negatively light as the narrative goes on, there are bright spots throughout, specifically at the very end (16:7). Aernie writes, “The intent of Mark’s portrayal of the disciples is not to get us to respond directly to the disciples. The intent is to encourage us to respond to Jesus“ (36).

Next Aernie moves to survey how Mark narrates how Jesus engages with women. It is here where Mark “emphasize[s] particular qualities of discipleship. In spite of the fact that the narrative space in which the women reside is significantly smaller than that of the twelve disciples, Mark uses their concise narratives to identify specific characteristics of discipleship more sharply” (37). Not all women are portrayed positively in Mark’s Gospel. Herodias and her daughter conspire against John the Baptist, Jesus’s mother and sisters think Jesus is out of his mind, (Mark 3:31–35; 6:3), and the servant girl “plays a contrarian role” as she interrogates Peter in the courtyard of the high priest during Jesus’s trial (Mark 14:66–72; p. 38). Aernie takes eight specific women who show faithfulness to Jesus to create “a distinct portrait of faithfulness” (39).

Part Two contains four chapters which offer a closer look into this narrative discipleship.

These eight women and their respective chapters are:
Chapter 3—restored life
1–2. Simon’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29–31) and the bleeding woman (Mark 5:25–34),
Chapter 4—kingdom speech
3. the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24–30),
Chapter 5—sacrificial action
4–5. the poor widow (Mark 12:41–44) and the woman who anoints Jesus (Mark 14:3–9),
Chapter 6—cruciformity
6–8. the three named women in the passion narrative—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome (Mark 15:40–41, 47; 16:1–8).

The Chocolate Milk

Aernie gives full treatments to these women. In Mark’s Gospel, the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law occurs in only three verses (mark 1:29–31), yet Aernie gives seven pages to this scene. Probably the longest treatment I’ve ever seen of this text, and I think it’s great. If you were tasked to preach this text, you would be tempted either not to spend much time on it or two draw in other parts of Scripture and exposit them longer than would be necessary. He connects this woman’s restored service with the angels serving Jesus after his temptation early in Mark (1:13), with Mark 10:45 when Jesus uses the verb twice in his key statement, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” and with Mark 15:41 where “serving” is applied to the three women who served Jesus in Galilee and followed him to Jerusalem. Aernie observes, “It seems important to note that the only human agents to whom this key discipleship term is attributed, apart from Jesus, are women—those who follow Jesus in the climatic events of the Gospel (Mark 15:40–41, 47; 16:1–8) and Simon’s mother-in-law who features in the early stages of the narrative (Mark 1:29–31)” (53–55).

In chapter four he gives what might be the most coherent explanation of tit-for-tat between Jesus and the Syrophoenician women I’ve read. I don’t want to give too much away, but he understands Jesus’ statement about not giving the children’s bread to the dogs to be an ironic parable. I initially found Aernie’s reasoning interesting but a bit farfetched. But as he drew his contextual reasoning, I think I’ve become convinced. Jesus just had a similar debate with the Pharisees on the distinction between clean and unclean in the first chunk of Mark 7, and now he’s giving this woman the Pharisee’s reasoning. While the disciples never seem to understand what Jesus is saying, this woman understands Jesus’ ironic parable and she parables back to him a kingdom understanding. He congratulates her and heals her daughter. This story is sandwiched between Jesus feeding 5,000 Jews with bread (and fish) and 4,000 Gentiles with bread (and fish).

The Spoiled Milks

I appreciated a closer look at eight of the female minor characters, their contrast with the twelve disciples, a look at how God’s kingdom impacted and changed their lives to reorient them to God’s kingdom. Reading these narratives and the characters within them help to shape our thinking in a gospel lens. If Mark presents the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I enjoy seeing how characters act and speak around Jesus to enlighten us with his character, grace, and wisdom. Seeing how he acts and responds as well as how others do it can help shape us into virtuous people who follow our Lord in complete allegiance. And as Aernie wrote in his introduction, “My intention here is to offer an introduction to the interpretation of narrative texts with a specific focus on the study of characters” (6). He does just that, and I can’t fault him for not doing something I wish he would have done, but didn’t say he was going to do.

Yet as Aernie also stated early in his book, Mark sought to create in his readers an “embodied virtue” (5). As Aernie writes, “This virtue or allegiance—this discipleship—is a dynamic activity which requires an active embodiment of the transformative reality of God’s kingdom and a faithful allegiance to the crucified and resurrected Jesus” (5). The Gospels form virtues into us. Mark’s Gospel is “a narrative that forms its audience throughout history” (17).

Aernie also stated, “The intent of [my] examination is to describe how Mark utilizes their narratives to create a paradigm of discipleship and to transform his audience” (29). Aernie presents this paradigm well. Mark portrays “the characteristics of restored life, kingdom speech, sacrificial action, and cruciformity [which] creates a broad framework for faithful allegiance to Jesus” (122).

What I expected Aernie to do was to show, even if briefly, how this would, as he wrote, “transform [Mark’s] audience” (29). I’ll offer one example. The Syrophoenician woman is praised for understanding Jesus’ ironic statement accurately, and in giving her parable back to Jesus, he tells her “For this statement (logos) you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter” (7:29). Mark frequently uses “word” (logos) for Jesus’ message and activity. Aernie writes, “In light of this connection, we can see that Jesus’s characterization of the woman’s statement as λόγος positions her restructured parable within the context of the gospel message” (79). 

I can understand how the gospel transcends cultural, ethnic, and national boundaries so that all followers of Jesus are my family. But in what way should I follow the woman and “speak” God’s kingdom (79)? How could spoken discipleship look today? It must be more than speaking parables to one another. If so, then what?

Recommended?

This is a great example of narrative criticism used well. Aernie highlights these eight minor characters and shows how their great faith is an example to all of us who live in God’s kingdom. Let us not gloss over these women as being minor and thus unimportant characters. They are doing just what Jesus has called all of us to do, even if they don’t get much screen time. I hope to see more from Aernie on the Gospels.