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Dramatic possibilities

Saturday, 05 March, 2005

To enter this space and time is also to realize what is possible and what is not possible in this story. As Coleridge said, when you enter the world of a story, you “suspend disbelief” and accept what is possible and what is not possible in that world. When the protagonist heals the sick, drives out demons, calms a storm, multiplies loaves in the desert, and expects his disciples to be able to do the same, you realize that this is a world in which everything is possible to one who has faith. Yet despite these dramatic possibilities, this world is full of strange paradoxes. While Jesus can heal people, he has no authority to control people. He can drive out a demon, but he cannot successfully command someone to keep quiet about it. He can make a deaf man hear, but he cannot make his disciples comprehend what he is teaching them. Here is a world in which it is easier to get a physically blind man to see than a spiritually blind person to understand. Here too is a world in which someone with authority over illness and demons and nature will come into necessary and violent conflict with the national leaders and be executed—and, of course, there is resurrection from the dead.

David Rhoads, “Performing the Gospel of Mark” in Body and Bible: Interpreting and Experiencing Biblical Narratives, ed. Björn Krondorfer, Trinity Press, International, 1992, p. 104.

(Personally, I would have changed the “cannots” to “allows”.)

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