Mark 3:31-35: Who Is, Here Is

In his preface to The Kingdom and the Glory, Agamben writes, “If, as has been suggested, there is in every book something like a hidden center, and the book was written to reach — or elude — it, then this center is to be found in the final paragraphs of Chapter 8” (xiii). If we turn to those paragraphs, we find at the center a recapitulation of his earlier work The Time that Remains. Specifically we find katargein, the Greek concept regularly translated as “rendering inoperative.”

For Agamben, katargein is a technical term in the practical religion of Paul, and it is the fundamental practice of Messianic time:

To live in the Messiah means precisely to revoke and render inoperative at each instant every aspect of the life that we live, and to make the life for which we live, which Paul calls the “life of Jesus” (zoe tou Iesou — zoe not bios!) appear within it: “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’s sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11). The messianic life is the impossibility that life might coincide with a predetermined form, the revoking of every bios in order to open it to the zoe tou Iesou. And the inoperativity that takes place here is not mere inertia or rest [my emphasis]; on the contrary, it is the messianic operation par excellence. (248-9)

We should dwell a bit on Agamben’s insistence that the practice of katargein (rendering inoperative) is not mere inertia or rest. We are not to seek the inoperative state of the in-between as an end in itself. To do so would mean seeking inertia or rest as the passive nihilism of Nietzsche’s last man; and it would seek ressentiment as the dormant vengeance that protects that inertia as the permanent state of being.

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Who is my family? Here is my family. Mark 3:31-35 provides us with yet another moment of New Testament katargesis: the rendering inoperative of the given so as to find something new. When Jesus is told by the crowd that his family wishes to see him, he responds, “Who is my family?” He follows with “Here is my family.” The movement from “Who is” to “Here is” introduces a suspension of meaning that is not pure negation of the family. It is a suspension that allows for the re-experiencing of a given category — family — that re-orients without defining with certainty what this new definition is.

Mark is clear about this suspension that creates a new experience of time. It is the heart of the Messianic Secret that is central to his text. Mark famously has his Jesus silence those who recognize him as the Messiah. But it is more than this. Mark is clear that the term Messiah itself is in need of katargesis — it must be rendered inoperative from its given meaning as the appearance of a new and definitive political-religious king as a descendent of David. But this rendering inoperative cannot be easily and quickly replaced by a new meaning. This will take time.

We are in the temporal experience of Zarathustra who builds a bridge across, not a ladder up and out. The What is? gives way to the What matters? The suspension of the meaning of family — Who is my family? — is answered by the What matters? — “here is my family.” But the question What matters? does not provide a ready answer. It does not immediately replace the given with something else. It merely but powerfully empties the given while allowing new meaning to be invented. To see this in action, we have to take Mark’s Jesus’ two phrases “Who is my family?” and “Here is my family” as inseparable. The question must move to the answer, but his is an answer without clear definition. Just as Jesus calls Simon and Andrew to become “fishers of men” (1:15), the given category is momentarily suspended of given meaning — Who is my family? — to gain the possibility of another meaning — Here is my family.

As the What is? gives way to the What matters?, we are oriented to a new experience of time where the givenness of the categories we live by is suspended so as to offer the possibility of new meaning. This is inseparable from physical movement through the landscape. Just prior to this passage, we find this moment: “And he goes up on the mountain and calls near [proskaleitai} those whom he wanted, and they went to him. And he appointed twelve and called them apostles [apostolous] that the might be with him and that he might send them [apostelle] to preach, and to have authority to cast out demons.” (3:13-15). The twelve are called out of the crowd, following Jesus up the mountain, where they will then be sent out into the world with a new mission. The form of the word apostello (ἀποστέλλω) is used twice here. We find it used many times throughout the NT, in which it always means to send someone forth with a delegated tasks or a message. In fact, apostello (“I send”) is the third verb used in Mark’s Gospel: “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah: Behold, I send [apostello] the messenger of me before you who will prepare your way” (1:2). Apostello is all one single and continuous motion that extracts from the given and reorients to the new without necessarily knowing at the moment of extraction what the new is or will be.