THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK
The
Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God.
Through the centuries, Mark, the shortest and simplest Gospel, has been
very unloved.
One of the reasons Mark received so little attention is the fact that
Matthew came first in the Canon, and for centuries was therefore assumed to be
the first Gospel.
There is very little in Mark that is not in Matthew, and much in Matthew
which is not in Mark. So the question arose, what was Mark’s Gospel for? Why was it written?
For a long time many believed it was an abridged version of Matthew,
perhaps a ‘Jesus for Dummies’.
Towards the end of the 19th century, however, scholars
looking at the Gospels in a new way, more analytical way came to the conclusion
that Mark was in fact the first
Gospel.
So, let’s begin with that conclusion, and forget all we know about
Matthew and Luke—John is in a completely different category.
We will return to the authorship, place and date of Mark in a more
detail later on. Suffice it to say at the moment that the Gospel was almost
certainly written sometime between the years 65 and 75 AD. When it burst upon
the Christian scene it was a unique piece of literature. Nothing like it had
been seen before, and it had no parallels in secular literature.
It is worth remembering that Mark’s new Gospel was not a history or
biography, either in the ancient or in the modern sense. The ancient world had
little concept of biography as we know it, with its need to collect every fact
and present it in a rational and coherent framework.
So, at last, let’s turn to the text. Remember, Matthew and Luke had not
yet set pen to paper. Those who first read Mark—or more probably heard it read
aloud—did not have any other accounts to compare it with.
Today we will look at Chapter 1.1-15
In only fifteen verses we get from John the Baptist to the beginning of
the ministry of Jesus. Mark does not hang around! The tale is told economically.
There is, no Birth narrative, no account of the temptations in the wilderness,
and no reflection on what it means for Jesus’ to be baptised ‘for the remission
of sins’. But this apparent simplicity does not imply a naïve and unreflective
approach. This short passage, perhaps more than any other in Mark, teems with
allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures. In a very short span it presents an ‘overture’
of the themes which will dominate the rest of the Gospel.
Remember that this is new. No-one has heard a Gospel before. At this
stage it is not even called a Gospel!
It’s the first one, the genre has not been labelled yet!
Mark’s account begins quite starkly:
The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“The beginning”—it’s a very good
place to start. It is the second word of John, and of the Greek version of
Genesis. The Greek word Arche gives rise to ‘Architect’. It doesn't just mean ‘beginning’, but implies an absolute beginning. It is the
foundation upon which everything else rests.
- Genesis 1:1 takes us back to the beginning of time—the dark abyss, the howling winds and the brooding Spirit of God which gives rise to all that is.
- John 1:1 takes us back to the pre-existent Logos—the Word of God which was in the beginning with God and without which nothing was made that was made.
- Matthew, with his genealogy and infancy stories, presents the credentials of Jesus and places him within the context of his Jewish heritage.
- Luke, beginning his story in the Temple, likewise harks back to God’s purposes through the salvation history of the people of Israel.
Mark simply presents the adult Jesus on the verge of his Baptism, with
that foundational word Arche. For Mark speculation about
Jesus of Nazareth is not required, response
is!
The beginning is of ‘The Good News or Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.’
Euangelion- it shares the ‘Eu’ with euphonics, eugenics,
and other similar words. It is a Greek particle which means ‘good’. The second
part shares its roots with the word ‘angel’. An angel is a herald, and
announcer. Euangelion is ‘good news’.
Mark takes up this word to characterise what Jesus of Nazareth is about.
Jesus does not just bring Good News
from God, he manifests, he realises it, he is
it!
What is the Good News? The Good News is of ‘Jesus Christ’.
Jesus is a Greek version of Joshua, meaning ‘The Lord saves’—a point
Matthew takes up when the angel gives instructions to Joseph about the naming
of the child.
By the time Mark’s Gospel was written the title Christos ‘the anointed one’ had already
been added to the personal name Jesus, not so much as a title but almost as a
surname. Mark gives no theological background either to the name or the title,
but presents them succinctly to make clear that this Good News is rooted in a
real man, Jesus Christ. He then goes on to describe Jesus as ‘Son of God’.
Later in this series we will consider Mark’s Christology—his views of who Jesus
was and his relationship to God. Mark hardly ever uses the term ‘Son of God’ to
describe Jesus. But he does so here, and the words are found again on the lips
of the Roman Centurion at the moment when Jesus dies. ‘Truly this man was the
Son of God.’ The phrase almost brackets the Gospel. The readers know Jesus to
be the Son of God, but those who were with him in his ministry and on his
journey to the cross only discovered it as a result of his Passion. We will
explore the consequences of that later, but at the moment we need simply note
the elegant way in which Mark uses this bracketing device.
What freshness and clarity in those few words! Imagine their impact on a
group of Christians sitting together for teaching and worship in a house,
probably in the great city of Antioch Syria
The Prologue to John is one of the most profound and poetic meditations
on the grounding of Christ in the reality of God. But consider how Mark presents
similar material in such compressed and concentrated form—Japanese haiku rather
than Tenysson!
Having splashed his banner headline across the front page, only then
does Mark look backwards at the Hebrew Scriptures.
“As it is written in Isaiah the Prophet”[1]
By placing them here Mark makes clear these prophecies are not merely
accidental, but that they, too, have a foundational nature.
Though he describes the Prophet as Isaiah, the quote is in fact an
amalgam of two verses, namely Malachi 3.1a[2]
and Isaiah 40.3[3].
This is the first time in the Gospels that the Old Testament has been
quoted. It’s worth taking a little detour here to think about some issues of
language, scripture and translation.
Mark wrote his Gospel in a rather rough and ready form of Greek; Jesus
and the Disciples spoke Aramaic; the Old Testament Scriptures were written in
Hebrew, by then a dead language.
The Jews had been scattered to every corner of the Mediterranean since
destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Wherever they went, as their children
assimilated and learned new languages, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated.
Around the time of Jesus one Greek version was becoming the standard, known as
the Septuagint. That is the version Scholars used when they went to compare the
quotations in the New Testament with the original version in the Old.
A crucial question is:
‘How would Mark, a Greek speaker and writer,
have access to Greek Old Testament texts when he wanted to quote them?’
He certainly wouldn’t be able to go to a bookcase, take out a neatly
bound volume, and flip to the right chapter and verse. A text of the Septuagint
would, however, be very rare and precious. Only the rich and famous scholars
would have access to it.
Memory, however, played a much greater part than it does these days.
A teacher would teach in public, reciting and explaining certain texts.
The student would commit these texts to memory. Repetition of the teaching
would embed the texts, and, in due course, the hearer might recite and teach
them himself.
By the time Mark began to write the Church had been in existence for
more than thirty years. It’s clear from Paul that the quotation and application
of Old Testament texts was a crucial part of Christian teaching from the very
beginning. It focussed, however, on those texts in the Old Testament which
pointed forward to Christ. Texts were often collected together by topic or key
word to make them easier to remember.
Mark might not have known his scriptures perfectly, and almost certainly
did not have a bible against which he could check his references, but, after
that stark introduction to his Gospel he continues with a bundle of texts
referring to the Messenger, the Voice.
The Messenger, in Malachi, was an individual, coming to prepare God’s
people for judgement. Note how the quotation in Mark is subtly changed. In
Isaiah the messenger will ‘prepare the way before me.’ In Mark this becomes ‘who will prepare your way.’ In Isaiah God is to act in the future, in Mark his
messenger is already active.
The Voice, in the second part of Isaiah, calls for a pathway in the
wilderness. This is to be a triumphal way on a grand scale, peaks levelled and
valleys filled in, so that the Lord may lead his people home from their Exile
in Babylon to their true home in Jerusalem. Again there is a subtle change. In
Isaiah the voice cries for the preparation of a route ‘for our God’. In Mark it
asks straight paths to be made for him.
Does the voice cry ‘in the wilderness’, or is ‘in the wilderness
prepare..” the first part of the message? In fact we can’t tell. Neither Hebrew
nor Greek have any punctuation! In Christian interpretation however the voice
definitely cries in the wilderness, and our attention is turned the next
verses—the appearance of that extraordinary character John the Baptist.
John is mentioned by the Jewish Historian Josephus, as well as by all
four evangelists. His historical
existence is without doubt, and his short ministry clearly made a great impact
on the Jewish people of the time.
There is no background to John, as Luke gives us. He simply ‘appears’ in
the wilderness. He is clearly identified both as the personal Messenger sent by
God to prepare the way of the Lord, and his message is the Voice crying in the
wilderness promised by Isaiah.
We are told first that John ‘preaches’. The Greek kerux is a herald—one who makes an authoritative proclamation of behalf of a
King or Ruler.
John preaches—he becomes both
the Voice foretold by the Prophet, and also—in the present time—the prophetic
voice itself.
He appears’ in the wilderness’ to preach.
Simply the mention of 'wilderness'conjures up for the Jew a whole network of allusions. The wilderness
was not simply an empty barren place or a place to get away from things. The
very word brought back to any Jew the central events of the Torah. We will consider
this further when we look at the testing of Jesus.
"John wore clothing made of camel’s
hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey."
If the mention of the wilderness brought them back to the encounters
with the living God under the leadership of Moses, the clothing of John the
Baptist explicitly reminded them of Elijah.
In 2 Kings 1:8 the King of Israel enquires of his servants about the
prophet they have met. They describe Elijah as ‘a hairy man with a leather belt
around his waist.’ The king instantly recognises the description and cries out
‘It is Elijah the Tishbite’.
Though at this point in the Gospel Mark does not explicitly name Elijah
as the one who is to return before the Messiah comes, the way he describes John’s
clothing makes the point allusively.
Here, at the very beginning John is surrounded by tantalising shadows,
or gleams, of Moses and Elijah, the two great pillars of Hebrew faith.
So, what does the Voice, the Herald have to say? What is the message of
the Messenger?
We are told, first of all, that he
“appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
He preaches repentance. The preparation of the coming of the Lord to
save his people is not to be an exterior event involving terraforming of
mountains and valleys, but an interior one—repentance for the forgiveness of
sins. It is not simply a verbal message,
but it be accompanied by a sign—baptism.
Israel at the time of Jesus was a ferment of religious movements,
ranging from the Saducees, the highly conservative Temple establishment, to the
Essenes, who lived a radical and ascetic existence in the desert. There were
many radical preachers and movements which came and went, not unlike the ‘new
age’ movements of our own day. John’s message struck home not only because of
his call for repentance. That in itself was not unusual. But he coupled it with
‘baptism’—a symbolic washing in the River Jordan. Jewish ritual emphasised the washing of hands
before prayer and eating as a sign of ritual cleanness. But the washing of the
whole body was reserved for proselytes, those not born as Jews who wished to
enter into the Jewish faith. John’s call for repentance coupled with baptism—complete
immersion—for all moved it from a ritual matter to a moral one.
John caught the mood of the times, and Mark tells us that people
Jerusalem and the whole of Judaea flocked out to take part in this ritual.
There was an apocalyptic mood in the air. For the majority of Jews, who
believed that prophecy was a thing of the past, and that God only spoke to his
people these days with the ‘Bath Qol’--the daughter of a voice—here was a
prophet, alive and active in their midst, preparing them through repentance for
the coming of the Lord. And people did not simply listen, they did what John
demanded of them—plunged into the water and confessed their sins!
Bapto is the
Greek for ‘plunge’. This was no token washing, but a deep plunge into the scary
water. The whole activity characterised John so much that it became his nickname,
‘John the baptising one’—though there is
no prophecy which indicates this particular activity in connection with the
forerunner.
After the effect of John’s ministry is described he makes plain the
nature of his rôle.
“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.”
The prophet said ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the
way of the Lord”. John does this. His only role is to point to Jesus, all his
activity of preaching and baptising is caught up in that.
“I have
baptised you with water”, he
says,
“but he will
baptise you with Holy Spirit.”
The Christians Mark was writing for knew the Holy Spirit as a personal
experience in their lives. For 1st century Jews the concept again
referred them back to Scripture. The word in both Greek and Hebrew means ‘wind’
and ‘breath’ as well as ‘spirit’. This alludes to the Spirit which ‘brooded
over the face of the abyss’—or the ‘wind which swept over the waters of the
abyss’ with the implications of new life which follows on from repentance when
the anointed one arrives.
What comes next will bring new life, as the breath of God does when it
breathes into what is dead and lifeless.
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth
in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
There is no pause, in the midst of all this public commotion and
excitement Jesus appears. The forerunner’s
ministry has been fulfilled. Note that he has come from a distance, not from
Jerusalem or the land of Judea, but from the Northern Tetrarchate of Galilee,
the place a little too close to the edge where Jews and Gentiles can’t entirely
be kept apart as they ought. Here he has no title but his earthly description.
No-one recognises him, and there are no special preparations for his baptism.
He simply goes down into the water with all the rest.
The events which occur as he comes out are recounted in all three
Synoptic Gospels, but in Mark they appear to be private events which are known
only to Jesus. There is no widespread seeing of the vision, or hearing of the
voice of God. His coming out of the water for every-one else is an uneventful
as his going in. We do not even have any indication in Mark that John the
Baptist recognised him.
In Mark the vision is personal. Jesus sees heaven ‘ripped open’. Though
Mark does not recount the tearing of the veil in the temple in the Passion
Narrative, the language is similar. The separation between heaven and earth is
interrupted in a dramatic way and direct communication between God and earth is
enabled. This is experienced in two ways. Firstly the Holy Spirit descends on
him like a dove. Secondly the voice
of God is heard, addressing Jesus: “You are my Son, my beloved. In you I am
well pleased.”
The symbolism of the Dove probably picks up the Rabbinic interpretation
of Gen 1.2 where the verb describing the activity of the Spirit was translated
as ‘broods’ and was interpreted as analogous to the activity of a bird hovering
brooding over its nest to hatch its young. The bird in question was often
identified as a dove. Here, then, unnoticed by humans amidst all the excitement
and action of the Jordan baptism, heaven is ripped open, and creation begins
afresh!
The words of God reflect a number of Old Testament passages, for example
Psalm 2.7,
You are
my Son, this day have I begotten you.
and Isaiah 42.1,
Here is
my Servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights
Psalm 2 is one of the ‘Royal Psalms’ in which the King of Israel, at his
anointing, is adopted as if he were the Son of God.
Isaiah 42 reflects that concept
of the Suffering Servant who will bring the people of Israel back to God.
The two concepts, the Anointed one of God—the Messiah or Christ—and the
suffering servant, are both central to the theology of Mark’s Gospel.
God’s word takes us back to the opening of the Gospel, and to the words
of the centurion at the Passion, and make it clear that being God’s son is not
merely what Jesus thought of himself. This is the action and decision of God.
Mark avoids any reflection on the nature of the baptism, or the fact
that Jesus was baptised ‘for the remission of sins’. Matthew’s longer account
takes up both these issues, which perhaps perplexed some of those who read the
earlier Gospel and needed addressing.
As soon as the words are uttered Mark uses one of his favourite link-words euthus immediately. Immediately Jesus is expelled by the
Spirit into the wilderness. The word used,ekballei is a very strong one. Hurled
or expelled is an appropriate translation. God’s new act of creation is
followed by dramatic action.
The wilderness again—this time the phrase is repeated twice, and the
same connotations occur as with John the Baptist. The wilderness is where God
tests his people, and where individuals discover their vocation .
Three things happen.
- He is tempted by Satan for forty days,
- he is with the wild beasts,
- and the angels minister to him.
If forty brought back a whole series of memories of Moses and the
journey to the Promised Land, forty is equally significant in the story of
Elijah.
In 1 Kings 17, a the beginning of
Elijah’s ministry he prophesies to the King of a drought which will come upon
Israel. The Lord then sends him out into the wilderness, where he drinks from a
stream, and where ravens brought him bread and meat to eat each morning and
evening.
Later he flees from Jezebel, goes a day’s journey into the wilderness,
and lies down under a broom tree to die. He believes he is the only prophet of YHWH left,
and his ministry is hopeless. At this point an angel visits him, and says ‘Get
up and eat’, and there is a freshly baked loaf and a jar of water. We are told
that
he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he
travelled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of
God.
Like Moses, and the People of Israel, for Elijah too the wilderness was
a formative place, both at the beginning of his prophesying, and at a time
where it seemed totally to have failed.
In the course of these two trips to the wilderness, he was fed by wild
beasts, i.e. the ravens, and ministered to by an angel.
The word peiradzo seems here to mean ‘test’ rather than
‘tempt’. Unlike Luke and Matthew there is no direct mention of fasting, and, no
moral temptations are recounted. But testing is not just about whether you pass
the test or not, it is about formation.
The Semitic term Satan is used by Mark, whereas Luke and Matthew use diabolos. Though both Jews and Gentiles at the time of Jesus believed in a
universe populated by spiritual beings of various sorts, some good, some bad
and some neutral, no theology of a personal Devil as we know it had yet been
worked out. Satan means adversary. In the Book of Job, the
adversary’s role is a neutral one—a Devil’s advocate, rather than a personified
force of evil.
The ministry of Jesus begins in Mark with baptism—the place where the
spiritual life of his readers would also have begun. Baptism leads, under the very
strong guidance, even compulsion, of the Spirit, to a time of testing in a wild
and completely isolated place inhabited only by wild beasts, but where,
nonetheless, he has the assurance of God’s presence through the ministry of the
angels.
Christians early began to suffer persecution, and, as we shall see, one
of the purposes of Mark’s Gospel was to explore the consequences of
discipleship… this is what Jesus did, what do we do, how do we respond to God’s
choice of us?
The Baptism and Testing of Jesus is portrayed as New Creation, a New
Exodus. A new people is the inevitable result. But what will their response be—obedience,
or disobedience??
In these few verses Mark shows his readers a paradigm in the life of
Jesus, and invites them to lay it over their own Christian life and experience.
The outcome of this testing is recounted again in a very compressed manner.
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!
John’s time is over. His courageous ministry has led to his arrest, and
as we shall see later, his martyrdom.
Jesus time now begins, not in Jerusalem Judea , but in Galilee … that mixed up place where Jews and Gentiles
lived too close together for the comfort of ‘proper’ Jews.
His message is a fresh one, building on that of John the Baptist, but
full not of impending judgement, but of Good News, and the assurance of the
closeness of the Kingdom
of God
How that message works out we will see in coming weeks as we look at the
Galilean ministry of Jesus.
I assure you that we will not be looking at the rest of the Gospel in
such excruciating detail, but this beginning passage show us that Mark is not a naïve writer, who abbreviates the
fuller Gospels to provide an ‘Idiots Guide’ to Jesus, but a skilful theologian.
In such a small compass he weaves together a web of scriptural quotations and
allusions to present us with a fresh and challenging portrait of Jesus as the
mysterious Son of God, emerging victorious from the testing of the Satan in the
wilderness, and entering into battle with him in the everyday realities of the
world.
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