The Gospel according to Mark. It is one of the first accounts of the life of Jesus and our earliest historical traditions link this book to a Christian scribe named Mark or John Mark. He was a co-worker with Paul and a close partner with Peter. In fact, an ancient church historian named Papias, he recalls that Mark had collected all of the eyewitness accounts and memories of Peter and then shaped them into this account.
But Mark didn't just randomly throw the pieces together. He's carefully designed the story of Jesus. In the first line of the book, Mark makes this claim about Jesus. It's the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.
Now what's interesting is that this is the only time Mark is going to tell you what he thinks. For the rest of the book, he's going to influence you by simply putting Jesus'actions and words in front of you and showing you how other people react to him. Now Marx designed the story of Jesus as a drama with three acts. The first one is set in Galilee, the third one is set in Jerusalem, and the second act shows Jesus on the way from one place to the other. And each of the acts focuses on a repeated theme.
So in Act 1, everybody is blown away by Jesus and they are wondering, who is this Jesus? In Act 2, it is the disciples who are struggling to understand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah. And then in Act 3, we watch the surprising paradox of how Jesus becomes the Messianic King. Let's just dive in and you'll see how it unfolds.
After the opening line, Mark begins with a quotation from the ancient prophets Isaiah and Malachi, who said that God would send a messenger to Israel to prepare them for when God would show up himself to rescue his people and become their king. And Mark introduces John the Baptist as that messenger, and then right when you expect God to show up personally, Mark introduces Jesus. And as he comes onto the scene, the heavens open, God's spirit descends on Jesus and God says, You are my beloved son.
After this, Mark places in front of us a summary of Jesus'core message. He went about Galilee announcing the good news that God's kingdom has come near. Jesus is carrying forward the story from the Old Testament Scriptures about God's rescue operation for his world.
Through Jesus, God is restoring his reign over the world by confronting and defeating evil and its hold on people's lives. And then, by inviting them to live under his reign by following Jesus. From here, Mark's given us a big block of stories showing us Jesus'power as he brings God's kingdom. He goes about healing people whose bodies are sick or broken or under the oppression of dark spiritual powers.
And Jesus even does something that for Jewish people only God has the right to do. He forgives people's sins. And Jesus'actions here produce lots of different responses.
So some people follow him and become his disciples. Other people don't know what to think, and still others reject him completely, especially Israel's leaders who accuse him of blaspheming God and being empowered by evil. But Jesus isn't surprised by these responses.
In fact, he draws attention to it. In chapter 4, Mark has collected many of Jesus'parables about the hidden, mysterious nature of God's kingdom. Jesus says that his message is like seed falling on different types of soil. Some are receptive, some are not.
Or it's like a mustard seed that's very tiny, it seems insignificant, but then it grows huge and surprises everyone. Jesus'point is that he really is the Messiah bringing God's kingdom, but it doesn't look like what anybody expected. This growing confusion about Jesus among the crowds is connected to a key idea Mark emphasizes at the end of Act 1. that even among Jesus'disciples there's confusion. Even they are struggling to grasp who Jesus really is, and that brings us to Act 2. It begins with a crucial conversation.
Jesus takes the disciples aside and he asks, Who do you all say that I am? And Peter speaks up saying, You're the Messiah. But it becomes clear that for Peter this means that Jesus is a victorious military king from the line of David who will rescue Israel from the Romans. But for Jesus to be the Messiah, means that he is the suffering servant king of Isaiah 53 who will bring God's rule by giving up his life in Jerusalem. And the disciples, they don't get it.
They think following King Jesus is going to mean fame and status and importance and Jesus makes it clear that following him is actually like dying, like carrying your own cross. It means rejecting violence and pride and selfishness and giving one's life out for others in acts of service and love. He has the same conversation with them two more times and it all culminates in Jesus'important statement that the Son of Man did not come to be served but to become a servant and give his life as a ransom for many.
The disciples still don't get it. They respond in confusion and fear. And so here in Act 2, Mark has placed another key story that echoes the book's introduction.
Jesus takes three of his disciples up to a mountain and he suddenly transformed. He's radiating with light and glory and a cloud envelops them. Now, this is just like the glory of the God of Israel that showed up long ago on Mount Sinai. And then the two prophets who stood in God's presence on Mount Sinai, Moses and Elijah, they appear next to Jesus as God announces again, this is my beloved son.
Now, by placing this story in the middle of all these conversations in Act 2, Mark is making an astounding claim that Jesus, God's son, is the physical embodiment of God's own glory. And in Jesus, the glorious God of Israel is going to become king by suffering and dying for the sins of his own people. It's a puzzling claim that confuses and scares the disciples as they leave the mountain.
Which brings us to Act 3. Jesus makes a very public royal entry into Jerusalem for Passover. People are hailing him as the Messiah. Then he enters into the temple courtyard and he asserts his royal authority by running out the thieves and crooks and stopping the sacrificial system.
Then this kicks off a whole week of Jesus debating and confronting the leaders of Israel, condemning their hypocrisy, and so they set in motion a plan to have him killed. And Jesus warns his disciples, predicting that Jerusalem and its temple will be destroyed within a generation and his disciples will be persecuted just like him. until he returns one day to bring God's kingdom fully over the world.
And it all leads up to the final night. Jesus has his last Passover meal with the disciples, a symbolic meal that told the story of Israel's liberation from slavery through the death of the Passover lamb. And Jesus takes these symbols and he gives them new meaning. They point to the liberation from sin and death that will happen through the death of the suffering servant Messiah.
From here the story rushes forward to Jesus'arrest, his trial before Israel's priests, and the Roman governor Pilate, all resulting in Jesus'crucifixion. And it culminates in a key scene that matches the important scenes from Acts 1 and 2, except this time it's darkness that descends, not a cloud. And instead of the divine voice from heaven, it's Jesus'voice crying out before he dies. And then most surprising is that it's a Roman soldier who sees Jesus die, who grasps and then announces who Jesus is.
This man was the Son of God. He is the first person in the story to recognize the story's shocking claim about Jesus'identity. That it is the crucified Son of God who is the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who died for his friends and for his enemies. After this, Jesus'body is placed in a tomb and on the first day of the new week, two women from his disciples come to the tomb and they discover that the tomb is empty, the stones rolled away. And an angelic man informs them that Jesus isn't here, that he's risen from the dead.
And so he orders them to go and tell this good news to the other disciples, that Jesus is alive, that he'll meet them back up in Galilee. And the women, they're freaked out. Mark says that they fled from the tomb in terror, telling no one, for they were afraid. And that's how the book ends, with Jesus'disciples showing the same kind of fear and confusion that concluded Acts 2 and 1. Now if you look in your Bible you'll see that the Gospel of Mark has more to its ending, where Jesus appears, he speaks to his disciples, but there's also a note there telling you that that ending is not part of the original book, that it's only found in later less reliable manuscripts. Now it's possible that the original ending got lost or that Mark actually never finished writing his account, but it's more likely that this abrupt ending is intentional to make a point.
The entire story has focused on the shocking claim that puzzled Jesus'disciples from beginning to end. That it's the suffering, crucified, and risen Jesus who's the Messiah, the Son of God. That God's love and upside-down kingdom were revealed as Jesus died for the sins of the world.
And so this story ends without closure, and it forces you, the reader, to grapple with this very strange and scandalous claim about Jesus. And are you going to run away like the disciples? Or are you going to recognize Jesus as your king and go and tell the good news? And only you can answer that question.
And that's what the Gospel of Mark is all about.