Mark 1:1 Good News!
5/28/00 D. Marion Clark
The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Background
Mark’s name first appears in Acts 12:12: When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. The “he” in this verse is Peter, who had miraculously escaped from prison. What we can pick up about Mark is that his full name was John Mark; he came from a well-to-do home (large and with at least one servant); his family was among the earliest Christians (some speculate that the Last Supper was held in his home), and at the time he was young and had lost his father (the house is identified as Mary’s).
Mark was the cousin of Barnabas, who attained high status in the early church. Probably because of that relationship, he joined his cousin and Paul on their first missionary journey. The two apostles had brought financial gifts to the Jerusalem Church from the Antioch Church, and they took John Mark back with them (Acts 12:25). Then, when they received their anointing to go forth as missionaries, they took Mark along (Acts 13:5). I would guess that Mark was an older teenager at the time. But something did not go right on the trip. All we know is that Mark left the men early in the trip and returned to Jerusalem (13:13). Whatever the reason for leaving, it did not set well with Paul, and Mark became a point of contention between him and Barnabas:
36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38 but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39 They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40 but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord (Acts 15:36-40).
Never again do we hear of Mark or Barnabas in the book of Acts. But we do hear about Mark in Paul’s epistles. In the letter to Philemon, he refers to Mark as one of his fellow workers. In Colossians, we can infer that Mark has remained with Paul during one of his imprisonments. He apparently is about to be sent out by Paul to carry on ministry: My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. (You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you, welcome him.) Colossians 4:10) That last phrase makes some wonder if Paul is having to help smooth the way for Mark because of his previous reputation. The most telling verse about Mark and Paul’s reconciliation comes from 2 Timothy 4:11: Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. Paul singles out Mark to come to him in his old age because of his usefulness. Apparently he came a long way from the youth who couldn’t handle the stress of ministry.
And apparently, he proved himself to be an encouragement to Peter who refers to him as my son Mark (1 Peter 5:13). He was with Peter in Rome at the time, and an early nonbiblical record speaks of him being with Peter when the apostle died in Rome. Afterwards, Mark, as the story is told, went into the countryside of Rome and wrote his gospel based on the stories of Peter.
Mark’s gospel is considered by most scholars to be the first gospel written, sometime between 50 and 70 AD. Almost every verse appears again in Matthew and Luke, and it is evident that Mark was the primary source for those gospels. Together, those gospels are referred to as the synoptic gospels: being similar to one another in their synopses of Jesus’ life.
There are two obvious features about Mark that set it off from the other two. The first is its brevity, being just two-thirds the size of the other two. The other feature is its fast pace. If Matthew and Luke were Hollywood movie directors, here is how their movies would start off. They would take a wide panoramic shot of the Holy Land, then close in on a quiet village. The opening scenes would slowly give us the context in which to understand the story eventually to be told. Mark, on the other hand, would have a close-up picture of John the Baptist proclaiming the coming of the Lord, who comes right away and starts his preaching and miracle-working immediately. Mark would have loved adventure movies, and he presents the greatest adventure story of them all with the greatest adventurer.
No baby stories in this gospel. No long genealogies. No long pauses between the action scenes. Jesus goes from routing demons to curing diseases to preaching repentance to confronting enemies. Without delay he calls his disciples. Immediately and at once are two recurring phrases: At once the Spirit leads him out to the desert; immediately the blind man receives his sight. The Gospel of Mark is the Indiana Jones version of Jesus’ ministry.
Gospel
We have used several times the term “gospel.” Mark is the one who speaks of Jesus’ ministry as the “good news.” Gospel is the contracted form of good news, i.e. “good spell.” The gospels are original forms of literature. There was nothing quite like them before. Though they are about a person’s life, they are not true biographies. For one thing, they only cover three years out of Jesus’ adult life, while touching briefly on his birth and childhood. For that matter, the three years are not treated with much detail. We would not even know that his ministry took up three years without making deductions from the number of visits Jesus made to Jerusalem. In comparison to all the teachings Jesus gave and all his work among the people, we really have a small selection.
What about descriptions of Jesus such as you would find in a biography? Have you ever read a biography that did not describe the person whose life is being recounted? There is no physical description whatever. None. And though we can deduce what Jesus was like through his sayings and acts, the gospel writers never bother to directly give their impressions. They never describe his temperament. We don’t know what foods he liked best; indeed, his likes and dislikes are not discussed. Did he laugh a lot or was he somber? Did he have a loud voice or was his normal voice soft. Once we learn a crowd’s derisive comments that he had been a carpenter, but Mark never talks about that aspect of Jesus’ life. There are not the usual anecdotes that a biographer uses to give us insight into the personality of the character.
The gospel writers had an agenda, which was to tell the “good news” about Jesus Christ. They were not writing biographies to give insight into the man Jesus. Though what they wrote was historically accurate, they were writing propaganda in the true sense of the word – material intended to demonstrate and persuade that Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God. The good news was that the Christ had brought salvation.
How he brought salvation can easily be seen in the amount of material given to one particular event – Jesus’ death. The period revolving around Jesus’ crucifixion – from the week leading up to it and the immediate days following, take up on average a full third of each gospel. Almost half of John’s gospel covers that time. The significance of Jesus’ life, according to the gospels, is found in his death. The salvation delivered by the Messiah comes through his sacrifice. The gospels, then, are understood with this act of salvation in focus. All the acts of Jesus and all his teachings point to the cross and are understood through the cross. Even the significance of his resurrection is found in the saving work of his death.
Mark is as clear on this as any of the gospels.
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again (8:31).
He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise” (9:31).
They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise” (10:32-34).
The events of Jesus’ life and his teachings were selected and put together to present Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior, who was crucified for the salvation of his people and who is now the risen Lord.
Jesus: Christ, the Son of God
Now most of you are aware that the gospels, though they all are about Jesus, present him from different perspectives. They all present him as the Messiah, but they emphasize different characteristics about him. Generally, the differences are presented like this: Matthew’s Jesus is the King who establishes the Kingdom of Heaven; Luke’s Jesus is the Savior of all the world who identifies with all people; John’s Jesus is the Son of God come in the flesh to reveal God and his salvation; and Mark’s Jesus is the Servant, the Son of Man who comes to serve man. The verse designated as the theme for Mark is 10:45: 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.
Having said this, I regard verse 1 as the true theme: The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That, to me, is a rather brash way to open his work. Mark lays his cards right on the table, so to speak. He says, “I am about to lay before you such wondrous words and actions of this man Jesus, that you will see that he was and is no mere man but the actual Son of God.” It is clear that Mark is begging the question throughout the gospel: “See, do you get it now who he is?”
And this was [John the Baptist’s] message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (1:7-8).
Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, 24 “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (1:23-24).
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (2:5-6)
Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God” (3:11).
[The disciples] were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (4:41)
When [the man with the evil spirit] saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” (5:6-7)
People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (7:37).
Then a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (9:7)
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” (14:61)
The pivotal verse in the gospel, is 8:29: “But what about you?” [Jesus] asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
If Mark were reading his gospel, you could easily imagine him stopping at this point, look intently at his listeners and say, “What about you?”
Yes, Jesus came to serve, but he carried out his work with authority. He was a paradox – humble and yet lordly. Mark shows clearly Jesus’ human nature, and yet his divine nature over and again comes through. There is a line in a Michael Card song that goes like this: “He was unlike any other man and yet so much like me.” Mark may have written, “He seemed like any other man and yet was so much more.”
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic trilogy The Lord of the Rings, four little hobbits meet a strange man who rescues them from being gobbled up by trees and then invites them into his home. The next day, Tom Bombadil entertains his guests with many stories. The hours and the stories pile up. Let’s pick up near the end.
When they caught his words again they found that he had now wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western shore; and still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. Then suddenly he stopped, and they saw that he nodded as if he was falling asleep. The hobbits sat still before him, enchanted; and it seemed as if, under the spell of his words, the wind had gone, and the clouds had dried up, and the day had been withdrawn, and darkness had come from East and West, and all the sky was filled with the light of white stars.
Whether the morning and evening of one day or of many days had passed Frodo could not tell. He did not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with wonder. The stars shone through the window and the silence of the heavens seemed to be round him. He spoke at last out of his wonder and a sudden fear of that silence:
“Who are you, Master?’ he asked.
“Eh, what?” said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent.”
We have in the Gospel of Mark one older than Tom Bombadil, one much more mysterious, and one far more important to know. For the more we learn about Jesus, the more we learn about God; indeed, the more we learn about ourselves and who we were intended to be. Jesus is not just an interesting character to know. He is after all, the Savior, the Son of God, about whom and through whom the good news for us has come.
