The Gospel of Mark, One Chapter per Week thru Easter
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The Gospel of Mark: My Three Big Take-Aways
I don’t know about you, but this has been an amazing project walking through the entire Gospel of Mark. Even we preachers so much of the time deal with just bits and pieces. Seeing how Mark weaves themes and motifs together gives me a fresh appreciation for the craft and artistry in this Gospel-telling. There is so much to revisit and reconsider but here at the end of our journey I wanted to share my 3 big take-aways.
Mark 1:1-15
The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah:
Look, I am sending my messenger before you.
He will prepare your way,
a voice shouting in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”
John the Baptist was in the wilderness calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. Everyone in Judea and all the people of Jerusalem went out to the Jordan River and were being baptized by John as they confessed their sins. John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. He announced, “One stronger than I am is coming after me. I’m not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”
At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him.
After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”
Take-Away #1 Jesus Wanted to Change the World, This World
Jesus’ ministry was focused on the world that we all live in. He spent very little time worrying about the next world, most of his energy was directed at those for whom the ways of the world were onerous and oppressive. Jesus also was not interested in simply changing the power players. It was the entire system of the way the powerful existed on the backs of the powerless that had to go. He taught a complete restructuring of the way that we live and support each other. The last shall be first, anyone who wants to lead must be least of all and slave of all, the way to life is to take up a cross. It seems to me that Jesus deeply believed that this life was never intended to be one of suffering and agony. His vision was a life that fed, welcomed, and restored the dispossessed and excluded ones.
Take-Away #2 What Jesus Did, He Did for Love
All of Jesus’ criticism of and confrontation with the Roman Empire and his own culture’s Temple structure were instigated because of love.Jesus’ deepest compassion was for those who did not have the means to defend themselves. It was the poor, the forgotten, the overlooked and oppressed that Jesus loved first. It was not that he did not love those who were rich and powerful, I believe he did. But he was acutely aware of the cost and pain inflicted on the ones who had to live on the bottom of the world’s hierarchy. Mark doesn’t give us any backstory on Jesus, but I wonder if Jesus loved this lowest class of people first because in some way he may have experienced that pain firsthand. That love burned so hot and deep that Jesus could not leave the world the way it was. His faith was that GOd had not ordained or created it that way. So for the sake of those he loved he set about ushering in a whole new world.
Take-Away #3 Jesus Didn’t Expect Us to Be Superhero Saints
It is intriguing that for his world-building project Jesus did not choose community organizers or political scientists or organizational designers. The way Mark tells the story, it seems that Jesus chose doofuses. The 12 disciples, those whom Jesus selected, taught, and sent out or spread the plan, are portrayed as thick-headed and even resistant. They struggle, and fail, to give up their own expectations of Jesus and to grasp the vision he casts. Mark shows them distancing themselves from Jesus particularly as he begins to teach the way of the cross, that new life is costly in the extreme. In his hour of crisis, these leaders of the movement desert Jesus completely, metaphorically embodied in the unnamed youth who runs away stark naked.Their naked doubt and fear and faithlessness are exposed as they run away. Those who seek to save their life will lose it indeed.
Bur in the face of their desertion, remember that Mark was writing this gospel some 30 or 40 years later in the midst of another time of crisis. Something continued, something was meaningful enough and hope-filled enough about the story of Jesus that Mark had to tell it.Mark ends the story with an unnamed youth now clothed in Jesus’ empty tomb, wearing a martyr’s robe signally that somehow the one who ran away naked is restored and redeemed and is now following Jesus’ way of the cross. The one who left all dignity and vision on the ground like discarded linen is the one who gets to announce the new life Jesus is living. And for all the supposed authority of the men Jesus chose, it was the women who followed on their own volition that are the first to receive this amazing news.
My take-away from this is that Jesus sees worth even in the stumbling, confused, and resistant doofus disciples. And if Jesus chose people like that to start building God’s new world, then maybe it’s not just a big mistake that Christ continues to choose somebody like me. Mark constructed his gospel in such a way that we as its readers identify with those disciples. It is as if Mark knew that it was through such mess-ups like us that allows God to get to work. We can’t take the credit because we know the times we misunderstand, deny, and desert the cause. But we who can’t get it done on our own are the ones Christ chooses nonetheless. I don’t know about you, but that is good news for me.
There are a lot of subtleties that even in three months we have not had time to explore. I’ve been preaching from Mark;s Gospel for over thirty years, and in this journey I have discovered new treasures . It still calls to me and challenges me, confounds me and in the end will not let me be done with it. It does its work of making me new even as it calls me to join in Jesus’ world-making ministry.
Conversation Questions
1. What are your big take-aways from Mark;s Gospel?
2. How does this story address the chaos of our own times?
3. Who in our time needs the Good News of Jesus Christ?
I don’t know about you, but this has been an amazing project walking through the entire Gospel of Mark. Even we preachers so much of the time deal with just bits and pieces. Seeing how Mark weaves themes and motifs together gives me a fresh appreciation for the craft and artistry in this Gospel-telling. There is so much to revisit and reconsider but here at the end of our journey I wanted to share my 3 big take-aways.
Mark 1:1-15
The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah:
Look, I am sending my messenger before you.
He will prepare your way,
a voice shouting in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”
John the Baptist was in the wilderness calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. Everyone in Judea and all the people of Jerusalem went out to the Jordan River and were being baptized by John as they confessed their sins. John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. He announced, “One stronger than I am is coming after me. I’m not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”
At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him.
After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”
Take-Away #1 Jesus Wanted to Change the World, This World
Jesus’ ministry was focused on the world that we all live in. He spent very little time worrying about the next world, most of his energy was directed at those for whom the ways of the world were onerous and oppressive. Jesus also was not interested in simply changing the power players. It was the entire system of the way the powerful existed on the backs of the powerless that had to go. He taught a complete restructuring of the way that we live and support each other. The last shall be first, anyone who wants to lead must be least of all and slave of all, the way to life is to take up a cross. It seems to me that Jesus deeply believed that this life was never intended to be one of suffering and agony. His vision was a life that fed, welcomed, and restored the dispossessed and excluded ones.
Take-Away #2 What Jesus Did, He Did for Love
All of Jesus’ criticism of and confrontation with the Roman Empire and his own culture’s Temple structure were instigated because of love.Jesus’ deepest compassion was for those who did not have the means to defend themselves. It was the poor, the forgotten, the overlooked and oppressed that Jesus loved first. It was not that he did not love those who were rich and powerful, I believe he did. But he was acutely aware of the cost and pain inflicted on the ones who had to live on the bottom of the world’s hierarchy. Mark doesn’t give us any backstory on Jesus, but I wonder if Jesus loved this lowest class of people first because in some way he may have experienced that pain firsthand. That love burned so hot and deep that Jesus could not leave the world the way it was. His faith was that GOd had not ordained or created it that way. So for the sake of those he loved he set about ushering in a whole new world.
Take-Away #3 Jesus Didn’t Expect Us to Be Superhero Saints
It is intriguing that for his world-building project Jesus did not choose community organizers or political scientists or organizational designers. The way Mark tells the story, it seems that Jesus chose doofuses. The 12 disciples, those whom Jesus selected, taught, and sent out or spread the plan, are portrayed as thick-headed and even resistant. They struggle, and fail, to give up their own expectations of Jesus and to grasp the vision he casts. Mark shows them distancing themselves from Jesus particularly as he begins to teach the way of the cross, that new life is costly in the extreme. In his hour of crisis, these leaders of the movement desert Jesus completely, metaphorically embodied in the unnamed youth who runs away stark naked.Their naked doubt and fear and faithlessness are exposed as they run away. Those who seek to save their life will lose it indeed.
Bur in the face of their desertion, remember that Mark was writing this gospel some 30 or 40 years later in the midst of another time of crisis. Something continued, something was meaningful enough and hope-filled enough about the story of Jesus that Mark had to tell it.Mark ends the story with an unnamed youth now clothed in Jesus’ empty tomb, wearing a martyr’s robe signally that somehow the one who ran away naked is restored and redeemed and is now following Jesus’ way of the cross. The one who left all dignity and vision on the ground like discarded linen is the one who gets to announce the new life Jesus is living. And for all the supposed authority of the men Jesus chose, it was the women who followed on their own volition that are the first to receive this amazing news.
My take-away from this is that Jesus sees worth even in the stumbling, confused, and resistant doofus disciples. And if Jesus chose people like that to start building God’s new world, then maybe it’s not just a big mistake that Christ continues to choose somebody like me. Mark constructed his gospel in such a way that we as its readers identify with those disciples. It is as if Mark knew that it was through such mess-ups like us that allows God to get to work. We can’t take the credit because we know the times we misunderstand, deny, and desert the cause. But we who can’t get it done on our own are the ones Christ chooses nonetheless. I don’t know about you, but that is good news for me.
There are a lot of subtleties that even in three months we have not had time to explore. I’ve been preaching from Mark;s Gospel for over thirty years, and in this journey I have discovered new treasures . It still calls to me and challenges me, confounds me and in the end will not let me be done with it. It does its work of making me new even as it calls me to join in Jesus’ world-making ministry.
Conversation Questions
1. What are your big take-aways from Mark;s Gospel?
2. How does this story address the chaos of our own times?
3. Who in our time needs the Good News of Jesus Christ?
Chapters 15 & 16 It Is Finished and It Starts All Over Again
All the hopes built up in the first part of Mark’s Gospel come crashing down in one terrible night and a day. Once the body of Jesus is placed in the tomb, what can we hope for on Sunday morning? Spoilers: don’t expect earthquakes or angels.
Chapter 15:1-421 Day Six: The Romans’ Turn
Early Friday morning the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to the ROmans.THe trial that Mark describes is movement for movement identical to the Jewish trial, only the charges have changed. Instead of theological charges, they are now political. Pilate doesn’t care if Jesus thinks of himself as a messiah, he is more concerned whether Jesus presents himself as a commander or king. The issue here is a challenge to Caesar. Yet Pilate knows that in his custody, this man is no threat. He is not the king of Judea (a position granted and controlled by Rome). Pilate calls Jesus “the king of the Jews,” a derisive title to both Jesus and the rabble.
Pilate offers the crowd a choice between Jesus (proclaiming a whole new system of nonviolence and equality) and Barabbas (the same system of violence and oppression - but with a change of actors). Maybe they were disenchanted with Jesus now, maybe they were manipulated by their leaders, but the crowd calls for Barabbas and seals Jesus’ ’fate.
Jesus is now one of those he has advocated for for this entire story: he now has no control over his life, even his body. He is stripped, mocked, beaten and finally taken out to be crucified. ALong the way, the power of the empire conscripts another rural visitor to carry the crossbeam. It appears that Simon the Cyrene, the conscripted one, is gentile (his sons’ names, Alexander and Rufus, are not Jewish names). No one, Jew or gentile, is exempt from Rome’s domineering.
Chapter 15:22-32 Day Six, con’t: the Crucifixion of Jesus
For the last time Jesus is stripped naked. The soldiers gamble for his clothes for which he no longer has any use. He is nailed to the crossbeam and lifted onto the stake. Two rebels are crucified on either side of Jesus, those who had engaged in violence to overthrow Rome alongside the one who eschewed violence. Everyone, the crowds, the Temple leaders, and even those crucified with Jesus taunt him and insult him as he hangs there.
Chapter 15:33-41 Day Six con’t: the Apocalyptic Moment
This is the moment that Mark’s entire story has been building toward. It is THE moment that changes everything. This is not about heaven or hell. This is about who really controls this world and the lives we live in it. From noon until three the sun is blotted out, a nod to the story of Exodus when God showed up the pharaoh by controlling the power of the sun - Yahweh, and not the Egyptian sun god Ra. Jesus shouts out in agony and dies. At that moment, the triumph over the Temple is complete. The curtain dividing the Holy of Holies from the outer chamber tears in two. God no longer resides in the Temple but is set free for all the people at the death of Jesus. But none of Jesus’ male disciples - those who were supposed to be the heroes of the story - are here to see it. They all ran away in the last chapter. It is the women who witness it all. It is the women who have been faithful to the last.
Chapter 15:42-47 Day Six con’t: Jesus’ Incomplete Burial
Joseph of Arimithea really is a mysterious figure. Why would a member of the council that just maneuvered Jesus’ execution ask for his body? Maybe he was a secret sympathizer. Or maybe he was a clean-up man. By securing Jesus’ body and sealing it out of harm's way in a tomb meant that the crowds would have nothing to fixate on. Being a member of the council, Joseph would have had the means to give Jesus a proper burial but instead he wraps the body in a linen cloth and dumps in the tomb, sealing the entryway with a large stone. GIving Jesus’ body no burial rites was a grave disrespect, but out of sight is out of mind. Mark does not mention the seventh day, the sabbath. Jesus lies in silence.
Chapter 16:1-8 All the Resurrection Mark Gives Us
After the denouement of the 15th chapter, one might hope for a really big payoff. But Mark does not give us that. What he gives us is in fact pretty subdued. The women, the truly faithful disciples, arrive at dawn (when the sabbath is over) to finally give the body of Jesus the respect they believe it deserves. They find no angels, experience no earthquake, no flashes of light. The tomb is open and inside sits a youth wrapped in a white robe. No Jesus to be seen. The youth (is this the same youth that ran away naked at Jesus’ arrest?) tells the women not to fear and that Jesus is not here because he has gone ahead of them to Galilee. They are to go find the disciples and Peter and tell them too. The call to discipleship is given again: follow Jesus back to Galilee where it will all begin again. In the most enigment ending of all, Mark tells that the women fled the tomb and said nothing to anyone, so filled with fear were they.
As readers of Mark’s Gospel, that invitation is given to us as well. We are to continue following Jesus - wherever our Galilee may be. But the desire for a more satisfying ending is strong. We have a rich treasury of stories where the gods descend from Mount Olympus at the last minute, where the cavalry comes riding over the hill in the nick of time. Surely there is more to this story than simply a renewed call to discipleship and the promise of meeting the risen Jesus somewhere on the way (the Way?). So unsatisfying was Mark’s original ending that often included are two later additions that try to jazz it up. And when we read the other, subsequent, Gospels we find that those authors included scenes of lightning flashing, the earth shaking, graves opening with the dead walking around, and angels sitting atop the tombs. In those Gospels we meet the risen Christ. But all we are given in this earliest telling is the empty tomb and the invitation. And the implied question, now what will we do with this?
Conversation Questions
1. How has Jesus’ death changed the world? How has it not?
2. It is human nature to look for big, flashy signs. How much harder is it to believe in the way Jesus teaches when we don’t receive those in Mark’s Gospel?
3. Jesus’ invitation was to take up our own cross and follow. If we participate in Christ’s crucifixion, how might we experience Christ’s rising in our lives?
All the hopes built up in the first part of Mark’s Gospel come crashing down in one terrible night and a day. Once the body of Jesus is placed in the tomb, what can we hope for on Sunday morning? Spoilers: don’t expect earthquakes or angels.
Chapter 15:1-421 Day Six: The Romans’ Turn
Early Friday morning the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to the ROmans.THe trial that Mark describes is movement for movement identical to the Jewish trial, only the charges have changed. Instead of theological charges, they are now political. Pilate doesn’t care if Jesus thinks of himself as a messiah, he is more concerned whether Jesus presents himself as a commander or king. The issue here is a challenge to Caesar. Yet Pilate knows that in his custody, this man is no threat. He is not the king of Judea (a position granted and controlled by Rome). Pilate calls Jesus “the king of the Jews,” a derisive title to both Jesus and the rabble.
Pilate offers the crowd a choice between Jesus (proclaiming a whole new system of nonviolence and equality) and Barabbas (the same system of violence and oppression - but with a change of actors). Maybe they were disenchanted with Jesus now, maybe they were manipulated by their leaders, but the crowd calls for Barabbas and seals Jesus’ ’fate.
Jesus is now one of those he has advocated for for this entire story: he now has no control over his life, even his body. He is stripped, mocked, beaten and finally taken out to be crucified. ALong the way, the power of the empire conscripts another rural visitor to carry the crossbeam. It appears that Simon the Cyrene, the conscripted one, is gentile (his sons’ names, Alexander and Rufus, are not Jewish names). No one, Jew or gentile, is exempt from Rome’s domineering.
Chapter 15:22-32 Day Six, con’t: the Crucifixion of Jesus
For the last time Jesus is stripped naked. The soldiers gamble for his clothes for which he no longer has any use. He is nailed to the crossbeam and lifted onto the stake. Two rebels are crucified on either side of Jesus, those who had engaged in violence to overthrow Rome alongside the one who eschewed violence. Everyone, the crowds, the Temple leaders, and even those crucified with Jesus taunt him and insult him as he hangs there.
Chapter 15:33-41 Day Six con’t: the Apocalyptic Moment
This is the moment that Mark’s entire story has been building toward. It is THE moment that changes everything. This is not about heaven or hell. This is about who really controls this world and the lives we live in it. From noon until three the sun is blotted out, a nod to the story of Exodus when God showed up the pharaoh by controlling the power of the sun - Yahweh, and not the Egyptian sun god Ra. Jesus shouts out in agony and dies. At that moment, the triumph over the Temple is complete. The curtain dividing the Holy of Holies from the outer chamber tears in two. God no longer resides in the Temple but is set free for all the people at the death of Jesus. But none of Jesus’ male disciples - those who were supposed to be the heroes of the story - are here to see it. They all ran away in the last chapter. It is the women who witness it all. It is the women who have been faithful to the last.
Chapter 15:42-47 Day Six con’t: Jesus’ Incomplete Burial
Joseph of Arimithea really is a mysterious figure. Why would a member of the council that just maneuvered Jesus’ execution ask for his body? Maybe he was a secret sympathizer. Or maybe he was a clean-up man. By securing Jesus’ body and sealing it out of harm's way in a tomb meant that the crowds would have nothing to fixate on. Being a member of the council, Joseph would have had the means to give Jesus a proper burial but instead he wraps the body in a linen cloth and dumps in the tomb, sealing the entryway with a large stone. GIving Jesus’ body no burial rites was a grave disrespect, but out of sight is out of mind. Mark does not mention the seventh day, the sabbath. Jesus lies in silence.
Chapter 16:1-8 All the Resurrection Mark Gives Us
After the denouement of the 15th chapter, one might hope for a really big payoff. But Mark does not give us that. What he gives us is in fact pretty subdued. The women, the truly faithful disciples, arrive at dawn (when the sabbath is over) to finally give the body of Jesus the respect they believe it deserves. They find no angels, experience no earthquake, no flashes of light. The tomb is open and inside sits a youth wrapped in a white robe. No Jesus to be seen. The youth (is this the same youth that ran away naked at Jesus’ arrest?) tells the women not to fear and that Jesus is not here because he has gone ahead of them to Galilee. They are to go find the disciples and Peter and tell them too. The call to discipleship is given again: follow Jesus back to Galilee where it will all begin again. In the most enigment ending of all, Mark tells that the women fled the tomb and said nothing to anyone, so filled with fear were they.
As readers of Mark’s Gospel, that invitation is given to us as well. We are to continue following Jesus - wherever our Galilee may be. But the desire for a more satisfying ending is strong. We have a rich treasury of stories where the gods descend from Mount Olympus at the last minute, where the cavalry comes riding over the hill in the nick of time. Surely there is more to this story than simply a renewed call to discipleship and the promise of meeting the risen Jesus somewhere on the way (the Way?). So unsatisfying was Mark’s original ending that often included are two later additions that try to jazz it up. And when we read the other, subsequent, Gospels we find that those authors included scenes of lightning flashing, the earth shaking, graves opening with the dead walking around, and angels sitting atop the tombs. In those Gospels we meet the risen Christ. But all we are given in this earliest telling is the empty tomb and the invitation. And the implied question, now what will we do with this?
Conversation Questions
1. How has Jesus’ death changed the world? How has it not?
2. It is human nature to look for big, flashy signs. How much harder is it to believe in the way Jesus teaches when we don’t receive those in Mark’s Gospel?
3. Jesus’ invitation was to take up our own cross and follow. If we participate in Christ’s crucifixion, how might we experience Christ’s rising in our lives?
Chapter 14 The Beginning of the End (and the Beginning)
Scene shifts to scene quickly in the fourteenth chapter as the action propels us toward Mark’s climax. We see Jesus’ final moments with his followers, the disintegration of the discipleship movement, and the reassertion of the powers-that-be in Jesus’ arrest and trial. TIme is short and tensions are high.
Chapter 1:1-4 Day Four: Failing Vision and a True Disciple
It seems clear that Jesus and his movement are feeling the heat and have now gone underground. Still fearing the reaction of the crowd, the Pharisees and their allies are seeking a stealthy way to take care of their Jesus problem. Gathering in a private home in Bethany, Jesus does what he is known best for - having a Kin-dom dinner (A note about my use of the term “Kin-dom.” It seems clear to me that Jesus was trying to create a non-hierarchical community. His use of “kingdom” was a clear alternative to Caesar’s oppressive kingdom. Jesus was creating an all-inclusive community where all classes, nationalities, and genders were welcome - a new far-reaching family. So I follow the lead of a number of contemporary scholars in using the shorthand “Kin-dom” as a signal for that kind of Christlike community.)
During this dinner, a woman of some means (how else would she have obtained the expensive ointment?) joins the men (unheard of in those days). SHe breaks a jar of very expensive ointment and pours it on Jesus’ head, anointing him - literally making him a messiah (messiah means ‘anointed one”). Those named as Jesus’ grumble about the extravagance of her act - but not seeing its significance. Jesus names this unnamed woman as the only one who took him serious when he spoke of his death and rising. This out of place woman anointed him for his impending death while the men dwelt in denial She will be remembered forever for this. Somewhere in this tension-filled evening, Judas decides to ally with the Pharisees.
Chapter 14:12-21 Day Five: Spies and Secret Agents
Judas has become a spy for the Pharisees, evidently a rather poorly kept secret. But here we get a glimpse of the network of secret agents of the Jesus-followers. Jesus’ trusted associates are to go into the city and wait for a signal: a man carrying water (normally that was a woman’s job). Like the underground in World War II, they are led to a clandestine local where all is already set up for the Passover celebration. There they gathered to eat together for what would be the last time.The hope of God’s liberation was muted by Jesus’ admission that he knows that one there at the table was going to betray him. In an oddly honest confession, it seems like they had all thought about it: “is it me?”
Chapter 14:22-31 Day Four, con’t: Food for the Future
Jesus reinterprets the meaning Passover specifically for his disciples. He takes the unleavened bread and underscores what he has said so many times: Remember that my body will be broken like this bread, and my blood will flow like this wine. It is still our statement of faith that in facing the worst the forces of violence can offer, Jesus losing his life opens real life to us. Mark is evidently quoting what was already an established liturgy, something that Christians had been doing for some time. Radically inclusive, Jesus offers to them all, betrayers and deniers alike.
After supper they went outside to sing together. There Jesus tells them that things are going to get much worse: everyone of them will abandon him when things get dangerous. They all protest and deny, Jesus stands firm but gives just a little bit of hope. When this is all over, you’ll find be back in Galilee. Peter blusters his fidelity, though Jesus knows how deep his denial will go.
Chapter 14:32-52 Day Four con’t: Praying and Betraying
Remember how Jesus urged them all to stay alert at the end of his teaching last chapter? He takes the inner circle with him as he goes to prayer. And asks them to stay awake with him. THe language that Mark uses to describe Jesus’ prayer is gut-wrenching. This is no formal quoting of a question to perform a rote recitation for appearance’s sake. These are prayers of true anguish. Jesus does not want to die, but sees no other way to accomplish what is needed. And three times through it all, Peter, James and John snooze blissfully away - not alert at all.
Then Judas makes his reappearance. Leading the forces of violence, Judas betrays Jesus with a sign of family intimacy: a kiss. Under the cover of darkness they are bold enough with clubs and swords to grab Jesus when in the daylight they were afraid. But here all the disciples betray Jesus by running for their lives (those who wish to save their life will lose it, remember?). A young man, an unnamed follower, flees away naked - the ultimate sign of shame, leaving behind a cloth whose significance comes back at the end of this story.
Chapter 14:53-65 Day Four con’t: The Kangaroo Court, part 1
In “Binding the Strong Man,” Ched Myers’ commentary on Mark and my primary source material for this study, he points out that the scenes of Jesus’ trials are painted in strokes so broad that this borders on parody and caricature. Like the characters of a political cartoon, the players are recognizable but exaggerated in ways that make plain their motives and actions. Jesus’ first trial is at the hands of the High Priest (it is good to remember that he was put in place by the Romans) and the Sanhedrin. Rife with purchased testimony and falsified evidence, Myers reminds us that “Their goal is not justice, but putting (Jesus) to death” (p. 375). There is a good deal of ambiguity in the confession of Jesus in verse 62. While most translate Jesus’ answer to the question whether he is the Messiah as an assertive “I am!”, the nature of ancient Greek is that it is also plausible that Jesus responds with a sarcastic “am I?” However it is read, it was enough for the High Priest to declare blasphemy and call for Jesus’ death. Then, like the Romans following them, Jesus is physically abused by his Jewish accusers.
Chapter 14:66-72 Day Four con’t: Peter’s FInest Moment (that’s sarcasm)
We are familiar with the story of Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus, convicted by the crow of the rooster. It is ironic that his third and most vehement denial, accompanied by stevedore cursing and blasphemous oath-making, is “I don’t know him!” Peter, the first and ostensibly most central disciple, the first one to follow and Jesus’ oldest companion, seems to scream the truth when he says he never really knew Jesus at all.
Conversation Questions
1. What trials of faith are we facing?
2. Where is it tempting to deny or betray Jesus or just run away these days?
3. How is the Way of Jesus challenging us to face death and resurrection in 2020?
Scene shifts to scene quickly in the fourteenth chapter as the action propels us toward Mark’s climax. We see Jesus’ final moments with his followers, the disintegration of the discipleship movement, and the reassertion of the powers-that-be in Jesus’ arrest and trial. TIme is short and tensions are high.
Chapter 1:1-4 Day Four: Failing Vision and a True Disciple
It seems clear that Jesus and his movement are feeling the heat and have now gone underground. Still fearing the reaction of the crowd, the Pharisees and their allies are seeking a stealthy way to take care of their Jesus problem. Gathering in a private home in Bethany, Jesus does what he is known best for - having a Kin-dom dinner (A note about my use of the term “Kin-dom.” It seems clear to me that Jesus was trying to create a non-hierarchical community. His use of “kingdom” was a clear alternative to Caesar’s oppressive kingdom. Jesus was creating an all-inclusive community where all classes, nationalities, and genders were welcome - a new far-reaching family. So I follow the lead of a number of contemporary scholars in using the shorthand “Kin-dom” as a signal for that kind of Christlike community.)
During this dinner, a woman of some means (how else would she have obtained the expensive ointment?) joins the men (unheard of in those days). SHe breaks a jar of very expensive ointment and pours it on Jesus’ head, anointing him - literally making him a messiah (messiah means ‘anointed one”). Those named as Jesus’ grumble about the extravagance of her act - but not seeing its significance. Jesus names this unnamed woman as the only one who took him serious when he spoke of his death and rising. This out of place woman anointed him for his impending death while the men dwelt in denial She will be remembered forever for this. Somewhere in this tension-filled evening, Judas decides to ally with the Pharisees.
Chapter 14:12-21 Day Five: Spies and Secret Agents
Judas has become a spy for the Pharisees, evidently a rather poorly kept secret. But here we get a glimpse of the network of secret agents of the Jesus-followers. Jesus’ trusted associates are to go into the city and wait for a signal: a man carrying water (normally that was a woman’s job). Like the underground in World War II, they are led to a clandestine local where all is already set up for the Passover celebration. There they gathered to eat together for what would be the last time.The hope of God’s liberation was muted by Jesus’ admission that he knows that one there at the table was going to betray him. In an oddly honest confession, it seems like they had all thought about it: “is it me?”
Chapter 14:22-31 Day Four, con’t: Food for the Future
Jesus reinterprets the meaning Passover specifically for his disciples. He takes the unleavened bread and underscores what he has said so many times: Remember that my body will be broken like this bread, and my blood will flow like this wine. It is still our statement of faith that in facing the worst the forces of violence can offer, Jesus losing his life opens real life to us. Mark is evidently quoting what was already an established liturgy, something that Christians had been doing for some time. Radically inclusive, Jesus offers to them all, betrayers and deniers alike.
After supper they went outside to sing together. There Jesus tells them that things are going to get much worse: everyone of them will abandon him when things get dangerous. They all protest and deny, Jesus stands firm but gives just a little bit of hope. When this is all over, you’ll find be back in Galilee. Peter blusters his fidelity, though Jesus knows how deep his denial will go.
Chapter 14:32-52 Day Four con’t: Praying and Betraying
Remember how Jesus urged them all to stay alert at the end of his teaching last chapter? He takes the inner circle with him as he goes to prayer. And asks them to stay awake with him. THe language that Mark uses to describe Jesus’ prayer is gut-wrenching. This is no formal quoting of a question to perform a rote recitation for appearance’s sake. These are prayers of true anguish. Jesus does not want to die, but sees no other way to accomplish what is needed. And three times through it all, Peter, James and John snooze blissfully away - not alert at all.
Then Judas makes his reappearance. Leading the forces of violence, Judas betrays Jesus with a sign of family intimacy: a kiss. Under the cover of darkness they are bold enough with clubs and swords to grab Jesus when in the daylight they were afraid. But here all the disciples betray Jesus by running for their lives (those who wish to save their life will lose it, remember?). A young man, an unnamed follower, flees away naked - the ultimate sign of shame, leaving behind a cloth whose significance comes back at the end of this story.
Chapter 14:53-65 Day Four con’t: The Kangaroo Court, part 1
In “Binding the Strong Man,” Ched Myers’ commentary on Mark and my primary source material for this study, he points out that the scenes of Jesus’ trials are painted in strokes so broad that this borders on parody and caricature. Like the characters of a political cartoon, the players are recognizable but exaggerated in ways that make plain their motives and actions. Jesus’ first trial is at the hands of the High Priest (it is good to remember that he was put in place by the Romans) and the Sanhedrin. Rife with purchased testimony and falsified evidence, Myers reminds us that “Their goal is not justice, but putting (Jesus) to death” (p. 375). There is a good deal of ambiguity in the confession of Jesus in verse 62. While most translate Jesus’ answer to the question whether he is the Messiah as an assertive “I am!”, the nature of ancient Greek is that it is also plausible that Jesus responds with a sarcastic “am I?” However it is read, it was enough for the High Priest to declare blasphemy and call for Jesus’ death. Then, like the Romans following them, Jesus is physically abused by his Jewish accusers.
Chapter 14:66-72 Day Four con’t: Peter’s FInest Moment (that’s sarcasm)
We are familiar with the story of Peter’s three-fold denial of Jesus, convicted by the crow of the rooster. It is ironic that his third and most vehement denial, accompanied by stevedore cursing and blasphemous oath-making, is “I don’t know him!” Peter, the first and ostensibly most central disciple, the first one to follow and Jesus’ oldest companion, seems to scream the truth when he says he never really knew Jesus at all.
Conversation Questions
1. What trials of faith are we facing?
2. Where is it tempting to deny or betray Jesus or just run away these days?
3. How is the Way of Jesus challenging us to face death and resurrection in 2020?
Chapter 13 Visions and Dreams
This is likely the most discussed, most undecipherable, most challenging chapter to read in all of Mark’s Gospel. The difficulty comes because Mark is not only giving us Jesus’ teaching, he is also showing us the conflict and struggle present 30 years later (Mark’s own present day) caught in the middle of Romans and the Zealots and their war over Israel. Somewhere in this hazy mist of past and present (and our own day’s reading) Jesus’ hope of God’s Kin-dom comes into focus.
A word about the images of stars falling from the skies and foundations of the earth shaking. Mark is using a literary form called apocalyptic. In fact, he is heavily borrowing images and language from the Book of Daniel. Daniel is another wartime book, written during the conflict with Antiochus Epiphanes. It is from Daniel (and maybe Ezekiel) that Jesus’ favorite title comes: the Human One or Son of Man. Apocalyptic writing is always meant as encouragement for the faithful undergoing persecution and threat. It is written in cosmic scale, and most often using images that the crowd “in the know” (the readers) will comprehend, but that those in authority will have no hard evidence to charge sedition. So for us removed by a couple of thousand years this material is confusing and challenging. Remember that it was first intended for those who were in the midst of terrible danger. Apocalyptic authors were not attempting to write prophecies for a far off future. They were creating hope in their here and now. Our aim in the 21st Century is to discover what it says about our own day and time.
Chapter 13:1-4 Day Three continued: The End of the Temple
Following the confrontations in and around the Temple, Jesus’ disciples marvel at the majesty of all the royal and Temple architecture. But Jesus shocks them by declaring that all this impressive building will not long last. In fact it will be reduced to rubble. The concept that the Temple, the literal home of God and the center of their universe, could ever be destroyed is beyond believable. They ask how and when?
Chapter 13:5-27 Day Three con’t: Imposters and Posers
Jesus begins to teach the disciples, but in terms that Mark’s readers would have found very close to home. “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars…” Duh. They were living in the middle of it. The skies were shaded with battlesmoke. It appears that Mark’s community resisted both capitulating to the Roman forces as well as joining in with the Jewish rebels. That non-aligned position made them suspect to both factions. So they were more than acquainted with situations where “Brothers and sister will hand each other over…” Recent Jewish history had familiar names of those who claimed to be divinely anointed, and there were those in the present who sought to be God’s new general and king. Mark is warning the readers and members of his community that following Jesus in choosing not to fight was inviting suffering and persecution on many sides. But where everyone else sees the end of the world, Jesus promises a new beginning - not an easy one, but a new world nonetheless.
Chapter 13:28-37 Day Three, con’t: Figs and Staying Awake
We are back to the proverbial fig tree, and as it did earlier, here it symbolizes the Temple and its destruction. More than just the Temple, it is the decentralization of the whole Jewish identity. And again, this admonition seems to be talking as much to Mark’s readers and their current situation as much as the events of Jesus’ life. Again, Mark is describing his own current events - the generation who will see these things was Mark’s.
But Mark is a master storyteller. The telling of Jesus’ life has everything to do with living through his own wartorn days. His description of uncertain days prepares us for the model he will offer in the next chapter. Mark foreshadows that dark time: “No one knows when the householder will return. At evening, midnight, cockcrow,or dawn.” These hours will correspond with Mark’s telling of Jesus’ arrest. Evening is the time of the Last Supper. Midnight is the general time of Peter’s denial of Jesus. Cockcrow is when Peter is confronted with his denial. Dawn is when Jesus is taken away. Mark is pointing us to the event he believes fundamentally changes the world, Jesus’ crucifixion.
Likewise, we will see these events if we keep alert and stay awake. But who is unable to do just that? The disciples at Gethsemane. And if the disciples are our surrogates as the readers of this gospel, then are we able to stay awake any better as these terrifying events swirl around us?
Conversation Questions
1. With so many voices declaring the end times, how do we as followers of Jesus see this as a beginning of something new?
2. What distracts us and exhausts us in life these days so that it becomes difficult to stay alert for the world changes Christ brings?
3. How would we be followers of Jesus if the institution of “Church” is the fig tree that is passing away in our age?
This is likely the most discussed, most undecipherable, most challenging chapter to read in all of Mark’s Gospel. The difficulty comes because Mark is not only giving us Jesus’ teaching, he is also showing us the conflict and struggle present 30 years later (Mark’s own present day) caught in the middle of Romans and the Zealots and their war over Israel. Somewhere in this hazy mist of past and present (and our own day’s reading) Jesus’ hope of God’s Kin-dom comes into focus.
A word about the images of stars falling from the skies and foundations of the earth shaking. Mark is using a literary form called apocalyptic. In fact, he is heavily borrowing images and language from the Book of Daniel. Daniel is another wartime book, written during the conflict with Antiochus Epiphanes. It is from Daniel (and maybe Ezekiel) that Jesus’ favorite title comes: the Human One or Son of Man. Apocalyptic writing is always meant as encouragement for the faithful undergoing persecution and threat. It is written in cosmic scale, and most often using images that the crowd “in the know” (the readers) will comprehend, but that those in authority will have no hard evidence to charge sedition. So for us removed by a couple of thousand years this material is confusing and challenging. Remember that it was first intended for those who were in the midst of terrible danger. Apocalyptic authors were not attempting to write prophecies for a far off future. They were creating hope in their here and now. Our aim in the 21st Century is to discover what it says about our own day and time.
Chapter 13:1-4 Day Three continued: The End of the Temple
Following the confrontations in and around the Temple, Jesus’ disciples marvel at the majesty of all the royal and Temple architecture. But Jesus shocks them by declaring that all this impressive building will not long last. In fact it will be reduced to rubble. The concept that the Temple, the literal home of God and the center of their universe, could ever be destroyed is beyond believable. They ask how and when?
Chapter 13:5-27 Day Three con’t: Imposters and Posers
Jesus begins to teach the disciples, but in terms that Mark’s readers would have found very close to home. “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars…” Duh. They were living in the middle of it. The skies were shaded with battlesmoke. It appears that Mark’s community resisted both capitulating to the Roman forces as well as joining in with the Jewish rebels. That non-aligned position made them suspect to both factions. So they were more than acquainted with situations where “Brothers and sister will hand each other over…” Recent Jewish history had familiar names of those who claimed to be divinely anointed, and there were those in the present who sought to be God’s new general and king. Mark is warning the readers and members of his community that following Jesus in choosing not to fight was inviting suffering and persecution on many sides. But where everyone else sees the end of the world, Jesus promises a new beginning - not an easy one, but a new world nonetheless.
Chapter 13:28-37 Day Three, con’t: Figs and Staying Awake
We are back to the proverbial fig tree, and as it did earlier, here it symbolizes the Temple and its destruction. More than just the Temple, it is the decentralization of the whole Jewish identity. And again, this admonition seems to be talking as much to Mark’s readers and their current situation as much as the events of Jesus’ life. Again, Mark is describing his own current events - the generation who will see these things was Mark’s.
But Mark is a master storyteller. The telling of Jesus’ life has everything to do with living through his own wartorn days. His description of uncertain days prepares us for the model he will offer in the next chapter. Mark foreshadows that dark time: “No one knows when the householder will return. At evening, midnight, cockcrow,or dawn.” These hours will correspond with Mark’s telling of Jesus’ arrest. Evening is the time of the Last Supper. Midnight is the general time of Peter’s denial of Jesus. Cockcrow is when Peter is confronted with his denial. Dawn is when Jesus is taken away. Mark is pointing us to the event he believes fundamentally changes the world, Jesus’ crucifixion.
Likewise, we will see these events if we keep alert and stay awake. But who is unable to do just that? The disciples at Gethsemane. And if the disciples are our surrogates as the readers of this gospel, then are we able to stay awake any better as these terrifying events swirl around us?
Conversation Questions
1. With so many voices declaring the end times, how do we as followers of Jesus see this as a beginning of something new?
2. What distracts us and exhausts us in life these days so that it becomes difficult to stay alert for the world changes Christ brings?
3. How would we be followers of Jesus if the institution of “Church” is the fig tree that is passing away in our age?
Chapter 12 Jesus Turns It Up
Chapter 12 consists of a series of confrontations between Jesus and his opponents. Jesus challenges the status quo on almost every level. He confounds the experts and lifts up the invisible ones. And it feels like 2000 years later, Jesus continues to challenge our status quo.
Chapter 12:1-12 Day Three continued: A Thinly Veiled Criticism
After having been challenged on what authority he teaches, Jesus then turns the focus back on those questioning him. He tells the story of some unscrupulous tenant farmers who steal from the landowner, abuse those sent to care for the business, and even kill the landowner’s heir in an attempt to take possession of the land. Mark’s audience would have smiled at this story, because the sharecroppers in the story are clearly the scribes and other high society leaders. Picturing them as tenant farmers (probably like many of those listening to the story, or reading it) would have been a nice moment of comeuppance. Jesus' point, though, is that those to whom the health and well-being of the people had been entrusted instead used the trust for their own self enrichment and self-aggrandizement.The vineyard is the people of Israel, the tenants are the priests and scribes who have failed to obey God, and Jesus and his movement will be the rejected group replacing them as God brings justice to the world. This of course angers the powerful ones, but they are afraid of the crowds and skulk away.
Chapter 12:13-17 Day Three con’t: Death and Taxes
The following series of encounters seems to be attempts to trap Jesus into saying either something for which he can be arrested or to turn the crowds against him. The question about paying taxes is exactly that. Especially in an episode like this, remember that Mark was writing in the midst of a war of both armies and ideologies. This has nothing to do with the question whether modern Christians should file their tax returns ethically. It has everything to do with declaring which side you were on. For Jesus to say, “Yes, we should pay the required Roman tax” would have made him out to be a collaborator with the enemy. To say, “No! Paying the tax is wrong” would have made him a rebel and outlaw who could be immediately arrested. Instead, by asking to see a coin and whose image was engraved on it, Jesus (without having to say it out loud) shows that the Pharisees and Herod’s followers have the coin - meaning they are ready to pay the tribute. In the same breath, Jesus implies that he does not have the coin - meaning he is not ready to help the Empire. “Render unto Caesar” basically means to give to Rome what you owe them since you are bought and paid for already.
Chapter 12:18-27 Day Three, con’t: Resurrection. Huh?
At first glance, this seems to be an esoteric, academic theological argument that has little contact with real life. The Sadducees were another group opposing Jesus and while we don’t know a lot about them, Mark tells us that they did not believe in resurrection. They construct this unlikely scenario about one woman having to marry 7 brothers to fulfill the law, and then if there is a resurrection - just who does she belong to? What Jesus sees in this is not a clarifying query about theology. He sees it as an unexamined commitment to denigration of women. Just like his teaching about divorce, Jesus sees that the question assumes the woman is property whose only value is in producing an heir. In this scenario she is given no agency or personhood of her own. Jesus rejects their unexamined commitment to a system that denies dignity to half the human race, instead working to bring about the Kin-dom of God where all people are valued, and are raised to a new life.
Chapter 12:28-34 Day Three, con’t: The Greatest Commandment
A scribe, a member of the group opposing Jesus and taking part in the plot to kill him, comes to Jesus. He interrupts the argument with the Sadducees to ask which is the greatest commandment.Jesus answers that it is not just one, but two together that function as the heart of the commandments:Love God and love of neighbor. When the scribe affirms Jesus’ reply, Jesus says that this scribe is not far from the Kin-dom.
Yet what we miss here is the distance left intact. Jesus does not issue an offer for the scribe to follow, presumably because as a scribe the person still participates in a system that fails to live into one or both parts of the Great Commandment. As we shall shortly see, the scribes are the sharp point of Jesus’ criticism.
Chapter 12:35-37 Day Three, con’t: David and the Messiah
I confess that I am unable to grasp all of the subtleties of some of this. Maybe there is some historical or cultural piece that I am missing. What I do see in this arcane little argument is that Jesus seems to be distancing his understanding who and what the messiah is from the popular myth of a conquering, militaristic descendant of David. Jesus is messiah not to sit on David's throne and rule over the people. Jesus is messiah to confront the oppressing powers and set those people free.
Chapter 12:38-44 Day Three, con’t: Broken Covenant
Here are two little vignettes that are often heard separately but which I think need to be kept together to be seen clearly. The first is Jesus caricaturing the scribes as self-important, praise-hungry egotists demanding the honor and recognition of their status. The last line of Jesus’ criticism says that they: “devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” How do they “devour widow’s houses?” The next incident makes that clear.
While this story is often used to extol the poor widow for her faithfulness in giving, that is not really thepoint. Yes, she is doing all she can to live up to the requirements of supporting the Temple, even putting into the treasury her last two little coins - in fact, all she had to live on. And that is the point. Jesus sees all these other affluent people who have more than enough to live on that their gifts to the Temple are made from their excess. But they ignore this poor widow - emblematic of a class of vulnerable people that scripture specifically says are to be protected and cared for - who gives up the pittance she had left to live on. There are a couple of unasked questions here: why was this widow abandoned to live in poverty? And why did all of those giving from their abundance allow her to make herself destitute by giving up what little she had?
The scribe in the story gave lip service to the great command to love one’s neighbor as you love yourself, but in practice this poor woman is not loved at all.This is the distance Jesus sees between those who participate in the Temple system and God’s Kin-dom. For Jesus, it is not good enough to say the right words. God’s new reality is one that is lived out.
Conversation Questions
1. What do you think Mark’sJesuswouldsay to us about our version of organized religion?
2. What systems exist in our day that belittle and disenfranchise people? What people feel the brunt of those systems?
3. What specific ways are we loving our neighbor as ourself?
4. Are we blind to the needs of those around us? How has our religious practice allowed us to comfortably ignore the needs of others?
Chapter 11 The Jerusalem Campaign Begins
As Jesus and his disciples approach Jerusalem, he begins a very intentional and orchestrated curriculum of teaching, confrontation, and demonstration. Written in the midst of the war between Israel and Rome, this begins the heart of Mark’s story. Jesus shows us that the way the world is not the way it has to be.
Chapter 11:1-11 Day One: Political Theater
When taught this scene, the “Triumphal Entry,” in Sunday school it seemed like all these events just happened, just fell into place. But a closer reader shows that this was all carefully crafted and planned by Jesus. The whole scene is footnoted by a reference to the prophet Zechariah.Jesus takes great care to show that this parade is not a show of military strength, but a re-enactment of Zechariah’s promise of a humble king, a leader of peace. In fact, it may well have been a parody of the showy processions that the Romans made marching in force into Jerusalem. But more than a parody of Rome’s militarism, Jesus is making a display of the kind of messiah he intends to be, quite different from the popular view of the restoration of the Davidic empire - itself a militaristic hope. Ched Myers says, “[T]he theatrics of the procession may have been meant by Mark as a kind of parody, contrasting Jesus’ destiny of the cross with the popular messianic expectations of the disciples/crowds/readers.” And as if to confound the popular expectations further, after making this showy entrance Jesus looks around the temple and then simply leaves.
Chapter 11:12-19 Day Two: FIg Trees and Temples
The morning of their second day in and around Jerusalem, Jesus leads his disciples back into the city. On the way, Jesus curses an out of season fig tree for not having fruit to feed his hunger. Taken by itself, this seems wildly out of character for Jesus but Mark includes this as a symbolic parable for Jesus’ frustration and judgement upon those in charge of the Temple. They are the ones who are supposed to care for and feed the most vulnerable of Israel’s people but they have forsaken that role and instead are using their position to oppress the poor and enrich themselves.
From there Jesus and his group go to the temple and perform another act that for some also seems out of character. Jesus chases all the people out of the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychanger and those selling sacrificial doves. Since Jesus sees the day to day operations of the temple practices as a broken system which disenfranchises and denigrates the poor, the widow, and the stranger he sets out to shut it down - since the temple no longer bears the fruit of justice for the poor. As if to make a living enactment of his earlier parable Jesus and bound the strongmen of the temple leadership and ransacked their house. Jesus sees the temple as a barren fig tree.
Chapter 11:20-26 Day Three, part one: The Fig Tree Conclusion
Heading back to Jerusalem again the next morning, the disciples notice that the poor fig tree has withered to its roots. The fig tree was a common symbol for Israel as a nation and called to mind images from the prophets. Those voices called on the nation to restore justice to the land or experience a withering curse. Mark ties this to the corrupt temple practices in Jerusalem and makes Jesus the call for repentance and the restoration of justice.
The disciples may or may not make that connection, but they are mystified at Jesus’ passion and power for his work. He tells them the key ingredients to this work are faith and forgiveness. Faith can free them from the enormous power of the Roman Empire and the oppression of their own leaders. When Jesus tells them that they can pick up “this mountain” and throw it into the sea, he is not abstractly saying that they can do the impossible. “This mountain” almost certainly referred to the temple. Jesus was talking about replacing the whole broken system of tribute and temple worship - if they have faith that God really is constructing a new order. In a line that is as close as Mark gives us to The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus stresses the centrality of forgiveness. If the temple is no longer the site for touching the love of God, then it will happen in the midst of a community that forgives and gives up the power and prestige systems that have corrupted the old system. Forgiveness and equality are the hallmarks of a community that practices a living reconciliation - the Way of Jesus that Mark and his community strive to embody.
Chapter 11:27-33 Day Three, part two: Who Does Jesus Think He Is?
This is the first direct confrontation Jesus has with the leaders he has been criticizing since coming to Jerusalem. They want to know just who does he think he is, overturning tables and casting aspurgences? How does this country peasant have any authority to do these things? Jesus turns their questions back on them by asking them to say where John’s authority to baptize came from. They show their indignation to be political because they are afraid to answer one way or another for fear of alienating the crowds. So Jesus flatly refuses to answer them about himself. He does not recognize their authority over him or his people.
Conversation Questions
1. What was Jesus trying to show by entering Jerusalem the specific way he did?
2. We have a saying that you can’t fight city hall. What was Jesus fighting by disrupting the Temple practices?
3. If the cursing of the fig tree is a parable, what in our society no longer serves its purpose in making life better especially for the poor?
4. These days in Jerusalem will portray Jesus at his most confrontational. Where does Christ confront the way our culture operates?
As Jesus and his disciples approach Jerusalem, he begins a very intentional and orchestrated curriculum of teaching, confrontation, and demonstration. Written in the midst of the war between Israel and Rome, this begins the heart of Mark’s story. Jesus shows us that the way the world is not the way it has to be.
Chapter 11:1-11 Day One: Political Theater
When taught this scene, the “Triumphal Entry,” in Sunday school it seemed like all these events just happened, just fell into place. But a closer reader shows that this was all carefully crafted and planned by Jesus. The whole scene is footnoted by a reference to the prophet Zechariah.Jesus takes great care to show that this parade is not a show of military strength, but a re-enactment of Zechariah’s promise of a humble king, a leader of peace. In fact, it may well have been a parody of the showy processions that the Romans made marching in force into Jerusalem. But more than a parody of Rome’s militarism, Jesus is making a display of the kind of messiah he intends to be, quite different from the popular view of the restoration of the Davidic empire - itself a militaristic hope. Ched Myers says, “[T]he theatrics of the procession may have been meant by Mark as a kind of parody, contrasting Jesus’ destiny of the cross with the popular messianic expectations of the disciples/crowds/readers.” And as if to confound the popular expectations further, after making this showy entrance Jesus looks around the temple and then simply leaves.
Chapter 11:12-19 Day Two: FIg Trees and Temples
The morning of their second day in and around Jerusalem, Jesus leads his disciples back into the city. On the way, Jesus curses an out of season fig tree for not having fruit to feed his hunger. Taken by itself, this seems wildly out of character for Jesus but Mark includes this as a symbolic parable for Jesus’ frustration and judgement upon those in charge of the Temple. They are the ones who are supposed to care for and feed the most vulnerable of Israel’s people but they have forsaken that role and instead are using their position to oppress the poor and enrich themselves.
From there Jesus and his group go to the temple and perform another act that for some also seems out of character. Jesus chases all the people out of the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychanger and those selling sacrificial doves. Since Jesus sees the day to day operations of the temple practices as a broken system which disenfranchises and denigrates the poor, the widow, and the stranger he sets out to shut it down - since the temple no longer bears the fruit of justice for the poor. As if to make a living enactment of his earlier parable Jesus and bound the strongmen of the temple leadership and ransacked their house. Jesus sees the temple as a barren fig tree.
Chapter 11:20-26 Day Three, part one: The Fig Tree Conclusion
Heading back to Jerusalem again the next morning, the disciples notice that the poor fig tree has withered to its roots. The fig tree was a common symbol for Israel as a nation and called to mind images from the prophets. Those voices called on the nation to restore justice to the land or experience a withering curse. Mark ties this to the corrupt temple practices in Jerusalem and makes Jesus the call for repentance and the restoration of justice.
The disciples may or may not make that connection, but they are mystified at Jesus’ passion and power for his work. He tells them the key ingredients to this work are faith and forgiveness. Faith can free them from the enormous power of the Roman Empire and the oppression of their own leaders. When Jesus tells them that they can pick up “this mountain” and throw it into the sea, he is not abstractly saying that they can do the impossible. “This mountain” almost certainly referred to the temple. Jesus was talking about replacing the whole broken system of tribute and temple worship - if they have faith that God really is constructing a new order. In a line that is as close as Mark gives us to The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus stresses the centrality of forgiveness. If the temple is no longer the site for touching the love of God, then it will happen in the midst of a community that forgives and gives up the power and prestige systems that have corrupted the old system. Forgiveness and equality are the hallmarks of a community that practices a living reconciliation - the Way of Jesus that Mark and his community strive to embody.
Chapter 11:27-33 Day Three, part two: Who Does Jesus Think He Is?
This is the first direct confrontation Jesus has with the leaders he has been criticizing since coming to Jerusalem. They want to know just who does he think he is, overturning tables and casting aspurgences? How does this country peasant have any authority to do these things? Jesus turns their questions back on them by asking them to say where John’s authority to baptize came from. They show their indignation to be political because they are afraid to answer one way or another for fear of alienating the crowds. So Jesus flatly refuses to answer them about himself. He does not recognize their authority over him or his people.
Conversation Questions
1. What was Jesus trying to show by entering Jerusalem the specific way he did?
2. We have a saying that you can’t fight city hall. What was Jesus fighting by disrupting the Temple practices?
3. If the cursing of the fig tree is a parable, what in our society no longer serves its purpose in making life better especially for the poor?
4. These days in Jerusalem will portray Jesus at his most confrontational. Where does Christ confront the way our culture operates?
Chapter 10 A Kin-dom from the Bottom Up
Jesus continues traveling to Jerusalem. Along the way, his teaching is confronting and confounding business as usual on all levels. Jesus really means it when he says the last shall be first!
Chapter 10:1-16 Women and Children
I find it snarkily fascinating that we don’t hear many biblical literalists quoting Jesus on divorce. Whether the fundamentalists want to admit it or not, marriage in biblical times and marriage in modern days is not the same. Women were property, and adultery was a crime of theft. Jesus’ pronouncements about divorce are more about empowering women (who had no legal agency in Jewish law) and protecting them from abuse and disenfranchisement by men - even their husbands. Jesu views the women as equal partners in life, not subjects nor chattel. He is critiquing the human tradition of patriarchy (men as sole agents) because God intends equality. When Jesus refers to Genesis, it is not any kind of argument for heterosexual marriage as opposed to homosexual marriage. Rather, it is the call to recognize a relationship of mutuality, a partnership of equals. It is human tradition that subjugated women, not God’s desire.
Likewise, Jesus' attention on the children is a call to see them as already present citizens of God’s Kin-dom. While we like to see the image of Jesus hugging the little kids (as well we should), we can’t overlook his view that children - the literal lowest of the low in the social hierarchy - are already included in this new reality that he is constructing. So in both of these episodes, Jesus is elevating those whom society had diminished. While presenting this kind of equality as an ideal, maybe Mark’s community was also struggling to make it real in their midst.
Chapter 10:17-31 A Question of Wealth
Like Mark’s telling of the whole story of Jesus, this episode is also spare and compact. Here the person coming to Jesus is not described as either young or a ruler. Itr is simply a person asking about eternal life. I have to confess that I don’t really know what that term meant in Jesus’ or Mark’s day, but it seems to have to do with more than simply living forever. It likely has something to do with being fully accepted in God’s presence.
In answer, Jesus recaps the 10 commandments. In a bit of overlooked hubris, the person claims that they have kept all the laws since they were young (Jewish tradition held that Abraham, Moses, and Aaron were able to keep the whole law - auspicious company indeed!). But Jesus sees a deeper entanglement here. Looking at the person with love, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give the proceeds to the poor, and then to come and follow. The person revealed as wealthy, goes away grieving unable to meet Jesus’ requirement for discipleship. Remember the parable of the sower and the seeds? The 3rd place where the seeds could not take root was among the thorns. Jesus said it this way: “And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. (Mark 4:18-19)” It seems that Jesus (and Mark) see this person as the embodiment of the seeds among the thorns.
The most important source of wealth in biblical times was land. And remember that when they entered the Promised Land, each family was allocated part of the land as their own. Therefore, for someone to accumulate great wealth meant that they had acquired someone else’s land. One got rich quite literally at the expense of the poor. This vignette makes the point that the wealthy person was in fact NOT keeping all the law.
While Jesus’ invitation seems extreme to us, it was not any more than he asked of his other disciples. They all had left behind careers and family and means of livelihood in order to follow Jesus. Even so, the disciples are confused by Jesus’ denouncement of wealth. They, like us, often believed that wealth and success was a reward from God - but Jesus said it was wealth itself that prevented one from entering God’s Kin-dom. The camel through a needle’s eye means exactly what it says. Yet Jesus affirms that there are greater rewards than wealth waiting for those who can truly and freely follow.
Chapter 10:32-45 Wrong-headed Hopes
As they get near Jerusalem, Mark shows us the widening gap between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus speaks again, in greater detail, abouthis arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. He makes it as clear as possible that he is not going to Jerusalem to be a conquering king. And in the next breath James and John are asking to be Vice-president and Secretary of State. Jesus tries again to make his alternative vision clear for them but they seem unable to grasp it with any depth. The other disciples join in on the disagreement - not buying into jesus’ vision but upset that they weren’t included. In as direct a way as possible, Jesus again asserts that those who follow him will not be a top-down society but that for them greatness is measured in servanthood, the highest must be a slave. And when Jesus says that he came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many - that word “ransom” is the technical term for the price of emancipation for a slave. Jesus understands his death as the means to set people free, not from hell but from the grinding weight of a tyrannical world.
Chapter 10:46-53 One Last Healing Before Jerusalem
We are given another story about Jesus healing blindness. This telling is unique in that we learn the afflicted one’s name (Bartimaeus may mean “son of the unclean” in Hebrew). Bartimaeus leaps up, throws off his begging cloak (his means of livelihood!) to come to Jesus. He begs Jesus for his sight, which is gladly granted. Then he follows Jesus on the way. Two comparisons are being made here: One, where blind eyes are opened by Jesus compared to the seeing eyes of the disciples who are blind to his vision. Second, where an unclean, blind beggar (the last in society) leaves everything to follow Jesus as compared to the affluent person (the first in society) who cannot follow because of being trapped by their many possessions. The first shall be last and who truly sees?
Conversation Questions
1. Though we have made a lot of progress toward equality in two thousand years, where is our society still not equal?
2. Do you agree with Jesus that wealth is an impediment to entering God’s Kin-dom?
3. Why do the disciples have such a hard time buying into Jesus’ vision of an equal and non-hierarchical world? What about us?
4. Where dowe come closest to modeling the world that Jesus envisions?
Jesus continues traveling to Jerusalem. Along the way, his teaching is confronting and confounding business as usual on all levels. Jesus really means it when he says the last shall be first!
Chapter 10:1-16 Women and Children
I find it snarkily fascinating that we don’t hear many biblical literalists quoting Jesus on divorce. Whether the fundamentalists want to admit it or not, marriage in biblical times and marriage in modern days is not the same. Women were property, and adultery was a crime of theft. Jesus’ pronouncements about divorce are more about empowering women (who had no legal agency in Jewish law) and protecting them from abuse and disenfranchisement by men - even their husbands. Jesu views the women as equal partners in life, not subjects nor chattel. He is critiquing the human tradition of patriarchy (men as sole agents) because God intends equality. When Jesus refers to Genesis, it is not any kind of argument for heterosexual marriage as opposed to homosexual marriage. Rather, it is the call to recognize a relationship of mutuality, a partnership of equals. It is human tradition that subjugated women, not God’s desire.
Likewise, Jesus' attention on the children is a call to see them as already present citizens of God’s Kin-dom. While we like to see the image of Jesus hugging the little kids (as well we should), we can’t overlook his view that children - the literal lowest of the low in the social hierarchy - are already included in this new reality that he is constructing. So in both of these episodes, Jesus is elevating those whom society had diminished. While presenting this kind of equality as an ideal, maybe Mark’s community was also struggling to make it real in their midst.
Chapter 10:17-31 A Question of Wealth
Like Mark’s telling of the whole story of Jesus, this episode is also spare and compact. Here the person coming to Jesus is not described as either young or a ruler. Itr is simply a person asking about eternal life. I have to confess that I don’t really know what that term meant in Jesus’ or Mark’s day, but it seems to have to do with more than simply living forever. It likely has something to do with being fully accepted in God’s presence.
In answer, Jesus recaps the 10 commandments. In a bit of overlooked hubris, the person claims that they have kept all the laws since they were young (Jewish tradition held that Abraham, Moses, and Aaron were able to keep the whole law - auspicious company indeed!). But Jesus sees a deeper entanglement here. Looking at the person with love, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give the proceeds to the poor, and then to come and follow. The person revealed as wealthy, goes away grieving unable to meet Jesus’ requirement for discipleship. Remember the parable of the sower and the seeds? The 3rd place where the seeds could not take root was among the thorns. Jesus said it this way: “And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. (Mark 4:18-19)” It seems that Jesus (and Mark) see this person as the embodiment of the seeds among the thorns.
The most important source of wealth in biblical times was land. And remember that when they entered the Promised Land, each family was allocated part of the land as their own. Therefore, for someone to accumulate great wealth meant that they had acquired someone else’s land. One got rich quite literally at the expense of the poor. This vignette makes the point that the wealthy person was in fact NOT keeping all the law.
While Jesus’ invitation seems extreme to us, it was not any more than he asked of his other disciples. They all had left behind careers and family and means of livelihood in order to follow Jesus. Even so, the disciples are confused by Jesus’ denouncement of wealth. They, like us, often believed that wealth and success was a reward from God - but Jesus said it was wealth itself that prevented one from entering God’s Kin-dom. The camel through a needle’s eye means exactly what it says. Yet Jesus affirms that there are greater rewards than wealth waiting for those who can truly and freely follow.
Chapter 10:32-45 Wrong-headed Hopes
As they get near Jerusalem, Mark shows us the widening gap between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus speaks again, in greater detail, abouthis arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. He makes it as clear as possible that he is not going to Jerusalem to be a conquering king. And in the next breath James and John are asking to be Vice-president and Secretary of State. Jesus tries again to make his alternative vision clear for them but they seem unable to grasp it with any depth. The other disciples join in on the disagreement - not buying into jesus’ vision but upset that they weren’t included. In as direct a way as possible, Jesus again asserts that those who follow him will not be a top-down society but that for them greatness is measured in servanthood, the highest must be a slave. And when Jesus says that he came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many - that word “ransom” is the technical term for the price of emancipation for a slave. Jesus understands his death as the means to set people free, not from hell but from the grinding weight of a tyrannical world.
Chapter 10:46-53 One Last Healing Before Jerusalem
We are given another story about Jesus healing blindness. This telling is unique in that we learn the afflicted one’s name (Bartimaeus may mean “son of the unclean” in Hebrew). Bartimaeus leaps up, throws off his begging cloak (his means of livelihood!) to come to Jesus. He begs Jesus for his sight, which is gladly granted. Then he follows Jesus on the way. Two comparisons are being made here: One, where blind eyes are opened by Jesus compared to the seeing eyes of the disciples who are blind to his vision. Second, where an unclean, blind beggar (the last in society) leaves everything to follow Jesus as compared to the affluent person (the first in society) who cannot follow because of being trapped by their many possessions. The first shall be last and who truly sees?
Conversation Questions
1. Though we have made a lot of progress toward equality in two thousand years, where is our society still not equal?
2. Do you agree with Jesus that wealth is an impediment to entering God’s Kin-dom?
3. Why do the disciples have such a hard time buying into Jesus’ vision of an equal and non-hierarchical world? What about us?
4. Where dowe come closest to modeling the world that Jesus envisions?
Chapter 9 Reversal of Expectations
This chapter is the pivot for Mark’s story. The direction changes from Galilee to Jerusalem. And Jesus’ teaching focuses on the new Kin-dom community and how it differs from society’s exercise of the strong over the weak.
Chapter 9:1-8 Seeing Jesus in a New Way
This episode, called “the transfiguration,” stands as a reaffirmation of Jesus as God’s beloved and chosen agent. It is most often interpreted as the miraculous conjoining of God’s work from Moses and Elijah through to Jesus. But if this is indeed the turning point in the telling of Jesus’ story, the turning toward Jerusalem and its inevitable consequence, then something here points the way for us. Mark tells us that Jesus’ clothes became “dazzling white, whiter than any fuller could bleach them.” The majority of commentaries point out white as the color of purity and see in this the shining example of Jesus’ nature. Mark never emphasizes Jesus’ sinless nature - that’s actually a later theological development. But in the persecuted times when Mark was written, a white robe was widely known as the garb of a martyr. One way of seeing what happens on the mountaintop was the divine imprimatur of the direction Jesus is set upon: to Jerusalem and the cross. It’s no wonder that Peter wants to focus on other things, building monuments and such.
Chapter 9:9-13 A Prophet’s Fate
The question of Elijah comes up again. It seems that there were those in ancient days who expected Elijah to reappear as the forerunner to the messiah. The disciples are seeking confirmation that Jesus is the messiah they have been looking for. Jesus alludes that he sees John the Baptist as the returned Elijah, but that what God is doing is very far from the triumphalist overthrow commonly expected. Jesus’ invitation to follow by denying self and taking up the cross, and the scene they have just witnessed clothing Jesus in a martyr’s robe have the disciple confused and struggling to understand.
Chapter 9:14-29 The Demon of Unbelief
Mark inserts another story of Jesus freeing someone from the power of a demon. As usual, the gospel writer uses the story as commentary on the events surrounding it. Jesus’ declaration that he will die and be raised is still hanging in the air. The imagery of the transfiguration underscore this. The parent of a boy seized by a violent demon asks Jesus’ help. His disciples have been unable to do anything.It seems that when the people do not believe in the path Jesus is walking, healing power is impeded. But the parent prays the ultimate prayer: “I believe. Help my unbelief!” It is the temptation to despair that Jesus will be unable to change the world (especially on this fateful path) that seems to possess the people, the disciples and even us. After Jesus freed the child, the disciples ask why they were unable to do so. Jesus replies that prayer is the only key to this kind of liberation. Ched Myers has this to say: “Is not prayer the intensely personal struggle within each disciple, and among us collectively, to resist the despair and distractions that cause us to practice unbelief, to abandon or avoid the way of Jesus?” (p. 256)
Chapter 9:30-32 Emphasizing the Path
Making the exorcism they have just witnessed into a kind of parable, Mark has Jesus teaching as plainly as he can about his arrest, death, and resurrection. But they cannot comprehend it (why would the messiah die?), but are afraid to ask any further.
Chapter 9:33-37 Who Will Be the Greatest?
The disciples make it obvious that they are not getting what Jesus is giving. They are still devoted to the old, Davidic idea of a triumphant messiah. Like Arthur’s knights, they are fighting over their position at the round table. Jesus gives them a saying and an object lesson. “The first shall be last of all and servant of all.” Then Jesus takes a child in his arms (finally a familiar image!) and admonishes that “whoever (powerful word, that whoever) welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and the one who sent me.” Children were the bottom of the bottom on the social scale, functionally non-entities around the adults. Jesus promises no status or privilege on this path.
Chapter 9:38-41 Who Is With Us?
Just as the disciples mistakenly tried to draw lines of privilege or status, now they erroneously try to draw a boundary on their movement. There is someone else - not of their group - casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they cry copyright infringement! In a stunning rebuke of in/out, us/them thinking, Jesus declares that whoever (there is that inclusive word again!) is not against us is with us. Whoever (again!) offers even a cup of water because you bear the name of Christ is worthy of their reward. Whoever, whoever, whoever.
Chapter 9:42-49 Extreme Measures
This one of those places where 21st Century Western culture is vastly different from Mark’s day. We would never advocate self-mutilation, and rightly so. One of the hallmarks of warfare (ancient and modern) is that people leap to extremes. It was/is expedient to make every offense in wartime a capital matter, large or small. It is possible that Jesus was proposing a measured response to this extremism. And to take this metaphorically, it seems likely that this addressed to those of Mark’s community who have fallen away or betrayed them. Jesus’ metaphor says to remove the elements that scandalize the community - but not execute them entirely.
This is underscored by the aphorism of the salt. Salt was a symbol of covenant. To share salt (as in a meal together) was to be in covenant with each other. If the covenant is gone, the salt has become useless. Instead, Jesus exhorts them to be themselves the salt of this new covenant.
Conversation Questions
1. If the transfiguration is an affirmation of Jesus’ intent to die and be raised (rather than of his divine nature), how does that affect our invitation to follow him?
2. Do we still believe that Jesus comes to change the world? Can this still happen?
3.What keeps us from really following Jesus?
4. What does it mean to be last of all and servant of all in Lincoln, Nebraska?
This chapter is the pivot for Mark’s story. The direction changes from Galilee to Jerusalem. And Jesus’ teaching focuses on the new Kin-dom community and how it differs from society’s exercise of the strong over the weak.
Chapter 9:1-8 Seeing Jesus in a New Way
This episode, called “the transfiguration,” stands as a reaffirmation of Jesus as God’s beloved and chosen agent. It is most often interpreted as the miraculous conjoining of God’s work from Moses and Elijah through to Jesus. But if this is indeed the turning point in the telling of Jesus’ story, the turning toward Jerusalem and its inevitable consequence, then something here points the way for us. Mark tells us that Jesus’ clothes became “dazzling white, whiter than any fuller could bleach them.” The majority of commentaries point out white as the color of purity and see in this the shining example of Jesus’ nature. Mark never emphasizes Jesus’ sinless nature - that’s actually a later theological development. But in the persecuted times when Mark was written, a white robe was widely known as the garb of a martyr. One way of seeing what happens on the mountaintop was the divine imprimatur of the direction Jesus is set upon: to Jerusalem and the cross. It’s no wonder that Peter wants to focus on other things, building monuments and such.
Chapter 9:9-13 A Prophet’s Fate
The question of Elijah comes up again. It seems that there were those in ancient days who expected Elijah to reappear as the forerunner to the messiah. The disciples are seeking confirmation that Jesus is the messiah they have been looking for. Jesus alludes that he sees John the Baptist as the returned Elijah, but that what God is doing is very far from the triumphalist overthrow commonly expected. Jesus’ invitation to follow by denying self and taking up the cross, and the scene they have just witnessed clothing Jesus in a martyr’s robe have the disciple confused and struggling to understand.
Chapter 9:14-29 The Demon of Unbelief
Mark inserts another story of Jesus freeing someone from the power of a demon. As usual, the gospel writer uses the story as commentary on the events surrounding it. Jesus’ declaration that he will die and be raised is still hanging in the air. The imagery of the transfiguration underscore this. The parent of a boy seized by a violent demon asks Jesus’ help. His disciples have been unable to do anything.It seems that when the people do not believe in the path Jesus is walking, healing power is impeded. But the parent prays the ultimate prayer: “I believe. Help my unbelief!” It is the temptation to despair that Jesus will be unable to change the world (especially on this fateful path) that seems to possess the people, the disciples and even us. After Jesus freed the child, the disciples ask why they were unable to do so. Jesus replies that prayer is the only key to this kind of liberation. Ched Myers has this to say: “Is not prayer the intensely personal struggle within each disciple, and among us collectively, to resist the despair and distractions that cause us to practice unbelief, to abandon or avoid the way of Jesus?” (p. 256)
Chapter 9:30-32 Emphasizing the Path
Making the exorcism they have just witnessed into a kind of parable, Mark has Jesus teaching as plainly as he can about his arrest, death, and resurrection. But they cannot comprehend it (why would the messiah die?), but are afraid to ask any further.
Chapter 9:33-37 Who Will Be the Greatest?
The disciples make it obvious that they are not getting what Jesus is giving. They are still devoted to the old, Davidic idea of a triumphant messiah. Like Arthur’s knights, they are fighting over their position at the round table. Jesus gives them a saying and an object lesson. “The first shall be last of all and servant of all.” Then Jesus takes a child in his arms (finally a familiar image!) and admonishes that “whoever (powerful word, that whoever) welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and the one who sent me.” Children were the bottom of the bottom on the social scale, functionally non-entities around the adults. Jesus promises no status or privilege on this path.
Chapter 9:38-41 Who Is With Us?
Just as the disciples mistakenly tried to draw lines of privilege or status, now they erroneously try to draw a boundary on their movement. There is someone else - not of their group - casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they cry copyright infringement! In a stunning rebuke of in/out, us/them thinking, Jesus declares that whoever (there is that inclusive word again!) is not against us is with us. Whoever (again!) offers even a cup of water because you bear the name of Christ is worthy of their reward. Whoever, whoever, whoever.
Chapter 9:42-49 Extreme Measures
This one of those places where 21st Century Western culture is vastly different from Mark’s day. We would never advocate self-mutilation, and rightly so. One of the hallmarks of warfare (ancient and modern) is that people leap to extremes. It was/is expedient to make every offense in wartime a capital matter, large or small. It is possible that Jesus was proposing a measured response to this extremism. And to take this metaphorically, it seems likely that this addressed to those of Mark’s community who have fallen away or betrayed them. Jesus’ metaphor says to remove the elements that scandalize the community - but not execute them entirely.
This is underscored by the aphorism of the salt. Salt was a symbol of covenant. To share salt (as in a meal together) was to be in covenant with each other. If the covenant is gone, the salt has become useless. Instead, Jesus exhorts them to be themselves the salt of this new covenant.
Conversation Questions
1. If the transfiguration is an affirmation of Jesus’ intent to die and be raised (rather than of his divine nature), how does that affect our invitation to follow him?
2. Do we still believe that Jesus comes to change the world? Can this still happen?
3.What keeps us from really following Jesus?
4. What does it mean to be last of all and servant of all in Lincoln, Nebraska?
Chapter 8 Bread for the Hardest Journey
Chapter eight brings us to the fulcrum of Mark’s story. Here we see the last of Jesus meandering and teaching. From here everything faces Jerusalem. Mark emphasizes that Jesus is the one who feeds, frees, and invites us to follow.
Chapter 8:1-10 Food for a New Crowd
In an almost identical fashion to the earlier episode, Mark tells us that Jesus feeds a crowd of four thousand families. The difference is the location. The 5000 were fed in Jewish territory. Here we are on gentile ground. Once again we get the message that this Gospel is for everybody.Mark wants us to see clearly: Jesus feeds those who are hungry regardless of who they are or where they come from. And that when we form the Jesus community, there is enough generosity to feed us all, with bounty left over.
Chapter 8:11-13 No Signs, No Tests
Still trying to trap Jesus, the Pharisees ask for him to perform some miraculous sign. Jesus flatly refuses to engage, gets into a boat and leaves.
Chapter 8:14-21 More Questions About Bread
In the boat, the narrator tells us that disciples neglected to get provisions, taking with them only one loaf of bread. They take Jesus’ warning about the “yeast of Herod” literally and think he is chastising them for forgetting to get more bread. Frustrated with their myopia, Jesus recites all that they have seen thus far: a few loaves can feed thousands - twice! In Jesus’ hands even one loaf is enough for all God’s people. In a damning question, Jesus asks “don’t you understand yet?”
Chapter 8:22-26 Who Is Really Blind?
This healing episode acts as a commentary on both what has just happened and what is about to come. Scripture signs of the Messiah are that the deaf hear and blind see. Yet the disciples cannot see the sign of the loaf. Like the slow-to-believe disciples, when Jesus heals
Chapter eight brings us to the fulcrum of Mark’s story. Here we see the last of Jesus meandering and teaching. From here everything faces Jerusalem. Mark emphasizes that Jesus is the one who feeds, frees, and invites us to follow.
Chapter 8:1-10 Food for a New Crowd
In an almost identical fashion to the earlier episode, Mark tells us that Jesus feeds a crowd of four thousand families. The difference is the location. The 5000 were fed in Jewish territory. Here we are on gentile ground. Once again we get the message that this Gospel is for everybody.Mark wants us to see clearly: Jesus feeds those who are hungry regardless of who they are or where they come from. And that when we form the Jesus community, there is enough generosity to feed us all, with bounty left over.
Chapter 8:11-13 No Signs, No Tests
Still trying to trap Jesus, the Pharisees ask for him to perform some miraculous sign. Jesus flatly refuses to engage, gets into a boat and leaves.
Chapter 8:14-21 More Questions About Bread
In the boat, the narrator tells us that disciples neglected to get provisions, taking with them only one loaf of bread. They take Jesus’ warning about the “yeast of Herod” literally and think he is chastising them for forgetting to get more bread. Frustrated with their myopia, Jesus recites all that they have seen thus far: a few loaves can feed thousands - twice! In Jesus’ hands even one loaf is enough for all God’s people. In a damning question, Jesus asks “don’t you understand yet?”
Chapter 8:22-26 Who Is Really Blind?
This healing episode acts as a commentary on both what has just happened and what is about to come. Scripture signs of the Messiah are that the deaf hear and blind see. Yet the disciples cannot see the sign of the loaf. Like the slow-to-believe disciples, when Jesus heals
Chapter 7 ERASING THE LINES
Jesus’ examples of hospitality and inclusiveness begin to come into focus now in this chapter. Jesus is forming a different kind of community, one whose members cross all the lines of separation: geographic, economic, class, gender, and religion. The encounters in this chapter embody the values of Mark’s Christian community offering a new hope in the midst of the oppression and violence of both Empire and Temple.
Chapter 7:1-13 Challenging the Enforcers
Mark takes up once again the argument about ritual cleanliness. It seems that Mark’s community saw the cleanliness rules (and all the purity codes) as opposing the kind of inclusiveness they practiced. To be clear, these rules are not about hygiene, they are boundaries between who is acceptable and who is not.
The Pharisees’ insistence on ritual washing, and all of the rules they imposed, were a high standard to meet.Very few of the rural poor to whom Jesus ministered were able to keep up. Jesus responds rather confrontationally that they are imposing human rules while ignoring God’s actual commands. The whole discussion of “corban” was an exaggerated point to illustrate this.
One could dedicate their estate to the work of the Temple, declaring it corban. Once so dedicated, it could not be used for other obligations. Jesus paints a picture of people declaring their estates as corban in order to escape their obligation to care for their aging parents, which was clearly wrong according to scripture (honor your father and mother!). Much of the Temple’s operating capital came from such bequests. Whether the situation described by Jesus actually happened often, it seems Jesus was using the example as a satire on the way the Pharisees were protecting their own position and prestige. Jesus didn’t hold much truck with traditions that separated people.
Chapter 7:14-23 Good Food and Good Hearts
Jesus then turns to the crowds with a rather surprising comparison. Whereas the Pharisee saw contamination coming from the outside (hence the need for ritual cleansing), Jesus said it was the things coming from inside (from out of one’s heart) that tainted. He explains further to the disciples that outside things pass through the body and into the sewer, thus do not stay and contaminated. Mark parenthetically narrates that by saying this, Jesus declared all foods to be acceptable. Again, for people who struggled to put any food on the table, worrying about its ritual cleanliness was an expensive luxury. By this we can presume that Mark’s community (likely made up of both Jews and gentiles) had already moved past the kosher laws, and used this episode as an explanation to a curious world why they were able to do so. Rather, Jesus was more concerned with what came out of a person’s heart: attitudes and actions that exerted power over another and demeaned or harmed them. This was what came out of the heart and truly poisoned life together.
Chapter 7:24-30 A Foreign Woman’s Honor
Jesus and his band have wandered back into foreign territory again. Into the crowded house barges a woman described as Greek, in fact Syrophoenician. She should have had no standing in Jesus’ presence. Men and women did not commingle in those days, much less would a foreign woman be given permission to take part. BUt she begs Jesus to deliver her daughter from possession. In what was often a common game between men of equal standing, she and Jesus engage in a verbal push and shove over whether she deserves his attention. Stranger still, Jesus concedes that she wins the debate! Again Mark is showing us how welcoming people into the Kin-dom was more important for their community than gender roles, origin, or status. Very few men other than Jesus would have allowed a woman to win in such a repartee, much less admitting it publically. And such a welcome as freeing - even of the little girl’s demon.
Chapter 7:31-37 Who Is Really Deaf?
Mark ends this series of encounters with another healing story. We see things that should be familiar by now: Jesus flaunts cleanliness laws by healing with saliva and even touching the tongue and ears of the afflicted one. Jesus restores both their hearing and the speech. The story asks the question about who is really able to hear this message about acceptability and welcome. Are we ready to hear a new Word?
Conversation Questions
1. How does Jesus’ debate about Scripture and human tradition relate to the United Methodist Church’s controversy over human sexuality?
2. When have rules gotten in your way of helping someone?
3.While we are not as honor-bound as a society as in Jesus’ day, what kind of person offends our sense of honor or appropriateness?
4. What makes it difficult for us to hear Jesus’ Good News today?
Jesus’ examples of hospitality and inclusiveness begin to come into focus now in this chapter. Jesus is forming a different kind of community, one whose members cross all the lines of separation: geographic, economic, class, gender, and religion. The encounters in this chapter embody the values of Mark’s Christian community offering a new hope in the midst of the oppression and violence of both Empire and Temple.
Chapter 7:1-13 Challenging the Enforcers
Mark takes up once again the argument about ritual cleanliness. It seems that Mark’s community saw the cleanliness rules (and all the purity codes) as opposing the kind of inclusiveness they practiced. To be clear, these rules are not about hygiene, they are boundaries between who is acceptable and who is not.
The Pharisees’ insistence on ritual washing, and all of the rules they imposed, were a high standard to meet.Very few of the rural poor to whom Jesus ministered were able to keep up. Jesus responds rather confrontationally that they are imposing human rules while ignoring God’s actual commands. The whole discussion of “corban” was an exaggerated point to illustrate this.
One could dedicate their estate to the work of the Temple, declaring it corban. Once so dedicated, it could not be used for other obligations. Jesus paints a picture of people declaring their estates as corban in order to escape their obligation to care for their aging parents, which was clearly wrong according to scripture (honor your father and mother!). Much of the Temple’s operating capital came from such bequests. Whether the situation described by Jesus actually happened often, it seems Jesus was using the example as a satire on the way the Pharisees were protecting their own position and prestige. Jesus didn’t hold much truck with traditions that separated people.
Chapter 7:14-23 Good Food and Good Hearts
Jesus then turns to the crowds with a rather surprising comparison. Whereas the Pharisee saw contamination coming from the outside (hence the need for ritual cleansing), Jesus said it was the things coming from inside (from out of one’s heart) that tainted. He explains further to the disciples that outside things pass through the body and into the sewer, thus do not stay and contaminated. Mark parenthetically narrates that by saying this, Jesus declared all foods to be acceptable. Again, for people who struggled to put any food on the table, worrying about its ritual cleanliness was an expensive luxury. By this we can presume that Mark’s community (likely made up of both Jews and gentiles) had already moved past the kosher laws, and used this episode as an explanation to a curious world why they were able to do so. Rather, Jesus was more concerned with what came out of a person’s heart: attitudes and actions that exerted power over another and demeaned or harmed them. This was what came out of the heart and truly poisoned life together.
Chapter 7:24-30 A Foreign Woman’s Honor
Jesus and his band have wandered back into foreign territory again. Into the crowded house barges a woman described as Greek, in fact Syrophoenician. She should have had no standing in Jesus’ presence. Men and women did not commingle in those days, much less would a foreign woman be given permission to take part. BUt she begs Jesus to deliver her daughter from possession. In what was often a common game between men of equal standing, she and Jesus engage in a verbal push and shove over whether she deserves his attention. Stranger still, Jesus concedes that she wins the debate! Again Mark is showing us how welcoming people into the Kin-dom was more important for their community than gender roles, origin, or status. Very few men other than Jesus would have allowed a woman to win in such a repartee, much less admitting it publically. And such a welcome as freeing - even of the little girl’s demon.
Chapter 7:31-37 Who Is Really Deaf?
Mark ends this series of encounters with another healing story. We see things that should be familiar by now: Jesus flaunts cleanliness laws by healing with saliva and even touching the tongue and ears of the afflicted one. Jesus restores both their hearing and the speech. The story asks the question about who is really able to hear this message about acceptability and welcome. Are we ready to hear a new Word?
Conversation Questions
1. How does Jesus’ debate about Scripture and human tradition relate to the United Methodist Church’s controversy over human sexuality?
2. When have rules gotten in your way of helping someone?
3.While we are not as honor-bound as a society as in Jesus’ day, what kind of person offends our sense of honor or appropriateness?
4. What makes it difficult for us to hear Jesus’ Good News today?
CHAPTER SIX: TURNING POINTS
This is one of the places where the designation of a chapter is more academic than content-driven. Chapter six is a collection of episodes that are not necessarily a thematic group. But as is typical for Mark, these scenes quickly drive the plot forward and tell us more of who Jesus is, and of the Kingdom of God he proclaims.
Mark 6:1-6a There’s No Place Like Home
The people in Jesus’ hometown have legitimate reasons to question who he is and what he is doing. By the standards of the day, Jesus had turned his back on his place and his responsibilities. As the first born son, it was Jesus’ obligation to care for his mother and family - but he had abandoned them to go preaching and teaching. He further demonstrated his disrespect of them by claiming strangers as his family (3:34-35). The locals name Jesus as the carpenter - evidently a career he deserted, an act of denying tradition and social status. They thought Jesus was acting as if he was too good for the folk of his hometown. They couldn’t see the new vision of what he was attempting to build. That lack of vision prevented Jesus from doing much of anything among them.
Mark 6:6b-13 Sent on a Mission
Once out of his hometown, Jesus sends the 12 on their first Kingdom-building mission. But instead of equipping them with the usual tools for creating a society (power, influence, money) Jesus sends them out with practically nothing. What they are depending upon above all else is hospitality - the first recruits of God’s Kingdom are those willing to welcome the destitute. And if the apostles are not welcomed, they are not to hold a grudge - just leave their dust on the road. They invited all to walk in a new direction, healing them and freeing them of that which possessed them.
Mark 6:14-29 Flashback
Back in the first chapter, Mark curtly says, “after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee.” Now we finish John’s story. King Herod is frightened by Jesus, for he seems to have all the popularity and influence that John did - but he knew he had already killed John. John had been arrested for publicly criticizing Herod’s improper marriage. In what is most likely a parody of palace proceedings we are told of how Herod paints himself into a corner is and is manipulated by his wife into executing John. Instead of representing justice and right, the king’s court is a place of capriciousness and guile. It underscores how the powers that be inflict that power on the weak and powerless.
Mark 6:30-44 The Kingdom Comes to Dinner
The 12 have returned and are debriefing with Jesus. Though he invites to some time alone in the wilderness, the crowds find them there. Jesus has compassion on the “lost” crowds (the word has its roots in the feeling a mother has for the child in her womb) and he begins to teach. He teaches them all day until it is almost supper time. The disciples want to dismiss the crowds to fend for themselves, but Jesus tells them feeding the crowds is their responsibility. They have nowhere near enough money to buy them all food, and hardly enough food to even feed themselves. After organizing the crowds into manageable groups, Jesus takes the meager fare, blesses it, and gives it to the disciples to share with all the people.
The wording suggests nothing magical happening, just that “all ate and were filled,” and that there were 12 basketfuls left over (12 - remember to think symbolically). Ched Myers sees in this that the miracle is the triumph of the economics of sharing over the economy of cumsumption (p.206). Taught by Jesus, the crowds of strangers share of themselves instead of competing for resources. In essence, they construct a community of the Kingdom of God.
Mark 6:45-52 Walking on Water
Mark returns again to the symbolism of stormy waters. It seems to imply that the disciples are struggling to understand what has occurred. It is Jesus who calms the wind they are struggling against and Mark names the cause as their misunderstanding as “the loaves.”
Mark 6:53-56 Coming for Healing
After Jesus has joined them in the boat and calmed the waters of their confusion, they finally make shore. When they do, the crowds once again recognize them and inundate them with the need for healing. The come from the villages, cities, farms, and marketplaces - that is, from everywhere: rich or poor, rural or urban. Like the earlier healing story, all they desire is to touch the fringes on Jesus’ cloak and even that is enough to heal them. The implication is that those coming for healing are not respecters of boundaries. They are from every aspect of life, and likely even a mixed bag of local and foreign, Jew and gentile. Word of Jesus touches all the people.
Conversation Questions
1. When has the estimation of others dampered your hopes or plans?
2. What would it be like to be totally dependent on the well wishes of others? What would it be like to present yourself as almost a beggar?
3. What are some examples today of the capricious use of power?
4. When have you been fed by the graciousness of strangers?
This is one of the places where the designation of a chapter is more academic than content-driven. Chapter six is a collection of episodes that are not necessarily a thematic group. But as is typical for Mark, these scenes quickly drive the plot forward and tell us more of who Jesus is, and of the Kingdom of God he proclaims.
Mark 6:1-6a There’s No Place Like Home
The people in Jesus’ hometown have legitimate reasons to question who he is and what he is doing. By the standards of the day, Jesus had turned his back on his place and his responsibilities. As the first born son, it was Jesus’ obligation to care for his mother and family - but he had abandoned them to go preaching and teaching. He further demonstrated his disrespect of them by claiming strangers as his family (3:34-35). The locals name Jesus as the carpenter - evidently a career he deserted, an act of denying tradition and social status. They thought Jesus was acting as if he was too good for the folk of his hometown. They couldn’t see the new vision of what he was attempting to build. That lack of vision prevented Jesus from doing much of anything among them.
Mark 6:6b-13 Sent on a Mission
Once out of his hometown, Jesus sends the 12 on their first Kingdom-building mission. But instead of equipping them with the usual tools for creating a society (power, influence, money) Jesus sends them out with practically nothing. What they are depending upon above all else is hospitality - the first recruits of God’s Kingdom are those willing to welcome the destitute. And if the apostles are not welcomed, they are not to hold a grudge - just leave their dust on the road. They invited all to walk in a new direction, healing them and freeing them of that which possessed them.
Mark 6:14-29 Flashback
Back in the first chapter, Mark curtly says, “after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee.” Now we finish John’s story. King Herod is frightened by Jesus, for he seems to have all the popularity and influence that John did - but he knew he had already killed John. John had been arrested for publicly criticizing Herod’s improper marriage. In what is most likely a parody of palace proceedings we are told of how Herod paints himself into a corner is and is manipulated by his wife into executing John. Instead of representing justice and right, the king’s court is a place of capriciousness and guile. It underscores how the powers that be inflict that power on the weak and powerless.
Mark 6:30-44 The Kingdom Comes to Dinner
The 12 have returned and are debriefing with Jesus. Though he invites to some time alone in the wilderness, the crowds find them there. Jesus has compassion on the “lost” crowds (the word has its roots in the feeling a mother has for the child in her womb) and he begins to teach. He teaches them all day until it is almost supper time. The disciples want to dismiss the crowds to fend for themselves, but Jesus tells them feeding the crowds is their responsibility. They have nowhere near enough money to buy them all food, and hardly enough food to even feed themselves. After organizing the crowds into manageable groups, Jesus takes the meager fare, blesses it, and gives it to the disciples to share with all the people.
The wording suggests nothing magical happening, just that “all ate and were filled,” and that there were 12 basketfuls left over (12 - remember to think symbolically). Ched Myers sees in this that the miracle is the triumph of the economics of sharing over the economy of cumsumption (p.206). Taught by Jesus, the crowds of strangers share of themselves instead of competing for resources. In essence, they construct a community of the Kingdom of God.
Mark 6:45-52 Walking on Water
Mark returns again to the symbolism of stormy waters. It seems to imply that the disciples are struggling to understand what has occurred. It is Jesus who calms the wind they are struggling against and Mark names the cause as their misunderstanding as “the loaves.”
Mark 6:53-56 Coming for Healing
After Jesus has joined them in the boat and calmed the waters of their confusion, they finally make shore. When they do, the crowds once again recognize them and inundate them with the need for healing. The come from the villages, cities, farms, and marketplaces - that is, from everywhere: rich or poor, rural or urban. Like the earlier healing story, all they desire is to touch the fringes on Jesus’ cloak and even that is enough to heal them. The implication is that those coming for healing are not respecters of boundaries. They are from every aspect of life, and likely even a mixed bag of local and foreign, Jew and gentile. Word of Jesus touches all the people.
Conversation Questions
1. When has the estimation of others dampered your hopes or plans?
2. What would it be like to be totally dependent on the well wishes of others? What would it be like to present yourself as almost a beggar?
3. What are some examples today of the capricious use of power?
4. When have you been fed by the graciousness of strangers?
CHAPTER FIVE: SYMBOLIC STORYTELLING
Mark was a literary artist. Mark chose the order and placement of each story to tell us more than the facts of each event. Our challenge is to ask why Mark is telling this story in relation to the stories around it, what is he telling about who Jesus is? It means learning to hear the Gospel symbolically - not just did this happen, but what does it mean? Mark wrote the Gospel to share what he believed the life and teaching of means in times of chaos and turmoil. What do those stories mean to us in our times of chaos and turmoil?
Mark 5:1-20 Grace in Roman Territory
Last chapter ended with the disciples facing a storm that scared them to death. The storm was not just weather. They were crossing from the Jewish side to the Roman side, from the known to the unknown. The storm they find themselves in is the storm of fear. And it seems that fear is justified when they land on the far shore.
Mark makes a point of telling this story in the gentile world. In a literary sense, Mark writes a number of parallels between this healing and the very first healing he tells us of. The parallel makes an important point: one is Jewish, the other is gentile. Jesus is not afraid to cross that turbulent sea.
As soon as they set foot on land, they are accosted by a madman stinking of the tombs. The locals had tried to restrain him, to no avail. To Jewish readers every detail screams unclean, unacceptable, and unJewish. And definitely Roman. Mark tells us a story showing Jesus’ power of liberation operates even in the heart of enemy territory.
The demon’s name is “Legion” and only referred to one thing: a garrison of soldiers. The word Mark uses for the herd of pigs is most often used to describe a squad of recruits. Even the territory named by Mark (the region of the Gerasenes) calls to mind a recent incident of Roman brutality. Gerasa had been plundered by the Romans. The historian Josephus described it this way: “(They) set fire to the houses and marched against the surrounding villages. THose who were able bodied fled, the weak perished, and all that was left went up in flames.” No wonder the disciples were terrified to come to this part of the land.
But Mark tells us that Jesus deliberately came to this most Roman of the Roman territory. He shows that Jesus’ vision of the Kin-dom is at play even in this graveyard. Gentiles receive the healing and liberation that Jesus announces is available to everyone, even the most Roman of the Romans.
Mark 5:21-43 Two Healings
The scene has suddenly shifted back to the known, comfortable, Jewish territory. But the intertwined stories Mark tells now lay bare a couple of uncomfortable realities. These are the stories of two women. The first is a daughter of privilege and rank, yet that privilege and rank have not prevented her from falling deathly ill. Her father, a leader in the synagogue, has rushed to get Jesus - her best hope for healing. Enter the second woman. Ravaged by poverty and a chronic condition that has rendered her untouchable for 12 years. She defies the purity codes and ventures into the crowd to see Jesus - her best hope for healing.
By touching the fringe of Jesus’ prayer shawl she is indeed healed, but her encounter with Jesus delays him until word comes that the original reason for his errand is moot: the first daughter has died. Undeterred, Jesus continues to the synagogue leader’s house where he beckons the daughter to get up, and she is restored to life.
Mark’s audience was likely mortified that Jesus would choose to attend to the needs of an impoverished, unhealthy, and unclean woman over those of a highly respected and respected leader of the religious institutions of the day. Jesus (and the movement he represents) is seen to be the relief of the older woman’s maladies, even when conventional methods have driven her into poverty and made her condition worse. Admitting that the woman touched him meant that once again Jesus joined her in her uncleanness. In fact, he praised her for her forwardness and for ignoring the cleanliness laws: he called it faith. And it is worth noting that the young woman who lived in privilege and power was nonetheless unable to avoid her terminal illness. She still needed Jesus.
These stories talk to us about the inclusiveness of Jesus’ movement. Healing occurs both at home and in foreign territory. Healing power goes out to the poor and outcast, but is also given to those of position and privilege. The Way of Jesus, and the Kingdom of God he proclaims and embodies is open to all.
Conversation Questions
1. How do you think Mark’s Jewish audience felt about Jesus healing the gentile madman?
2. Who would we tell that story about today?
3. Healing the poor and disenfranchised seems to have a priority for Jesus. How does today’s Church embody that priority ?
4. When do you feel the need for healing (physical or spiritual)?
5. What actions are you willing to take to seek after that healing?
Mark was a literary artist. Mark chose the order and placement of each story to tell us more than the facts of each event. Our challenge is to ask why Mark is telling this story in relation to the stories around it, what is he telling about who Jesus is? It means learning to hear the Gospel symbolically - not just did this happen, but what does it mean? Mark wrote the Gospel to share what he believed the life and teaching of means in times of chaos and turmoil. What do those stories mean to us in our times of chaos and turmoil?
Mark 5:1-20 Grace in Roman Territory
Last chapter ended with the disciples facing a storm that scared them to death. The storm was not just weather. They were crossing from the Jewish side to the Roman side, from the known to the unknown. The storm they find themselves in is the storm of fear. And it seems that fear is justified when they land on the far shore.
Mark makes a point of telling this story in the gentile world. In a literary sense, Mark writes a number of parallels between this healing and the very first healing he tells us of. The parallel makes an important point: one is Jewish, the other is gentile. Jesus is not afraid to cross that turbulent sea.
As soon as they set foot on land, they are accosted by a madman stinking of the tombs. The locals had tried to restrain him, to no avail. To Jewish readers every detail screams unclean, unacceptable, and unJewish. And definitely Roman. Mark tells us a story showing Jesus’ power of liberation operates even in the heart of enemy territory.
The demon’s name is “Legion” and only referred to one thing: a garrison of soldiers. The word Mark uses for the herd of pigs is most often used to describe a squad of recruits. Even the territory named by Mark (the region of the Gerasenes) calls to mind a recent incident of Roman brutality. Gerasa had been plundered by the Romans. The historian Josephus described it this way: “(They) set fire to the houses and marched against the surrounding villages. THose who were able bodied fled, the weak perished, and all that was left went up in flames.” No wonder the disciples were terrified to come to this part of the land.
But Mark tells us that Jesus deliberately came to this most Roman of the Roman territory. He shows that Jesus’ vision of the Kin-dom is at play even in this graveyard. Gentiles receive the healing and liberation that Jesus announces is available to everyone, even the most Roman of the Romans.
Mark 5:21-43 Two Healings
The scene has suddenly shifted back to the known, comfortable, Jewish territory. But the intertwined stories Mark tells now lay bare a couple of uncomfortable realities. These are the stories of two women. The first is a daughter of privilege and rank, yet that privilege and rank have not prevented her from falling deathly ill. Her father, a leader in the synagogue, has rushed to get Jesus - her best hope for healing. Enter the second woman. Ravaged by poverty and a chronic condition that has rendered her untouchable for 12 years. She defies the purity codes and ventures into the crowd to see Jesus - her best hope for healing.
By touching the fringe of Jesus’ prayer shawl she is indeed healed, but her encounter with Jesus delays him until word comes that the original reason for his errand is moot: the first daughter has died. Undeterred, Jesus continues to the synagogue leader’s house where he beckons the daughter to get up, and she is restored to life.
Mark’s audience was likely mortified that Jesus would choose to attend to the needs of an impoverished, unhealthy, and unclean woman over those of a highly respected and respected leader of the religious institutions of the day. Jesus (and the movement he represents) is seen to be the relief of the older woman’s maladies, even when conventional methods have driven her into poverty and made her condition worse. Admitting that the woman touched him meant that once again Jesus joined her in her uncleanness. In fact, he praised her for her forwardness and for ignoring the cleanliness laws: he called it faith. And it is worth noting that the young woman who lived in privilege and power was nonetheless unable to avoid her terminal illness. She still needed Jesus.
These stories talk to us about the inclusiveness of Jesus’ movement. Healing occurs both at home and in foreign territory. Healing power goes out to the poor and outcast, but is also given to those of position and privilege. The Way of Jesus, and the Kingdom of God he proclaims and embodies is open to all.
Conversation Questions
1. How do you think Mark’s Jewish audience felt about Jesus healing the gentile madman?
2. Who would we tell that story about today?
3. Healing the poor and disenfranchised seems to have a priority for Jesus. How does today’s Church embody that priority ?
4. When do you feel the need for healing (physical or spiritual)?
5. What actions are you willing to take to seek after that healing?
CHAPTER FOUR: THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Up to now, Mark has shown us Jesus in action. In this chapter, we hear from Jesus. As he was known for, the teaching comes in parables but we likely hear them differently than the subsistence farmers and peasants to whom Jesus was talking. With a little background, we can discover the revolutionary message in Jesus’ teaching.
Mark 4:1-9
I’m not a farmer, so Jesus’ agricultural stories are lost on me. But I suspect that today’s farmers are likely mystified by these ancient parables, too. Part of that is that we are far removed from the methods of subsistence in the First Century, and part because most of us do not experience the kind of desperation that those subsistence farmers felt when everything they raised went to Temple, Empire, and loan sharks.
The Parable of the Sower is just this kind of example. I’d thought it was a story about a rather silly farmer with bad aim who scatters seeds everywhere. But maybe the story has more to do with the poor kinds of soil that the peasant farmers were forced to sow. But the Good News comes when some seeds find the fertile soil. The harvest of thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold is not just a gobsmacking return. It is the kind of harvest that can pay off all loans, meet all tithes, and even satisfy the tax burden of the farmer. It is freedom.
Mark 4:10-12
This little piece is inserted to explain why Jesus taught in parables. Some think of it as a kind of code meant to confuse opponents, or a way of conveying some secret knowledge withheld from unbelievers. The idea that this is some secret hidden from the world is a little absurd in the Mark wrote this all in a public document intended to be widely circulated. Jesus used parables because it is easy to see who hears, and who denies or misconstrues, the real message.
Mark 4:13-25
In private, Jesus goes into detail about his understanding of the sower parable. His explanation makes clear that the deficients soils are obstacles to true discipleship: fears, distractions, and affluence. The good soil are those who follow true discipleship: focused, committed, with deep roots. And though costly, true discipleship offers a harvest of hope and freedom.
The image of an unhidden lamp comes with a warning, too. While on its face the saying in verse 25 seems like fatalism (Them that has, gets. Them that ain’t got, lose it all. Or, the ways of the world reward the rich and punish the poor.) But Ched Myers suggests that Jesus uses the saying in an ironic way, subtly referencing Old Testament prophets who used such fatalisms to criticize those in power. In essence: here’s what the world tells you, but don’t you believe it!
Mark 4:26-34
Jesus returns to his farming parables. Seeds grown on their own and even the best farmer can’t control them. When planting seeds of the Kin-dom, remain patient because God is making them grow. Grow they will, at God’s own good pace. The mustard seed is a weed that grows even in the shadow of the largest tree - even a tree as large as the Roman Empire. The Kin-dom is like a weed that grows and grows.
Mark 4:35-41
While at the end of the Fourth chapter, these verses really the beginning of the story told in the Fifth chapter. The storm threatening the disciples is not just meteorological. It is the storm facing Mark’s community as they cross from the side of the world they knew to the unknown side - the side that includes gentiles, too as their world convulses under the oppression of Roman Empire that doesn’t discriminate among the peoples it conquers.
Conversation Questions
1. What would the promise of freedom from debt and fear mean to First Century peasants? What does that promise mean to us?
2. What are the obstacles to true discipleship today?
3.Do Jesus’ parables still challenge us? Give us hope? How?
4.Jesus is recruiting the powerless to change the world. What would make you ready to sign on to his campaign?
5. Are there storms you might face that would seem life-threatening? World threatening?
Up to now, Mark has shown us Jesus in action. In this chapter, we hear from Jesus. As he was known for, the teaching comes in parables but we likely hear them differently than the subsistence farmers and peasants to whom Jesus was talking. With a little background, we can discover the revolutionary message in Jesus’ teaching.
Mark 4:1-9
I’m not a farmer, so Jesus’ agricultural stories are lost on me. But I suspect that today’s farmers are likely mystified by these ancient parables, too. Part of that is that we are far removed from the methods of subsistence in the First Century, and part because most of us do not experience the kind of desperation that those subsistence farmers felt when everything they raised went to Temple, Empire, and loan sharks.
The Parable of the Sower is just this kind of example. I’d thought it was a story about a rather silly farmer with bad aim who scatters seeds everywhere. But maybe the story has more to do with the poor kinds of soil that the peasant farmers were forced to sow. But the Good News comes when some seeds find the fertile soil. The harvest of thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold is not just a gobsmacking return. It is the kind of harvest that can pay off all loans, meet all tithes, and even satisfy the tax burden of the farmer. It is freedom.
Mark 4:10-12
This little piece is inserted to explain why Jesus taught in parables. Some think of it as a kind of code meant to confuse opponents, or a way of conveying some secret knowledge withheld from unbelievers. The idea that this is some secret hidden from the world is a little absurd in the Mark wrote this all in a public document intended to be widely circulated. Jesus used parables because it is easy to see who hears, and who denies or misconstrues, the real message.
Mark 4:13-25
In private, Jesus goes into detail about his understanding of the sower parable. His explanation makes clear that the deficients soils are obstacles to true discipleship: fears, distractions, and affluence. The good soil are those who follow true discipleship: focused, committed, with deep roots. And though costly, true discipleship offers a harvest of hope and freedom.
The image of an unhidden lamp comes with a warning, too. While on its face the saying in verse 25 seems like fatalism (Them that has, gets. Them that ain’t got, lose it all. Or, the ways of the world reward the rich and punish the poor.) But Ched Myers suggests that Jesus uses the saying in an ironic way, subtly referencing Old Testament prophets who used such fatalisms to criticize those in power. In essence: here’s what the world tells you, but don’t you believe it!
Mark 4:26-34
Jesus returns to his farming parables. Seeds grown on their own and even the best farmer can’t control them. When planting seeds of the Kin-dom, remain patient because God is making them grow. Grow they will, at God’s own good pace. The mustard seed is a weed that grows even in the shadow of the largest tree - even a tree as large as the Roman Empire. The Kin-dom is like a weed that grows and grows.
Mark 4:35-41
While at the end of the Fourth chapter, these verses really the beginning of the story told in the Fifth chapter. The storm threatening the disciples is not just meteorological. It is the storm facing Mark’s community as they cross from the side of the world they knew to the unknown side - the side that includes gentiles, too as their world convulses under the oppression of Roman Empire that doesn’t discriminate among the peoples it conquers.
Conversation Questions
1. What would the promise of freedom from debt and fear mean to First Century peasants? What does that promise mean to us?
2. What are the obstacles to true discipleship today?
3.Do Jesus’ parables still challenge us? Give us hope? How?
4.Jesus is recruiting the powerless to change the world. What would make you ready to sign on to his campaign?
5. Are there storms you might face that would seem life-threatening? World threatening?
CHAPTER THREE: THE JESUS WE NEVER KNEW
Jesus continues to confront the powers that be. But this is not the gentle, kind Jesus we saw in Sunday School paintings.The Jesus that Mark shows us gets angry when those he is passionate about are wronged. This Jesus loves his followers more than the household he grew up in. This is a Jesus with a singular heart for God’s Kin-dom.
Mark 3:1-12
It’s almost as if we’ve already seen this movie. It is the Sabbath again. There is a person in need of healing. The rules and the rulers stand in the way. Jesus stands up. But the tensions are running particularly high this time. Jesus quotes Torah for the Torah experts, “Is it lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath,” and then adds his own commentary: “to save or to kill?” Evidently he sees the protecting of Sabbath law, that is - refusing to heal the person with the withered hand - has a killing effect. When no one can answer him, Jesus responds in a way that we think is not very Christ-like. He gets angry. And grieved at their stubbornness - their unwillingness to change. And one more time Jesus breaks the law, healing the man on the Sabbath. So incensed are they by his forwardness, the party of Herod begins to plot to take Jesus’ life.
Jesus has no respect for the systems that keep the poor in poverty. His anger is directed at those who stand in the way of showing compassion and welcoming them fully into all levels of society. He wants to tear down those systems, and in return the representatives of those systems seek to destroy Jesus.
Once again the crowds descend on Jesus. It is worth noting that Mark’s favorite word for the crowds makes a distinction between the poor masses and the wealthy elite. They are the ones that Jesus loves and stands up for. He heals their ailments and exorcizes their demons. Recall Jesus’ first encounter with a demon, how for Jesus this was not just some free-floating evil spirit - it was the evil of elevating systems above the needs of people, particularly in the synagogue.
Mark 3:13-19
Jesus is already known as a law-breaker, one who is ritually unclean, and one who associates with undesirables. In this section he becomes a revolutionary (though clearly not one who advocates violence). He forms a new government, so to speak. By naming 12 apostles. Jesus again makes a symbolic move whose meaning would have inescapable for Mark’s audience. The 12 apostles were obviously representing new tribes, and so in choosing them Jesus was announcing a whole new system was coming.
Mark 3:20-30
Those in authority read Jesus’ intentions accurately, so they attack him. They accuse him of working for Satan, even though he was exorcising demons. Jesus calls them on their faulty logic. More than that, he lays out his own vision for his work. Jesus calls himself a thief and refers to the scribes and Pharisees and Herodians (those in power) as the strong man whom Jesus is binding, robbing them of everything. Jesus is not about small tweaks. This is a whole new world.The sin against the Holy Spirit is not some specific blasphemy, but the blindness of the authorities toward Jesus and his compassion for the crowds.
Mark 3:31-35
Jesus’ passion for his people is so thorough-going that he even redefines what it means to be family. Family was the bedrock of society in Jesus’ day. Your family was your support, your best allies, your defense against a hostile world. When Jesus’ blood family arrives to take him home (they think he’s lost his mind!) he doesn’t even acknowledge the. He looks at the ne'er do wells and undesirables surrounding him and claims them as his family! THis really is a whole new world.
Conversation Questions
1. Mark’s Gospel was written out of a world that was falling apart - being torn apart. What isn’t working the way it is supposed to in our world?
2. How was Mark’s Gospel good news for the people he was writing to?
3. Do Jesus’ actions affect the way we see or exercise power?
4.How do you feel about a Jesus who gets angry, breaks the law, and describes himself as a thief?
5. What does it take for you to really change?
Jesus continues to confront the powers that be. But this is not the gentle, kind Jesus we saw in Sunday School paintings.The Jesus that Mark shows us gets angry when those he is passionate about are wronged. This Jesus loves his followers more than the household he grew up in. This is a Jesus with a singular heart for God’s Kin-dom.
Mark 3:1-12
It’s almost as if we’ve already seen this movie. It is the Sabbath again. There is a person in need of healing. The rules and the rulers stand in the way. Jesus stands up. But the tensions are running particularly high this time. Jesus quotes Torah for the Torah experts, “Is it lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath,” and then adds his own commentary: “to save or to kill?” Evidently he sees the protecting of Sabbath law, that is - refusing to heal the person with the withered hand - has a killing effect. When no one can answer him, Jesus responds in a way that we think is not very Christ-like. He gets angry. And grieved at their stubbornness - their unwillingness to change. And one more time Jesus breaks the law, healing the man on the Sabbath. So incensed are they by his forwardness, the party of Herod begins to plot to take Jesus’ life.
Jesus has no respect for the systems that keep the poor in poverty. His anger is directed at those who stand in the way of showing compassion and welcoming them fully into all levels of society. He wants to tear down those systems, and in return the representatives of those systems seek to destroy Jesus.
Once again the crowds descend on Jesus. It is worth noting that Mark’s favorite word for the crowds makes a distinction between the poor masses and the wealthy elite. They are the ones that Jesus loves and stands up for. He heals their ailments and exorcizes their demons. Recall Jesus’ first encounter with a demon, how for Jesus this was not just some free-floating evil spirit - it was the evil of elevating systems above the needs of people, particularly in the synagogue.
Mark 3:13-19
Jesus is already known as a law-breaker, one who is ritually unclean, and one who associates with undesirables. In this section he becomes a revolutionary (though clearly not one who advocates violence). He forms a new government, so to speak. By naming 12 apostles. Jesus again makes a symbolic move whose meaning would have inescapable for Mark’s audience. The 12 apostles were obviously representing new tribes, and so in choosing them Jesus was announcing a whole new system was coming.
Mark 3:20-30
Those in authority read Jesus’ intentions accurately, so they attack him. They accuse him of working for Satan, even though he was exorcising demons. Jesus calls them on their faulty logic. More than that, he lays out his own vision for his work. Jesus calls himself a thief and refers to the scribes and Pharisees and Herodians (those in power) as the strong man whom Jesus is binding, robbing them of everything. Jesus is not about small tweaks. This is a whole new world.The sin against the Holy Spirit is not some specific blasphemy, but the blindness of the authorities toward Jesus and his compassion for the crowds.
Mark 3:31-35
Jesus’ passion for his people is so thorough-going that he even redefines what it means to be family. Family was the bedrock of society in Jesus’ day. Your family was your support, your best allies, your defense against a hostile world. When Jesus’ blood family arrives to take him home (they think he’s lost his mind!) he doesn’t even acknowledge the. He looks at the ne'er do wells and undesirables surrounding him and claims them as his family! THis really is a whole new world.
Conversation Questions
1. Mark’s Gospel was written out of a world that was falling apart - being torn apart. What isn’t working the way it is supposed to in our world?
2. How was Mark’s Gospel good news for the people he was writing to?
3. Do Jesus’ actions affect the way we see or exercise power?
4.How do you feel about a Jesus who gets angry, breaks the law, and describes himself as a thief?
5. What does it take for you to really change?
CHAPTER TWO: GOING PUBLIC
Jesus had gathered his first collaborators. He has challenged those in authority who work to keep things the way they are. He has given hope to those who live in poverty and pain. Now Jesus continues to show people what the Kin-dom of God looks like.
Mark 2:1-12
The crowds seem to have great confidence in Jesus. Whether Jesus is in his own home in Capernaum, or simply “in a home,” the crowd crowds in on him asking for healing. This is a longing for more than physical restoration as this episode illustrates. These friends dig through the earthen roof in order to get their friend in front of Jesus. The pallet or bed that the paralytic lies on is a beggar’s mat - it underscores not just the fact that he is paralyzed but that his ailment compounds his impoverished condition.
Jesus’ willingness to heal the paralyzed one not only restores his ability to a livelihood, it challenges the authority of those guarding the way things are. Instead of using words of healing, Jesus announces that his sins are forgiven. “Sins” also carries with it the connotation of debt - spiritual and economic. The scribes are scandalized that Jesus , independent of the priests’ or scribes’ permission or authority, declared the forgiveness of sins. They use the screed of God’s authority, but the reality is that they fear that if they can turn directly to Jesus the crowds will have no need of them! Jesus is in the midst of the crowds of poor, where they have no need to go to the synagogue, the priest, or the Temple for God to notice them, heal them, and restore them. Jesus has thrown down the gauntlet right at the scribes’ feet.
Mark 2:13-17
After directly challenging their authority, Jesus goes on to redefine the codes of acceptability. He calls a Roman collaborator as a follower and attends a party at this tax-collector’s house. It is a gathering of other tax-collectors an unnamed sinners. The Pharisees had strict rules about only eating with “righteous” people and the crowd Jesus is hanging with does NOT fit that definition. But Jesus has no reservations about the crowd he chooses.
Mark 2:18-22
They the question is raised about fasting. The Pharisees had a tradition of fasting twice a week in addition to the few ritual fasts called for in the Torah. This relatively new tradition coincidently highlighted the difference between the wealthy, city-dwelling ruling classes and the crowds of poor whom Jesus loved. For the crowds, fasting happened more often because of the scarcity of food and not because they had the luxury to refrain from eating. Jesus chooses to be the life of their (the crowds of the poor) party. And Jesus declares that he is all about changing the ways things work, with stories of patches and new wine skins.
Mark 2:23-28
The Sabbath becomes ground zero again for Jesus’ confrontation with the authorities. When questioned about letting his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath, in one fell swoop Jesus claims the authority of King David (as audacious as that sounds) and denies the authority of the Pharisees over his disciples. In fact, Jesus’s permission pick and eat grain on the Sabbath is not unlike sit-ins or picket lines. It was an act of civil (or, again, religious) disobedience. Especially in conjunction with the previous issue about fasting, this act is clear. Jesus’ final declaration in this passage again takes away the authority of the Pharisees and empowers the disenfranchised. “The Sabbath was made for the good of the people, and the Human One (or Son of Man - either way it is an image from the Book of Daniel: the one God works through) is the lord of the Sabbath.”
It should be clear that Jesus did not appear to address only spiritual needs. His actions and alliances clearly demonstrate that Jesus also cared about the real lives the people lived. He opposed the systems that kept people poor and deprived. He was putting in place new systems of equality, compassion, and grace.
Conversation Questions
1. Have you ever felt like it was impossible to get ahead?
2. How did Jesus show his love for the poor crowds?
3. How does it feel to hear that Jesus encouraged his followers to break the law?
4. What rules in church or society keep people on the outside?
Jesus had gathered his first collaborators. He has challenged those in authority who work to keep things the way they are. He has given hope to those who live in poverty and pain. Now Jesus continues to show people what the Kin-dom of God looks like.
Mark 2:1-12
The crowds seem to have great confidence in Jesus. Whether Jesus is in his own home in Capernaum, or simply “in a home,” the crowd crowds in on him asking for healing. This is a longing for more than physical restoration as this episode illustrates. These friends dig through the earthen roof in order to get their friend in front of Jesus. The pallet or bed that the paralytic lies on is a beggar’s mat - it underscores not just the fact that he is paralyzed but that his ailment compounds his impoverished condition.
Jesus’ willingness to heal the paralyzed one not only restores his ability to a livelihood, it challenges the authority of those guarding the way things are. Instead of using words of healing, Jesus announces that his sins are forgiven. “Sins” also carries with it the connotation of debt - spiritual and economic. The scribes are scandalized that Jesus , independent of the priests’ or scribes’ permission or authority, declared the forgiveness of sins. They use the screed of God’s authority, but the reality is that they fear that if they can turn directly to Jesus the crowds will have no need of them! Jesus is in the midst of the crowds of poor, where they have no need to go to the synagogue, the priest, or the Temple for God to notice them, heal them, and restore them. Jesus has thrown down the gauntlet right at the scribes’ feet.
Mark 2:13-17
After directly challenging their authority, Jesus goes on to redefine the codes of acceptability. He calls a Roman collaborator as a follower and attends a party at this tax-collector’s house. It is a gathering of other tax-collectors an unnamed sinners. The Pharisees had strict rules about only eating with “righteous” people and the crowd Jesus is hanging with does NOT fit that definition. But Jesus has no reservations about the crowd he chooses.
Mark 2:18-22
They the question is raised about fasting. The Pharisees had a tradition of fasting twice a week in addition to the few ritual fasts called for in the Torah. This relatively new tradition coincidently highlighted the difference between the wealthy, city-dwelling ruling classes and the crowds of poor whom Jesus loved. For the crowds, fasting happened more often because of the scarcity of food and not because they had the luxury to refrain from eating. Jesus chooses to be the life of their (the crowds of the poor) party. And Jesus declares that he is all about changing the ways things work, with stories of patches and new wine skins.
Mark 2:23-28
The Sabbath becomes ground zero again for Jesus’ confrontation with the authorities. When questioned about letting his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath, in one fell swoop Jesus claims the authority of King David (as audacious as that sounds) and denies the authority of the Pharisees over his disciples. In fact, Jesus’s permission pick and eat grain on the Sabbath is not unlike sit-ins or picket lines. It was an act of civil (or, again, religious) disobedience. Especially in conjunction with the previous issue about fasting, this act is clear. Jesus’ final declaration in this passage again takes away the authority of the Pharisees and empowers the disenfranchised. “The Sabbath was made for the good of the people, and the Human One (or Son of Man - either way it is an image from the Book of Daniel: the one God works through) is the lord of the Sabbath.”
It should be clear that Jesus did not appear to address only spiritual needs. His actions and alliances clearly demonstrate that Jesus also cared about the real lives the people lived. He opposed the systems that kept people poor and deprived. He was putting in place new systems of equality, compassion, and grace.
Conversation Questions
1. Have you ever felt like it was impossible to get ahead?
2. How did Jesus show his love for the poor crowds?
3. How does it feel to hear that Jesus encouraged his followers to break the law?
4. What rules in church or society keep people on the outside?
Suppose you pinned all your hope on David, but Goliath won anyway? That’s what happened when Rome reconquered Israel 40 years after the time of Jesus. When all hopes were shattered, Mark (whoever he was) wrote a document called a Gospel to offer a way of resurrecting hope. It was the story of Jesus of Nazareth and his Way of discipleship—of living in God’s Kin-dom even as we live in the world of power and oppression imposed by Rome. In our modern world of uncertainty and despair, Mark’s Gospel still offers us a path back to hope and meaning. It is Jesus’ Way.
As we embark on this journey through Mark, I encourage you to make 2 commitments: First, read the Gospel of Mark through. It is the first and the shortest of the Gospels. Find a translation that is easy to read, I like the Common English version, and Peterson’s “The Message” is very approachable (there are lots of others, just find one you can understand). Read it completely in one sitting if you can, it’s only 16 chapters. The chapters and verses were added long after it was originally written, as a convenience for referencing its teaching. But it was never intended to be diced up into little snippets and soundbites. Try and get a feel for the entire story.
Second, join a group for deeper study and conversation. When it was first distributed, Mark’s Gospel was originally real aloud (in its entirety) to a group of people. From its beginning it was a communal document. While we will be focusing on a chapter a week through Easter Sunday, we cannot explore all the depth and meaning of an entire chapter in worship. Group time will allow you to ask questions, explore ideas, and plumb the depths of the chapters that we simply can’t get to in one hour of Sunday worship.
As we embark on this journey through Mark, I encourage you to make 2 commitments: First, read the Gospel of Mark through. It is the first and the shortest of the Gospels. Find a translation that is easy to read, I like the Common English version, and Peterson’s “The Message” is very approachable (there are lots of others, just find one you can understand). Read it completely in one sitting if you can, it’s only 16 chapters. The chapters and verses were added long after it was originally written, as a convenience for referencing its teaching. But it was never intended to be diced up into little snippets and soundbites. Try and get a feel for the entire story.
Second, join a group for deeper study and conversation. When it was first distributed, Mark’s Gospel was originally real aloud (in its entirety) to a group of people. From its beginning it was a communal document. While we will be focusing on a chapter a week through Easter Sunday, we cannot explore all the depth and meaning of an entire chapter in worship. Group time will allow you to ask questions, explore ideas, and plumb the depths of the chapters that we simply can’t get to in one hour of Sunday worship.
CHAPTER ONE: THE OVERTURE
Operas generally start with an overture, a prelude that introduces the musical themes that will appear throughout the performance. The first chapter of Mark functions in much the same way: it introduces the themes and priorities that the story of Jesus will present throughout the rest of the Gospel. These chords will resonate even in the climactic images of the crucifixion and Mark’s odd telling of the resurrection. This is Mark’s debut of the hope that exists even in the midst of the war with Rome and the devastation it brought.
Mark 1:1-8
The first verse tells us that this is good news, specifically the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In its day this introduction lobs a challenge at the Roman Empire. “Son of God” was a common title for Caesar in Rome, proclaiming that his authority was divinely given. But this is a story about a very different “Son of God.”
The first character introduced in this drama is not Jesus but John the Baptist. Mark’s audience would have immediately recognized his description as a prophet cut from the Old Testament mold. Isaiah (really, though, an amalgam of Old Testament prophetic sources) is quoted to underscore this: a call to prepare for the arrival of God’s liberation and a call for the radical changing of direction of the people’s lives. Baptism was a common symbol of rebirth and new beginning. Situated on the edge of civilization, John attracts people even from the seats of power (Judea and Jerusalem).
John’s physical description allows no mistake that he is cut from the same cloth as the great prophet Elijah, and in fact may be the promised return of that most powerful of God’s servants. But even so, he points not his own power, but to the one who is coming with a better baptism than he can offer: Holy Spirit baptism.
Mark 1:9-13
In verse 9, Jesus finally enters the stage. He comes to John for baptism. Mark makes no reference to Jesus’ sinlessness but portrays the event as a momentous new beginning for Jesus. The sky tears open, a dove descends, and a voice proclaims “You are my own dear Son, and I am pleased with you.”
As soon as this happens, the Holy Spirit drives Jesus (the language is not gentle about this) into the wilderness where Jesus is tested. Mark does not give us details about these tests—just that they last 40 days (40 is a powerful biblical number and signals God-time just like 40days and nights of rain in Noah’s time, and 40 years in the wilderness for the wandering Hebrews)
Mark 1:14-20
Just as immediately, John is taken off the stage and Jesus takes the central position. He proclaims that God’s kingdom (again a word usually used to describe Rome’s power), is so close you can touch it. And then Jesus begins recruiting his team.
Ched Myers in his “Binding the Strong Man” (which I am heavily relying on for this study) raises the idea that we have misunderstood the image of Jesus inviting the disciples to be “Fishers of people.” Myers points out that Jeremiah used the same image not for evangelism, but for God’s censure. He suggests that Jesus chose this image not for gathering new followers, but as an invitation to pull down the old order and begin building a new one. Maybe Simon and Andrew, James and John were so quick to join because they knew firsthand the hopelessness of the status quo.
Mark 1:21-39
Having begun his movement, Jesus then takes his first public action. He goes to the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath where the people are astounded at his teaching. Then he is confronted from an evil spirit who tries to control him by speaking his name. This was an ancient understanding, that if you knew someone’s true name, you had power over them (think about when your parents used all three names to call you into account!). But Jesus is not subject to their power.
In front of God and everyone, Jesus frees the person from the influence of the spirit—ON THE SABBATH. Jesus broke the scribe’s law in order to bring freedom to one suffering from its influence. It seems that for Mark, this evil spirit was not just demonic but was a part of the religious system that kept people possessed and oppressed. In essence, Jesus commits an act of civil (or rather, religious) disobedience, breaks the law, and challenges the authority of those who would keep things the way they are forever.
And when Jesus then goes on to heal the crowds, he is demonstrating this same liberating love. Disease and illness in those days most often carried with it social stigma. Being sick (especially a chronic illness) meant you were pushed out of your society and sometimes even your family. Jesus healed people because he wanted them to be well AND he wanted them to be whole. Myers has an additional insight to the cost of illness: “Disease and physical disability were an inseparable part of the cycle of poverty (a phenomenon still true today despite the advent of modern medicine). For the day laborer, illness meant unemployment and instant impoverishment.” (p. 144) Jesus’ healing was another expression of his love for the poor.
Mark 1:40-45
That Jesus wanted to change the way the world worked is seen dramatically in his healing of the person with leprosy. First, he is willing to touch a social pariah—a healing that in so doing makes Jesus himself ritually unclean. Jesus places himself in literal solidarity with the outcast. Second, he sends the healed person to priest not just for validation but as a message to the priests that someone else claims their authority to heal and restore. Jesus the healer was a threat to the civic order. He was out to change the world. And he still is.
Operas generally start with an overture, a prelude that introduces the musical themes that will appear throughout the performance. The first chapter of Mark functions in much the same way: it introduces the themes and priorities that the story of Jesus will present throughout the rest of the Gospel. These chords will resonate even in the climactic images of the crucifixion and Mark’s odd telling of the resurrection. This is Mark’s debut of the hope that exists even in the midst of the war with Rome and the devastation it brought.
Mark 1:1-8
The first verse tells us that this is good news, specifically the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In its day this introduction lobs a challenge at the Roman Empire. “Son of God” was a common title for Caesar in Rome, proclaiming that his authority was divinely given. But this is a story about a very different “Son of God.”
The first character introduced in this drama is not Jesus but John the Baptist. Mark’s audience would have immediately recognized his description as a prophet cut from the Old Testament mold. Isaiah (really, though, an amalgam of Old Testament prophetic sources) is quoted to underscore this: a call to prepare for the arrival of God’s liberation and a call for the radical changing of direction of the people’s lives. Baptism was a common symbol of rebirth and new beginning. Situated on the edge of civilization, John attracts people even from the seats of power (Judea and Jerusalem).
John’s physical description allows no mistake that he is cut from the same cloth as the great prophet Elijah, and in fact may be the promised return of that most powerful of God’s servants. But even so, he points not his own power, but to the one who is coming with a better baptism than he can offer: Holy Spirit baptism.
Mark 1:9-13
In verse 9, Jesus finally enters the stage. He comes to John for baptism. Mark makes no reference to Jesus’ sinlessness but portrays the event as a momentous new beginning for Jesus. The sky tears open, a dove descends, and a voice proclaims “You are my own dear Son, and I am pleased with you.”
As soon as this happens, the Holy Spirit drives Jesus (the language is not gentle about this) into the wilderness where Jesus is tested. Mark does not give us details about these tests—just that they last 40 days (40 is a powerful biblical number and signals God-time just like 40days and nights of rain in Noah’s time, and 40 years in the wilderness for the wandering Hebrews)
Mark 1:14-20
Just as immediately, John is taken off the stage and Jesus takes the central position. He proclaims that God’s kingdom (again a word usually used to describe Rome’s power), is so close you can touch it. And then Jesus begins recruiting his team.
Ched Myers in his “Binding the Strong Man” (which I am heavily relying on for this study) raises the idea that we have misunderstood the image of Jesus inviting the disciples to be “Fishers of people.” Myers points out that Jeremiah used the same image not for evangelism, but for God’s censure. He suggests that Jesus chose this image not for gathering new followers, but as an invitation to pull down the old order and begin building a new one. Maybe Simon and Andrew, James and John were so quick to join because they knew firsthand the hopelessness of the status quo.
Mark 1:21-39
Having begun his movement, Jesus then takes his first public action. He goes to the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath where the people are astounded at his teaching. Then he is confronted from an evil spirit who tries to control him by speaking his name. This was an ancient understanding, that if you knew someone’s true name, you had power over them (think about when your parents used all three names to call you into account!). But Jesus is not subject to their power.
In front of God and everyone, Jesus frees the person from the influence of the spirit—ON THE SABBATH. Jesus broke the scribe’s law in order to bring freedom to one suffering from its influence. It seems that for Mark, this evil spirit was not just demonic but was a part of the religious system that kept people possessed and oppressed. In essence, Jesus commits an act of civil (or rather, religious) disobedience, breaks the law, and challenges the authority of those who would keep things the way they are forever.
And when Jesus then goes on to heal the crowds, he is demonstrating this same liberating love. Disease and illness in those days most often carried with it social stigma. Being sick (especially a chronic illness) meant you were pushed out of your society and sometimes even your family. Jesus healed people because he wanted them to be well AND he wanted them to be whole. Myers has an additional insight to the cost of illness: “Disease and physical disability were an inseparable part of the cycle of poverty (a phenomenon still true today despite the advent of modern medicine). For the day laborer, illness meant unemployment and instant impoverishment.” (p. 144) Jesus’ healing was another expression of his love for the poor.
Mark 1:40-45
That Jesus wanted to change the way the world worked is seen dramatically in his healing of the person with leprosy. First, he is willing to touch a social pariah—a healing that in so doing makes Jesus himself ritually unclean. Jesus places himself in literal solidarity with the outcast. Second, he sends the healed person to priest not just for validation but as a message to the priests that someone else claims their authority to heal and restore. Jesus the healer was a threat to the civic order. He was out to change the world. And he still is.
Conversation Questions
1. How do you think the story of Jesus was Good News for the first century Judeans fighting a losing war with Rome?
2. For whom particularly might it have been great news?
3. What in our day might this Jesus want to confront or change?
4. Can you imagine being so ready for something different that you would leave your livelihood and family? If not, why not?
5. What are the evil spirits controlling us or our society?
6. As Mark continues the story, what kind of new world is Jesus trying to create?
1. How do you think the story of Jesus was Good News for the first century Judeans fighting a losing war with Rome?
2. For whom particularly might it have been great news?
3. What in our day might this Jesus want to confront or change?
4. Can you imagine being so ready for something different that you would leave your livelihood and family? If not, why not?
5. What are the evil spirits controlling us or our society?
6. As Mark continues the story, what kind of new world is Jesus trying to create?
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