Reading: Mark 1-2, Psalm 95
Well, we’ve reached the climax of the grand Story we’ve been reading in the life of Jesus as recorded by the book of Matthew. So now what? We read it again.
Seem odd? Well, let us remember what the Bible is. It is a recording of events that happened in history, shaped to make a point. The only event in the Scriptures that is given this four way treatment is the life of Jesus. Given the importance of this event to the overarching narrative, it kind of makes sense that there would be more given to it than other events. Repetition is a form of emphasis, and I think that is part of what is going on with the four accounts of the life of Jesus. Another thing that is going on is that the four Gospel writers are making slightly different points. Each of them is relating the same events, but are shaping the narrative in a different way. We saw in the book of Matthew that he quote extensively from the Hebrew Scriptures. He saw links between the story of the people of Israel and the coming of Jesus all over the place, in places we might never think to look. He does so much tying of Jesus’ life and actions to the Hebrew Scriptures that mapping it all out might look like some conspiracy theorists basement wall of news articles connected by strings. Matthew wants his readers to understand that Jesus is the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. He shapes his book to emphasize that Jesus has the authority of the King and the mission of Israel. He is the King and Priest. Mark shapes his book to make a different point.
The opening lines of Mark appear similar to those of Matthew. He declares right away what he is about: The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Okay, Mark is about Jesus being the Son of God. Well, Matthew was about that too, right? Sort of. But not the way I think Mark means it. Here is a place that history helps us. In Mark’s day, the Caesars, the rulers of the Roman empire, were running around calling themselves the Sons of the gods. The title “Son of (the sun) god” was a normal mode of address for these guys. They liked to put themselves on a plane with their own deities, and even came up with “the immortal sun” as a kind of henotheistic solution to a multicultural empire. You can all worship your own gods, so long as you acknowledge the superiority of our god-emperor. Anyway, I think Mark is doing a little more than claiming that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah when he uses the term Son of God. I think he is surreptitiously working to subvert the position of the the Caesar claimed. We will see this play out in at the end of the book with a Roman centurion. Mark is targeting both the Jewish people through his connection with Isaiah and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures and the gentiles with his assault on the authority of the Roman government.
As we begin reading Mark, we see that he is in much more of a hurry than Matthew. Matthew goes into some long asides and records long sermons and stories. Mark doesn’t do much of that. He is short, to the point, and at times really blunt. While Matthew has Jesus giving multi-chapter sermons, Mark covers the same material in short snippets linked to movement. Mark’s account of Jesus is always on the move. You’ll see a great deal of immediately or then they went or then they came to or while they were going. Mark portrays Jesus as a man with a mission, always on the move, always headed to his ultimate goal in Jerusalem. Along the way he will do all the things that Matthew recorded: demonstrate the Kingdom of God has come through healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and raising the dead. But far more than Matthew, Mark wants his readers to see that the Story is ongoing. It continues to move. He will end the book with a bit of a mic drop, as much as daring the reader to find out what happened next.
Tomorrow I’ll start looking at the things Mark has Jesus doing, but I thought it important to look in a bigger way at what Mark is doing and why we are reading another account of the same story right after the book of Matthew. Matthew, I believe, wrote primarily to those who had deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark is writing to everybody else, pulling them in with the movement of the story and the subversive nature of his claim that Jesus the Jewish Messiah is the Son of God, and so the ruler of all the nations.