Mark 1:35-39
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Last week we began looking at Mark’s gospel – the first written gospel (that we know of) – and we started out by looking at what isn’t there. We talked of which of the familiar (to us) gospel stories have no place in Mark. It was quite an impressive list if you’ll recall. So much of what we today take for granted as part of our Christian heritage apparently didn’t exist for many in the earliest Christian communities – not before Mark and still not for another ten or twenty years after this gospel was written – not until Matthew’s gospel account was written down. They apparently existed somewhere because Matthew had access to them but in Mark’s time it would seem they only existed in isolated pockets of the rapidly expanding Christian world – unknown to many, including Mark.
So today we are going to talk about what is found in Mark’s account. Again, it’s important to remember that Marks’ is the first narrative account of Jesus’ life among us. A narrative is a story. It is not just a collection of sayings or events thrown together into a random list. A narrative has flow – it starts here and it goes to here. It may meander a lot along the way but it follows a pattern – it has a direction. This is the story - as Jesus is quoted as explaining in our reading today - of what Jesus came out to do. In Mark’s story we begin with a fully adult Jesus going out to the wilderness to hear John the Baptist and it ends with an empty tomb.
Marcus Borg points out that this narrative follows a threefold pattern – a pattern that will later be adopted and followed by both Matthew and Luke. Part One takes place in Galilee. This is where most of Jesus’ public ministry took place. I think I pointed out a couple of weeks ago that Jesus only went into Jerusalem at the end. The vast bulk of his ministry took place in the countryside and small villages. Roughly half of this gospel is devoted to the Galilean years. By the standards of the more sophisticated world this was truly a back-woods ministry, which makes it even more extraordinary when we think that it eventually spread throughout the world as it has done.
Part Two covers the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and Part Three takes place in Jerusalem and tells of the last few days of Jesus’ life, his struggles with authority and his death.
So what stories do make up Mark’s larger narrative? We begin with Jesus baptized by John and going out for 40 days in the wilderness and being tempted by Satan – not much detail in these stories – just the bare statements of fact. When he comes out of the wilderness he begins to call his disciples. His first recorded healing is the expulsion of an unclean spirit from a possessed man.
As Matthew and Luke will later do, Mark’s story of Jesus consists of many physical healings and expulsions of evil spirits, with teaching, in the form of parables, scattered throughout. Some of the particular events are recounted in the other gospels as well - a few are only found here.
The first of the parables to be retold in Mark is that of the Sower and the Seeds: some seed falls onto the pathway and is eaten by birds; next, seed lands on rocky ground where it sprouts but immediately withers because there is no soil for roots to grow; then seed fall among thorns and weeds and the new shoots are choked out. Finally the seed falls on good soil where it increases a hundredfold.
For several chapters, healing and parables are shared as Jesus and his followers move from village to small town to village – always on the move – teaching of the Kingdom of God everywhere he can reach.
There is even a journey across the Sea of Galilee into pagan country and the casting out of a multitude of demons from the man named Legion into a herd of pigs. That herd of pigs emphasizes to us that Jesus has, for the moment at least, gone outside his home territory, since no good Jew would be raising pigs. Later, there would be a trip to Tyre, on the Mediterranean, and an interaction with the “unclean” Syro-Phoenician woman – another trip away from home country and known customs.
Oddly enough we actually have the Loaves and Fishes story twice in Mark - once with 5000 hungry and once with 4000 – most likely an example of dubious editing with one story coming from two different sources.
Then somewhere toward the end of chapter eight, the traveling continues but we enter Part Two and the wandering begins to arc toward Jerusalem and the topic matter between Jesus and his disciples becomes darker. Peter answers the question “Who do you say I am?” with “You are the Messiah” - a huge leap in identification. Three separate times Jesus tries to tell his followers that he will die in Jerusalem while the disciples squabble among themselves about who among them will be the most important in Jesus’ kingdom, proving, yet again, just how little they understand.
Then with Chapter 11 and the “Triumphal Entry” into the city we begin Part Three – Jesus’ final days. Besides the actual events of Holy Week, Mark manages to squeeze in a lot more teaching into this final section. Among others, there is the fig tree cursed for not bearing fruit; the parable of the wicked tenants who murdered the landlord’s son; the “render unto Caesar” teaching on taxes and government authority; and the foretelling of the destruction of the Temple.
Like the other gospels Part Three of Mark’s gospel has the procession with palms and the cleansing of the temple, but then it’s back out to Bethany and the anointing of Jesus’ head and feet by the weeping woman, followed by Judas’ decision to betray Jesus. Interspersed through all this are more teachings and more questions: who is David’s son? Is there a resurrection?
Back in Jerusalem for Passover Mark tells us of the Last Supper, the prayers in the garden, the arrest and the trial before Pilate. Condemned, Jesus is taken out, crucified and buried. This part of the story is standard for one of the synoptic gospels – largely because Matthew and Luke would later follow Mark’s storyline fairly closely.
As we discussed earlier, this is pretty much where Mark’s gospel ends. When the Sabbath passed the women went out to the grave site to finish preparing the body for a proper burial since there hadn’t been time before sunset on the eve of Passover. The women met an angelic presence and were told that Jesus had risen and was no longer there - but they saw no one else. The angel told them they would see Jesus again in Galilee. And here Mark’s gospel ends.
Although we miss certain of the most familiar parables and stories, the basic story of Jesus’ public years and his ministry among the people is all here. Whether this version of things was fairly widespread knowledge throughout much of the ever-widening Christian world or more limited to the area around Galilee we don’t know. And just because Mark’s was written first does not make it any more correct not does it mean it is wrong when some stories are left out. It simply means that the gospels were written in different times in different locations with the writers having access to different pools of community memory. Remember – no tape recorders, no steno pads. The Gospel – the Good News – was a living, growing entity emerging out of a community that not only knew Jesus in the past but continued to experience him in their present – and so his story continued to grow – as it still does today.
Next week we will begin looking into Matthew’s gospel, the second to make it into written form.
So today we are going to talk about what is found in Mark’s account. Again, it’s important to remember that Marks’ is the first narrative account of Jesus’ life among us. A narrative is a story. It is not just a collection of sayings or events thrown together into a random list. A narrative has flow – it starts here and it goes to here. It may meander a lot along the way but it follows a pattern – it has a direction. This is the story - as Jesus is quoted as explaining in our reading today - of what Jesus came out to do. In Mark’s story we begin with a fully adult Jesus going out to the wilderness to hear John the Baptist and it ends with an empty tomb.
Marcus Borg points out that this narrative follows a threefold pattern – a pattern that will later be adopted and followed by both Matthew and Luke. Part One takes place in Galilee. This is where most of Jesus’ public ministry took place. I think I pointed out a couple of weeks ago that Jesus only went into Jerusalem at the end. The vast bulk of his ministry took place in the countryside and small villages. Roughly half of this gospel is devoted to the Galilean years. By the standards of the more sophisticated world this was truly a back-woods ministry, which makes it even more extraordinary when we think that it eventually spread throughout the world as it has done.
Part Two covers the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and Part Three takes place in Jerusalem and tells of the last few days of Jesus’ life, his struggles with authority and his death.
So what stories do make up Mark’s larger narrative? We begin with Jesus baptized by John and going out for 40 days in the wilderness and being tempted by Satan – not much detail in these stories – just the bare statements of fact. When he comes out of the wilderness he begins to call his disciples. His first recorded healing is the expulsion of an unclean spirit from a possessed man.
As Matthew and Luke will later do, Mark’s story of Jesus consists of many physical healings and expulsions of evil spirits, with teaching, in the form of parables, scattered throughout. Some of the particular events are recounted in the other gospels as well - a few are only found here.
The first of the parables to be retold in Mark is that of the Sower and the Seeds: some seed falls onto the pathway and is eaten by birds; next, seed lands on rocky ground where it sprouts but immediately withers because there is no soil for roots to grow; then seed fall among thorns and weeds and the new shoots are choked out. Finally the seed falls on good soil where it increases a hundredfold.
For several chapters, healing and parables are shared as Jesus and his followers move from village to small town to village – always on the move – teaching of the Kingdom of God everywhere he can reach.
There is even a journey across the Sea of Galilee into pagan country and the casting out of a multitude of demons from the man named Legion into a herd of pigs. That herd of pigs emphasizes to us that Jesus has, for the moment at least, gone outside his home territory, since no good Jew would be raising pigs. Later, there would be a trip to Tyre, on the Mediterranean, and an interaction with the “unclean” Syro-Phoenician woman – another trip away from home country and known customs.
Oddly enough we actually have the Loaves and Fishes story twice in Mark - once with 5000 hungry and once with 4000 – most likely an example of dubious editing with one story coming from two different sources.
Then somewhere toward the end of chapter eight, the traveling continues but we enter Part Two and the wandering begins to arc toward Jerusalem and the topic matter between Jesus and his disciples becomes darker. Peter answers the question “Who do you say I am?” with “You are the Messiah” - a huge leap in identification. Three separate times Jesus tries to tell his followers that he will die in Jerusalem while the disciples squabble among themselves about who among them will be the most important in Jesus’ kingdom, proving, yet again, just how little they understand.
Then with Chapter 11 and the “Triumphal Entry” into the city we begin Part Three – Jesus’ final days. Besides the actual events of Holy Week, Mark manages to squeeze in a lot more teaching into this final section. Among others, there is the fig tree cursed for not bearing fruit; the parable of the wicked tenants who murdered the landlord’s son; the “render unto Caesar” teaching on taxes and government authority; and the foretelling of the destruction of the Temple.
Like the other gospels Part Three of Mark’s gospel has the procession with palms and the cleansing of the temple, but then it’s back out to Bethany and the anointing of Jesus’ head and feet by the weeping woman, followed by Judas’ decision to betray Jesus. Interspersed through all this are more teachings and more questions: who is David’s son? Is there a resurrection?
Back in Jerusalem for Passover Mark tells us of the Last Supper, the prayers in the garden, the arrest and the trial before Pilate. Condemned, Jesus is taken out, crucified and buried. This part of the story is standard for one of the synoptic gospels – largely because Matthew and Luke would later follow Mark’s storyline fairly closely.
As we discussed earlier, this is pretty much where Mark’s gospel ends. When the Sabbath passed the women went out to the grave site to finish preparing the body for a proper burial since there hadn’t been time before sunset on the eve of Passover. The women met an angelic presence and were told that Jesus had risen and was no longer there - but they saw no one else. The angel told them they would see Jesus again in Galilee. And here Mark’s gospel ends.
Although we miss certain of the most familiar parables and stories, the basic story of Jesus’ public years and his ministry among the people is all here. Whether this version of things was fairly widespread knowledge throughout much of the ever-widening Christian world or more limited to the area around Galilee we don’t know. And just because Mark’s was written first does not make it any more correct not does it mean it is wrong when some stories are left out. It simply means that the gospels were written in different times in different locations with the writers having access to different pools of community memory. Remember – no tape recorders, no steno pads. The Gospel – the Good News – was a living, growing entity emerging out of a community that not only knew Jesus in the past but continued to experience him in their present – and so his story continued to grow – as it still does today.
Next week we will begin looking into Matthew’s gospel, the second to make it into written form.
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