CHAPTER SEVEN
The Gospel according to Mark
Orientation
We need all kinds of stories because life is full of all kinds of people and all kinds of experiences. Different stories reach different people and speak to different experiences. What kind of story is Mark’s Gospel? A comic book. A superhero movie. A graphic novel. These are analogies we can use to understand the fury, feel, flow, and flurry of activity that is the Gospel according to Mark. If we think of the four Gospels as four children, Mark is the energetic and wild one, full of action and verve.
Figure 7.1. This book cover (eleventh century, Germany) shows Mark writing his Gospel with a lion, his symbol, holding a scroll above him. [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.]
Probably the first Gospel written, Mark is the least refined. But it is foundational to this collection of biographies of Jesus and has its own important voice. Mark is the pioneer and provides the basic structure and narrative plot that the more complex Matthew and Luke will build on. What Mark lacks in nuance and polish, he makes up for with a powerful, engaging biography of Jesus.
The Historical Origins of Mark
Each of the Gospels is a biography, a story centered on one person who serves as a model to follow. But each Gospel also has a particular emphasis, a different flavor and scent. Mark’s Gospel focuses on Jesus’s actions. Through Jesus’s actions readers learn two primary things: who Jesus is and what it means to be his disciples.
These two themes—Jesus’s identity and the life of discipleship—are interwoven with mystery and conflict. Mark presents Jesus as the authoritative Messiah, but at the same time Jesus is unpredictable, and his actions and sayings create ambiguity for many. His teaching is mysterious and creates a separation between those who understand and those who don’t. Jesus has enemies who don’t understand or trust him. This combination of mystery and conflict drives the plot of Mark’s Gospel, culminating in Jesus’s persecution, suffering, and death. This, then, becomes the ultimate message of discipleship: Jesus suffers on his way to glory, and so too will his followers.
Mark’s story is the shortest of the four Gospels. It can be read in its entirety in less than an hour. But its episodes are full of vivid details. We can picture the scenes and feel the action.
Even though his overall story is short, there is a crucial, discernible arc that runs through the whole account. Mark’s story of Jesus is based on a three-stage journey narrative: Jesus ministers in and around Galilee in the north in the first stage (1:1–9:50). In the second part he begins the journey south (and higher in altitude) toward Jerusalem (10:1–52). And in the final stage Jesus is in Jerusalem, the place of his death and resurrection (11:1–16:8). We don’t know exactly how much time the first two stages took (roughly three years), but we know that the last and most important stage took place within just one week—Jesus’s last week of pre-resurrection life. Mark gives a lot of literary real estate to this final stage, leading many readers to observe that he is particularly emphasizing the passion week and its events.
The Structure of Mark
Exploration—Reading Mark
The Beginning of the Gospel
READ MARK 1:1–15
Mark’s introduction begins and ends with references to “the gospel / good news” (1:1, 14–15). Mark proclaims that what we are about to read is the start of something very important. It is great news. He describes this in 1:1 as the good news “of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” in 1:14 as simply “the good news of God,” and in 1:15 as the time being “fulfilled” and the “kingdom of God has come near.”
The last description makes clear what Mark means by “the gospel.” It is the good news that God is now finally returning to reign over the world through his anointed king. The return of God’s good and just kingdom was long promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is a joyful message that calls for a response: “Repent and believe in the good news!” (1:15). That is to say, turn away from actions that don’t align with God’s kingdom and put your hope in this coming divine regime change.
Inside this message that bookends the introduction, Mark introduces two people: the forerunner and the One. The forerunner, John the Baptizer, is a wild man with a wild man’s clothing and diet (1:4–6). From his mouth comes God’s call to repent, symbolized through the physical act of being baptized in the river of the promised land, the Jordan (1:5).
But despite his attractional power, John the Baptizer makes it very clear that he has a specific role to play. There is one far more powerful and important than him, the One who will baptize people with the Holy Spirit (1:7–8), the Messiah himself.
The intersection point between the forerunner and the Messiah is the river. When Jesus comes up from the water of John’s baptism, a voice—not from the wilderness but from heaven itself—declares the most important thing: Jesus is the Spirit-anointed Son of God (1:9–11). Jesus, the Son of God, starts in the wilderness, successfully defeating the temptations of the devil (unlike God’s son Israel), and then returns to the people of Galilee to proclaim God’s kingdom.
Jesus the Healer
READ MARK 1:16–2:12
We are now in part one of Mark’s two-part book. This half highlights the two main themes: Jesus’s identity and the call of discipleship. Jesus’s identity is filled out more through every story, while the call to discipleship introduces each of the four sections that follow through 8:26. All of this exists under the banner of the introduction, especially its concluding words, which serve as a transition to the main story: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (1:15).
The first collection of stories (1:16–2:12) begins with the first disciples and sets the tone that Jesus’s ministry is going to be one of gathering people—fishing for them—to follow him (1:16–19). The five stories that follow are aptly summarized with the final words in 2:12: “We have never seen anything like this!”
In these initial stories we learn that Jesus is the Holy One of God (1:24), a new teacher with amazing authority (1:27), a miraculous healer (1:29–34, 40–42; 2:12), a preacher (1:38–39), the “Son of Man” (2:10), and, depending on one’s perspective, either a blasphemer or divine forgiver of sins (2:6–10).
Each of these initial stories is positive—or at least awe-inspiring—until we get to the last one. In 2:1–12 we see the first hint of the conflict that will drive the whole story all the way to the point of Jesus’s tortured death. The conflict comes from his new enemies, the “scribes”—teachers of the law (2:6). Why? Because Jesus presents himself as more than a miracle worker and teacher. His identity moves into the realm of the divine: he offers forgiveness of sins (2:5) and claims to be the “Son of Man” (2:10).
This understandably provokes controversy. Jesus’s enemies are absolutely accurate in their logic but fundamentally fail in their conclusion. They are correct that only God can forgive sins; they are wrong that Jesus is blaspheming. This is because, as Mark wants his readers to understand, Jesus is presented here as God’s own Son in the flesh.
The “Son of Man” and Daniel 7
Jesus’s Mixed Reception
READ MARK 2:13–3:12
This portion of Mark once again begins with a story of calling disciples (see above, 1:16–20). But this new disciple is a controversial one. He is a tax collector, from a small segment of Jewish society that worked for the Roman oppressors and was despised for being greedy traitors. Not only does Jesus invite such a sinner to be his disciple, but even worse, Jesus is seen dining in the house with many tax collectors. The emotional effect would be comparable to Jesus taking his disciples to a strip club in today’s world.
The rest of this section’s stories hang together because they are all based on questions. But these are not questions asked simply for the sake of knowledge. They are pointed challenges to Jesus’s authority made in an effort to shame and discredit him. In each case Jesus gives a brilliant riposte that deepens our understanding of his identity. When asked why he is eating with notorious sinners, Jesus describes himself as a doctor, one who has come to call sinners to life and health (2:15–17). When asked why Jesus and his disciples are not fasting like the Pharisees and John the Baptizer’s disciples, Jesus describes himself as the joyful bridegroom who is with his people, bringing new wine into the world (2:18–22). When asked about eating grain from the fields on the Sabbath (which the Pharisees considered to be forbidden Sabbath work), Jesus analogizes himself to the great king David and mysteriously refers to himself as “the Son of Man” who is “Lord even of the Sabbath” (2:23–28).
These three challenging questions are then turned on their heads when Jesus asks his opponents a question. He is angry that God’s own people have no compassion for those who are suffering. So he rebukes them by asking them if it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, and by physically healing a man right in front of them. They have no answer and plot to kill him (3:1–6), foreshadowing the rising conflict.
The summary paragraph in 3:7–12 shows Jesus’s increasing popularity, with masses following him as he healed large numbers of people. Mark shows us that whatever wrong interpretations people may have about Jesus, at least the unclean spirits can’t help but cry out, “You are the Son of God!” (3:11).
The Opposition Is Building
READ MARK 3:13–6:6
The two main themes of Jesus’s identity and the call to discipleship are on display once again in this section of Mark’s story. But the overall narrative is beginning to darken. The previous section ended with a summary (3:7–12) that was bright and positive, with Jesus healing many and the confession of Jesus as the Son of God. This next section thickens the plot and also ends with a summary (6:1–6), but one that is not so positive. Jesus returns to his hometown and is once again teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, but the response is offense and dishonor and lack of faith. As a result, Jesus heals very few. Conflict is brewing.
What happens between these two very different summaries of Jesus’s ministry (3:7–12 and 6:1–6)? The stories that Mark has collected here show Jesus acting in a way that forces one to believe in or reject him. There is no middle ground.
This section is introduced by the full list of the original twelve disciples (3:13–19), following Mark’s pattern of starting each story unit with a reference to the disciples (1:16–20; 2:13–17). Immediately the conflict appears with two different groups questioning Jesus’s sanity (3:20–35). Jesus’s wild popularity and travel make his family think that he has lost his mind. The teachers of the law resort to the desperate argument that Jesus must be demon-possessed. Jesus answers both charges. To the Jewish leaders he observes that it is senseless that Satan would attack his own house. To his Jewish family he makes clear that something greater than biology is operative: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (3:35).
Mark 4:1–34 marks a major transition in Jesus’s story. Up to this point he has taught in the Jewish synagogues. Now he changes to a different venue (lakeside) and a very different style. Now Jesus teaches in mysterious parables, extended metaphors that are simultaneously engaging and ambiguous. Parables about a seed sower, a lampstand, the growth of grain, and the mustard seed are easy to understand at one level but prove too mysterious to fully comprehend. But Jesus explains that this is precisely the point. As a prophet and teacher of the coming kingdom, his teaching is designed to separate the world into those who understand versus those who do not, between those who will be disciples and those who won’t (4:9–12, 33–34).
This emphasis on the disciples’ understanding is followed immediately by three shocking stories that reveal Jesus’s identity as powerful even beyond what we have seen so far. First, Jesus’s power over nature is shown in his stilling of the storm, the result of which is, understandably, fear and wonder (4:35–41). The second story likewise evokes fear and wonder when Jesus heals a wild man full of demons. This time the miracle affects a whole region of people who plead with Jesus to leave—all except the healed man (5:1–20). The third story is a double power-healing narrative, with two amazing miracles woven together. The healing of a long-suffering woman because of her great faith (5:24–34) is embedded within the even more stunning story of a dead girl raised to life (5:21–24, 35–43).
Parables in the Old Testament
The Parables of an Apocalyptic Prophet
The Prophet Has Come
READ MARK 6:7–8:26
As with the preceding sections, this portion begins with a summary paragraph about Jesus’s disciples, this time being sent out to continue and expand his own ministry of kingdom preaching and healing (6:7–13).
This section of stories leads up to the midway point of Mark’s book, the crucial Caesarea Philippi confession (8:27–30). This unit of vignettes continues the double theme of Jesus’s identity and discipleship, but layered onto this is another paired theme: fame and misunderstanding. Throughout these stories we see Jesus’s popularity and impact, combined with the fact that people don’t truly understand who Jesus is and what this all means, including even his own disciples!
Jesus’s fame causes varied reactions: King Herod’s guilt-driven paranoia that leads him to kill John the Baptizer (6:14–29); masses passionately following Jesus into the wilderness, where he miraculously feeds them (6:30–44; 8:1–13) and then escapes from them to pray (6:45–56); and gentiles seeking the Jewish Messiah for healing (7:24–37).
Jesus’s popularity deepens his conflict with the religious authorities and Jewish conservatives, providing him an opportunity to clearly teach what God cares about: heart-cleanness, the inner person, and not external rituals (7:1–23).
Along with his fame, we see that people misunderstand Jesus’s identity and mission. There is a dullness of heart and weakness of faith, even among Jesus’s closest disciples. The disciples fail when they are asked by Jesus to provide food for the masses by faith (6:35–37; also 8:3–4), and then they can’t fathom his divinity when he walks on water because “their hearts were hardened” (6:52). They also can’t understand his teaching about the inner person because they are still “dull” (7:17–18). And when Jesus warns them about “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” they can’t understand that he is not referring to physical bread. Jesus asks why they still do not understand, why their hearts are hardened, and why they don’t remember what he has already shown them (8:14–21).
All of this leads up to the final story before the turning point of the book (8:22–26). Jesus’s healing of the blind man at Bethsaida is a two-stage healing in which the man goes from blindness, to seeing partially, to seeing fully. Here at the hinge point of Mark’s Gospel, right after the great emphasis on the disciples’ lack of understanding, this two-stage healing also serves as a symbol for the disciples’ growing into understanding, the healing of their heart-blindness.
Apophatic Discipleship
The Syrophoenician Woman
The Revelation of the Suffering Messiah
READ MARK 8:27–10:52
We have now reached the second half of Mark’s two-part Gospel story. In the first half we see Jesus as the powerful Son of God, preaching about God’s coming kingdom and, in accord with this reality, restoring oppressed people. Along the way Jesus gathers followers who understand his message (at least in part) and want to be a part of it.
Driving the story is the burning question of who exactly Jesus is. Various answers have been given: he is the Son of God, the Son of Man, a teacher and healer with amazing authority. Here at the turning point of the book a shocking answer is given. Peter declares that, whatever else people think Jesus to be, he is in fact the Messiah (8:27–30). The Hebrew word “messiah” means “anointed,” and it was tied to the hope of the return of a Davidic king to restore God’s just reign. Jesus as the Messiah-King is a perfect culminating description after 1:1–8:26.
What no one expected is that this king must be rejected, suffer, die, and rise from the dead. This was inconceivable, and Peter attempts to rebuke Jesus along these lines, only to receive a rebuke himself (8:31–33). As we have seen in Mark’s story so far, Jesus’s disciples continue to struggle to “see,” like the blind man in 8:22–26. They must learn that the glorious Messiah and Son of Man will enter into that glory only through humble suffering. He makes clear that to be a disciple is to follow in the way of cross-bearing (8:34–38). Once again we see the double theme of Jesus’s identity and the call to discipleship.
Figure 7.2. Exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, depicted in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (fifteenth century) [Condé Museum / Wikimedia Commons]
The Ransom Theory of the Atonement
But a new tone will dominate the second half of the story: glory that comes through suffering. This juxtaposition of glory and suffering is exemplified strikingly in the transfiguration story immediately following the turning point of the book (9:1–13). At this high point of Mark’s Gospel the disciples see Jesus in full glory, accompanied by the divine voice declaring him to be the beloved Son (9:7). Immediately Jesus reiterates his coming suffering and rejection (9:12; also 8:31–33; 9:30–32; 10:32–34). From this point the story is all downhill, barreling toward the fulfillment of these predictions in Jerusalem.
The hodgepodge of events and declarations (9:14–10:45) between the great confession and the transfiguration (8:27–9:13) and Jesus’s entering into Jerusalem for the last week of his life (11:1) can be summed up with the general heading of “life in the coming kingdom.” The connective thread through these various teachings on prayer, divorce, and riches is that life in God’s kingdom is upside down from that of the world. Children are commended (9:36–37, 42; 10:13–16), being crippled or disfigured is better than having a whole body in hell (9:43–48), riches and success are hindrances to life (10:17–31), and the greatest ones are the servants (10:29–31, 35–45). Jesus is the model of all virtue, but he especially exemplifies this topsy-turvy rule: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45).
This “journey to Jerusalem” section ends with another story of sight restoration (10:46–52) that parallels the previous story (8:22–26). The earlier healing served as a metaphor for the disciples progressively coming to see and understand Jesus’s identity. Now, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, the same symbolic meaning reappears. Emblematic of what it means to be a disciple, blind Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus, “I want to see” (10:51). Jesus mercifully grants this healing, and the man becomes a follower on the road to the culmination of Jesus’s story in Jerusalem (10:52).
Mark’s Christological Titles
The Transfiguration
Figure 7.3. Transfiguration mosaic (565–66) from St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai [Ravit Linn, Yotam Tepper, and Guy Bar-Oz, CC BY 4.0 / PLOS One]
Jesus the King Enters Jerusalem
READ MARK 11:1–13:37
The Gospel of Mark is broken into two major structural parts. Its plot, however, flows along a threefold journey pattern: Jesus’s ministry in Galilee (1:14–9:50), Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem (10:1–52), and Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem (11:1–16:8). These geographical movements have theological significance. Mark wants his readers to understand that Jesus—though he is Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man—is an outsider. To use the summary words of the Gospel of John, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Jesus’s ministry is most fruitful the farther he is from Jerusalem, the spiritual and cultural capital of the Jewish people. As Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem, opposition mounts, resulting finally in his imprisonment, ridicule, torture, and death. This communicates something crucial about Jesus and his ministry: he is not continuing the status quo of established religion; he is bringing something new! This is the gospel message, that God is doing something new to establish his reign on the earth.
This newness and the religious establishment’s opposition to it explain the heightened tension and intensity of Mark’s last sections. The conflict is reaching its climax. So Mark slows the breakneck pace of his story and spends the last section just on Jesus’s last week of life.
Chapter 11 begins on an appropriate high note as the true Son of David approaches and enters the city of David, to great acclaim and praise (11:1–11). But quickly we see that before Jesus can bring about the kingdom of God, there is a necessary cleansing that must take place. This cleansing comes in the form of judgment of the religious leadership, both in their worship (11:12–25) and in their authority/teaching (11:27–12:44). Then Jesus takes on the mantle of prophet and pronounces judgment now and in the future on Jerusalem and the temple (13:1–37). Using language full of poetic imagery (like the Old Testament prophets), Jesus speaks of a time coming when God himself will set the world to rights through the return of the Son of Man. The main point of the Olivet Discourse, as it is commonly called, is not to give detailed information about the “end times” but rather to call Jesus’s disciples to be on guard, avoiding false teachers and false living. In a word, Jesus’s disciples must “Watch!” (13:37), because the new era of the world is beginning.
The Sandwich Technique of Storytelling
The Eschatological Son of Man and Parables of Enoch
Jesus Dies and Rises Again
READ MARK 14:1–16:8
We now arrive at the high point to which the fast-action story of Mark has been heading. This is where the story finds its focus: Jesus’s betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection. If we imagine a soundtrack accompanying these scenes, it would be dark, somber, and foreboding. Each of these stories contributes to the building sense of doom, all the way to the end of chapter 15, when Jesus cries out in God-centered despair (15:33–37).
Throughout these stories we see characters respond in different, somewhat surprising ways to Jesus at the end of his life. We see an unnamed woman lovingly sacrifice her wealth to anoint Jesus for burial (14:1–9), put into sharp contrast with Judas, one of the original twelve disciples, who betrays Jesus’s trust with a kiss of hypocrisy (14:10–11, 43–45). The other disciples don’t betray him but prove to be more fearful than faithful. When Jesus is arrested, they all flee (14:50), and worst of all, Peter even denies that he knows Jesus (14:26–31, 66–72). In a stark and surprising contrast, we are told that a Roman centurion, who has just mocked and beaten Jesus (15:16–20), proclaims Jesus to be the Son of God (15:39). Another disciple, Joseph of Arimathea, finds the courage to ask for Jesus’s body so that he might bury him respectably (15:42–47). The Roman and Jewish authorities both play their parts in putting Jesus to death (14:53–65; 15:1–15).
Figure 7.4. Jesus Cleansing the Temple by Bernardo Bellotto [National Museum in Warsaw / Wikimedia Commons]
The Shema in the New Testament
Though Mark’s story ends as a cliff-hanger (16:8; see the sidebar “Mark in Search of an Ending”), it is not without hope. Jesus does not just die as an example of godly suffering; he rises from the dead and appears to his followers (16:1–8)!
The story that makes sense of this last section of Mark’s story is 14:22–26, the record of what Jesus did and said during his last meal with them. In this “Last Supper” he explains two crucial things about his suffering and death: it is both voluntary and world-changing. First, he is giving over his own body and blood, thus making a new covenant with anyone who would follow him (14:22–24). Second, he promises that he will come again, restoring God’s reign on the earth; at that time there will be rejoicing and fellowshipping together again (14:25). Together in these two sayings we can understand all these climactic events: Jesus’s death and his bodily resurrection. This great Gospel story ends with his disciples believing and awaiting his return to reign.
Mark in Search of an Ending
Implementation—Reading Mark as Christian Scripture Today
In C. S. Lewis’s famous Chronicles of Narnia series the Christ figure is the lion named Aslan. This is an appropriate biblical way to depict Jesus. As the Son of David, the promised king of Israel, he is called “the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (Rev. 5:5). The analogy of a lion is also helpful to think of Jesus as powerful and not to be toyed with. In Lewis’s stories Aslan is admired by those around him, even with a hint of fear at his obvious power. Aslan is devoted to his friends and forceful with his enemies. He is both playful and majestic. So too is the Jesus we encounter in Mark’s Gospel. The impression we get when reading Mark even two thousand years later is that this man Jesus was not someone who could be ignored. He forced people to pay attention to how they thought and acted.
Figure 7.5. Plaque with the lion symbol of Mark (1100) [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.]
And this is what a good reading of Mark should do for us. It is a call first to pay attention to who Jesus is. The answer that Mark gives is strong and beautiful: Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Son of David, the one who frees people from bondage and then dies sacrificially to ransom a people for himself. Directly linked, the second call of Mark is to a life of discipleship. Because of Jesus’s identity and actions, we cannot treat him as irrelevant or tangential to our personal lives. The presence of the Lion will not allow this. To be a Christian, Mark shows us, is to be a radical disciple. We will stumble and fail and misunderstand what God is doing. But we keep following with both fear and joy, just like Jesus’s first disciples, who saw him die and rise again.
Christian Reading Questions
- Trace the theme of the disciples’ reactions to Jesus, noting how Jesus responds to them.
- Read through Mark and make a list of the enemies of Jesus (demons and people) and what happens in their interactions. What does Mark teach us through this?
- Read through the book of 1 Peter and make a list of similarities of language and theme shared with Mark’s Gospel. Why do you think these similarities are present?
- What emotions do you think Mark’s abrupt ending would have evoked within his readers? Why do you think he ended his Gospel so suddenly?