IN THE GLARE of the Jerusalem sun, Jews from every nation jostle each other to get a closer look and to hear twelve men speak about God’s most recent display of power. One man named Peter raises his voice to address a crowd some fifty days after his Master was crucified in this very city. He solemnly declares that the Holy Spirit has come upon them, inaugurating the new age.
“Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2:22–24)
In this speech we have the basic outline of Mark’s Gospel, which tells more fully the story of what happened. What was hidden during Jesus’ public ministry can now be made public to clarify the basis of the Christian faith in Jesus.
The Title of the Gospel
THE OPENING OF Mark’s Gospel (1:1) is as abrupt as its ending (16:8). Does this first verse function as a subtitle introducing the subject matter of the first few verses? Is it the beginning of a clause that ends in verse 3? Or is it the title of the whole work? If the first option is correct, then it simply announces that what follows in the next verses launches the story of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. In this case, the story this Gospel tells has its beginning with the preaching of John the Baptizer and Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness. No other subtitles appear in the Gospel, however, which makes this interpretation less likely. The second option takes this opening line as the beginning of a sentence that concludes with the scriptural citation in verses 2–3: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God, as written by Isaiah the prophet …”; this interpretation affirms that the beginning of the gospel story accords with Isaiah’s promise of long ago, thus matching the apostles’ preaching in Acts, which traced the beginning of the story to the baptism of John (Acts 1:22; 10:37; 13:24–25).
The third option for interpreting this opening line reads it as the title of the whole Gospel (1:2–16:8): “The beginning of the proclamation of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (full stop). Modern readers are accustomed to books with attractive dust jackets trumpeting the title of the work and the name of the author, appealing graphics designed to grab the attention of potential buyers, and a snappy blurb summarizing its contents and recommending its purchase. The opening pages of modern books include a title page, a foreword, a preface, and an introduction to provide the reader with some background information before they begin to read. Ancient writers did not have such luxuries, but they did try to alert the reader to the scope of the work with a title or introductory phrase. The opening line, “the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” tells us what this work is about.1 It immediately informs the reader that the story this book recounts is no typical one.
If this interpretation is correct, then the whole Gospel of Mark is about a beginning. One advantage of this reading is that it sheds light on the perplexing ending, where Mark abruptly quits his story: The women flee from the tomb, trembling with fright, and say nothing to anyone (16:8). Mark does not finish the story because the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection and his going before his disciples to Galilee is not the final stage. The reader cannot put the book down at the closing line and chalk it up as a good read. The story of the gospel about Jesus Christ continues. On the one hand, the reader knows that the fearful silence of these women could not have been the end of the matter. Something else must have happened, or else we would not be hearing or reading this Gospel. On the other hand, the reader must ask questions: How will the fear of the women be vanquished? How will their mouths be opened? How will the word of good news get out? The answers to such questions can only be found by returning to the beginning “where the reader is reminded that it is all a beginning.” Mark must now be reread and reheard “with 20/20 hindsight.”2 The conclusion to this story is only the beginning of the proclamation of good news about Jesus Christ that goes on to the end of time and to the ends of the earth (13:10; 14:9).3 The Greek word arche (“beginning”) can also indicate the basis or foundation of something, as in the sentence, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10). This Gospel is more than just a chronicle of the genesis of God’s good news. It is the ground of the church’s proclamation of that good news.4
The Gospel
THE TITLE CONTAINS three key terms that are vital for understanding what this work is about: the gospel, Christ, and Son of God. The first term, the gospel, did not yet refer to a literary genre (a book telling the story of the life and teaching of Jesus) when Mark wrote. The word appears in 1:14, 15; 8:35; 10:29; 13:10; 14:9 and refers to what is preached about God or about Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. It refers to the whole story about Jesus that not only is narrated in the text but is also told in oral tradition and must supplement the text—the words, deeds, death, and resurrection of Jesus and what it all means as God’s act to save humankind.
While the term gospel is as familiar as water to most modern readers, it had a variety of associations in the first century. In calling the story of Jesus Christ “the gospel,” Mark gives the term a twist that would have surprised first-century readers, particularly in Rome. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the verb from which this noun is derived (euangelizo) was used for the proclamation of the news of victory from the battlefield. Cranfield notes, however, that most of the inhabitants of the Roman empire would have associated the word with the emperor cult, which represented the announcements of such events as the birth of an heir to the emperor, his coming of age, and his accession to the throne as glad tidings or gospels.5 These imperial glad tidings “represent the pretentious claims of self-important men” and the fawning flattery of their vassals. A frequently cited inscription from the Roman province of Asia decrees that the birthday of the emperor Augustus (September 23) would now mark the beginning of the year when persons assumed civil office. It was filled with exaggerated praise:
… it is a day which we may justly count as equivalent to the beginning of everything—if not in itself and in its own nature, at any rate in the benefits it brings—inasmuch as it has restored the shape of everything that was failing and turning into misfortune, and has given a new look to the Universe at a time when it would gladly have welcomed destruction if Caesar had not been born to be the common blessing of all men.
The decree resolves that:
Whereas the Providence which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a benefactor among men, and by sending in him, as it were, a saviour for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, to create order everywhere … and whereas the birthday of the God [Augustus] was the beginning for the world of the glad tidings that have come to men through him … Paulus Fabius Maximus, the proconsul of the province … has devised a way of honouring Augustus hitherto unknown to the Greeks, which is that the reckoning of time for the course of human life should begin with his birth.6
What constitutes good news in this edict is the cessation of wars and the bringing of benefits and social order. Succeeding emperors became even more enamored with themselves and claimed to bring new and greater benefits. Those who profited were the usual recipients of favor, the privileged and powerful. The glad tidings about Jesus, by contrast, are significantly different. (1) It has its origins in God (Rom. 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor. 11:7; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8; 1 Peter 4:17), who is the beginning and end of all things and the true source of blessing for humankind. (2) The good news cannot be separated from what Jesus said and did as the one who came to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The emperors of Rome belong to the dim past, and we do not think of them in any way as a present reality. One is more likely to ask, “Who was Augustus?” than “Who is Augustus?” By contrast, Jesus’ work abides in the present because we ask, “Who is Jesus who continues to reign in the hearts of his subjects?”7 (3) The peace and the benefits that Jesus brings do not come from crushing resistance with military terror but from his death on the cross. Consequently, Christianity does not offer a series of gospels with each succeeding ruler but only one, the gospel. (4) The benefits are universal and bestowed on everyone. They are offered to the outcast, the sinner, and the poor, Jew and Gentile alike, not just to the privileged few. This story is truly good news for the entire world.
The Christ
THE GOSPEL IS about “Jesus Christ.” The term Christ means “anointed one” and would have sounded strange to Greek ears.8 Mark offers no further explanation about the meaning of the word, which suggests that his intended audience was already familiar with it as well as with much of the story. Many characters in the Gospel, however, will use the title but have no idea of what it means for Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ. As the story unfolds, it becomes plain that one must throw out all preconceptions of what Christ means. Only after Jesus’ death and resurrection can one understand the momentous nature of the news that he is God’s Christ.
The title Christ quickly assumed the force of a proper name and has completely lost its original force for the modern reader. Some today may even assume that “Christ” is Jesus’ surname, as the son of Joseph and Mary Christ. Others may consider it to be some foreign, generic title of lordship: the holy Christ (like Shah, Rajah, or Kaiser). Christians may simply presume that it refers to the one and only Christ, in whom we believe. For the Greek-speaking Jews of Jesus’ day, however, Christ (= Messiah) was a title of the one anointed by God to carry out specific tasks related to the liberation of Israel. The term probably evoked a constellation of hopes for different Jews.
Views about the role of the Christ, when he would come, how he would be recognized, and what precisely he would do, varied.9 A few well-situated Jews were quite satisfied with the status quo and probably cared less about such speculation except as it threatened their power base. Among the rest, there was general agreement that the Messiah would be Moses-like in delivering the nation of Israel, that he would establish his throne in Jerusalem like David, that he would smash those who made the people suffer, as did the saviors of old (Neh. 9:27), and that he would rule with justice and restore the lost fortunes of the nation. Like Cyrus, also identified as God’s anointed (Isa. 45:1), the Messiah would subdue nations before him and make kings run in his service. No longer would Israel be the footstool of heathen overlords but would take its proper place of ascendancy in the world. The author of the Psalms of Solomon voiced this dream in the first century B.C.
See, Lord, and raise up for them their king,
the son of David, to rule over your servant Israel
in the time known to you, O God.
Undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers,
to purge Jerusalem from gentiles
who trample her to destruction;
in wisdom and in righteousness to drive out
the sinners from the inheritance;
to smash the arrogance of sinners
like a potter’s jar;
To shatter all their substance with an iron rod;
to destroy the unlawful nations with the word of his mouth;
At his warning the nations will flee from his presence;
and he will condemn sinners by the thoughts of their hearts (17:21–25).10
This kind of false hope helped spark the disastrous revolt against Rome in A.D. 66. The first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, contends that the Jewish rebels were provoked to war by their misunderstanding of an “ambiguous oracle in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that time one from their country would become king of the world.”11
Obviously, proclaiming one who was crucified to be the Christ must have created a severe case of cognitive dissonance for both the early Christians and their Jewish counterparts, whom they were trying to convince. Jesus won no decisive victories worthy of historical mention anywhere but in the Gospels, and these were spiritual triumphs. John the Baptist gets more press in Josephus’s account of Jewish history of this era than Jesus does. What little he did write about Jesus has been heavily edited by later Christian copyists. Jesus established no earthly reign. Rome still ruled the world with an iron hand. When Mark wrote, the Roman juggernaut was either about to or had already exacted severe retribution for Israel’s rebellion by sacking Jerusalem and burning the temple. Jesus the Messiah had come and gone, and the golden age had not arrived. Consequently, it was easy for many Jews to dismiss him as another dismal failure.
What was even more absurd, Jesus had been crucified like a criminal. Paul himself cites the theological hitch that a crucified Messiah created: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Gal. 3:13; cf. Deut. 21:23). Justin Martyr, in his record of an exchange with Rabbi Trypho about the Christian faith, cites Daniel 7 in an attempt to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Trypho remains unpersuaded and responds: “Sir, these and suchlike passages of scripture compel us to await One who is great and glorious, and takes the everlasting Kingdom from the Ancient of Days as Son of Man. But this your so-called Christ is without honour and glory, so that He has even fallen into the uttermost curse that is in the Law of God, for he was crucified.”12 From a Jewish standpoint, a crucified Messiah was an oxymoron, like calling a prisoner on death row, “Mr. President.”
For Mark to say without apology that Jesus was the Christ, the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes, her liberator, the one who ushered in the reign of God and who reigns triumphantly at the right hand of God, was and should still be startling if not incredible. The Christian gospel is, as Paul said, a stumbling block to Jews and sheer nonsense to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:23). From a pagan standpoint, it could be taken as further evidence of Jewish delusions. Years before, Cicero mocked Israel’s faith and hope by declaring that it has “made it clear how far it enjoys divine protection by the fact that it has been conquered, scattered, enslaved.”13 In bridging the context to our contemporary situation, we need to recapture the scandal of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, who exposes our false hopes and selfish expectations.
The Son of God
THE PHRASE “SON of God” does not appear in all early copies of Mark. Jesus as God’s Son, however, is an important theme in Mark’s Gospel. The inclusion of this title in the opening line could be the original reading that a scribe accidentally omitted.14 The title emerges at pivotal junctures in the story: the baptism (1:11), the transfiguration (9:7), and the crucifixion (15:39). Jittery demons also shout out this title (3:11; 5:7), and it appears on the lips of the outraged high priest when he asks point blank if Jesus is the “Christ, the Son of the Blessed One” (14:61). Jesus responds unambiguously, “I am.” (14:62). For Mark, being the Christ and the Son of God is one and the same thing.
The Beginning
GOD IS A God of beginnings. The good news of Mark is that God begins again with the chosen people by sending his Son. At the end of the Gospel, however, things look far more gloomy. The women slink away from the empty tomb and are mute from fear. Failure, denial, and fear are not the end of the story, however. When things seem to end, there is a new beginning. The gospel is good news because one can begin again. One may wonder how these discredited disciples could ever emerge as leaders of a growing church and fulfill their mission, but we know that their failure was not fatal. Neither is ours. God is the one who consistently makes something out of nothing. What seems like the end, and a pathetic one at that, is only a new beginning. God will continue to work with and revive the people. Mark makes it clear that “the church exists because of what God has done in Christ, not because of any outstanding abilities in its first members.”15 The gospel proclaims that the one “who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).
As far as Mark is concerned, the story cannot end when the women tell the news or when the disciples rendezvous with Jesus in Galilee. This explains why he does not report either event, as do the other Evangelists. Christianity is not a closed book, and Christian readers are the latest chapter in a continuing story of God’s good news. The question for us is, therefore, the same as it was for those early disciples, “Where do we go from here?” The next stage is up to us. How will we continue the story? Will we cower in fear or boldly proclaim the glad tidings of Jesus to the world?
Contemporary Significance
IN PROCLAIMING THE glad tidings, one should reexamine what is good news about our message concerning Jesus Christ. False gospels still abound. In the secular world, politicians promise, like the emperors of old, that happy days will be here again with their offer of a New Deal, a New Frontier, the Great Society, or a New World Order. Tyrants inaugurate such things as the Thousand-Year Reich and the Great Leap Forward, but life seems to remain pretty much the same. The oppressed remain oppressed, and the poor are still downtrodden. Hatred and prejudice are still at home in our communities. In the religious world, the good news about Jesus Christ is watered down to good advice. People are told to be kind, to smile a lot, to love all creatures, to think positively, and to feel good about themselves. But the true gospel about Jesus Christ is something far more radical and explosive. It has to do with God’s redemptive action in Jesus, which reveals God’s love for humans and judgment on human sin and satanic evil.
Albert Einstein once said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”16 The gospel proclaims, however, that God is involved with the very depths of human trouble and shame and allows the Son of God to be treated ingloriously on the cross to effect our redemption. It reveals that God comes to us in the din of huge crowds, soldiers shooting dice, and priests raging, and in the great darkness when the Son of God drinks the cup of suffering on a cross. In the crown of thorns and the shame of death, we can see the crown of majesty and the victory of God. The gospel also furnishes a new basis for our relationship to God and our relationship to each other. Our relationship to God is based on unmerited forgiveness. Even disobedient disciples, who abandon Jesus in Gethsemane, deny him with curses, and are muzzled by fear, find forgiveness and the chance to begin again through God’s power. Jesus’ death calls into being a new humanity based on faith in him, not on the biological limitations of clans and tribes. It creates a community based on compassion and a new inclusive sense of family.
The shock that the crucified Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Son, makes clear that God cannot and will not be confined by finite human expectations. This is the God who made the platypus, a mammal so unmammal-like that expert scientists declared it a hoax when it was first sent to the British Museum. The religious experts of Jesus’ day rejected him because he did not fit any preconceived notions of what the Jewish Messiah would be or do. We today are little different from first-century Jews and the disciples in wanting a Messiah who does our bidding, wins our wars, destroys our enemies, and exalts us. Throughout Mark, the disciples display a delight in power, glorious achievements, and personal ambition; they want a Messiah who is above suffering and who will give them their heart’s desires. We too want a Messiah who graciously adapts his will to our desires and needs and is dedicated to serve us rather than all humankind. The Messiah we meet in Mark is a rude awakening to those who are more interested in themselves and in ensuring their personal salvation and entrance to eternal life (10:17) than in God or the fate of God’s world. Michael Card captures this reality in his lyrics to “Scandalon.”
Along the path of life there lies this stubborn Scandalon
And all who come this way must be offended.
To some He is a barrier; to others He’s the way,
For all should know the scandal of believing.17
As was the case during Jesus’ ministry, so today many will not believe or will try to mold Christ into their own images by telling him who he is and what he is to do. They want glamorous, gimmicky, short-term solutions to their own problems. Many try to domesticate the scandal, turn the cross into jewelry, and turn the Christ into a teacher of self-actualization. The Gospel of Mark is the antidote to this distortion as it presents the foundation story of the gospel about Jesus Christ, who suffers and dies on a cross.
Authorship
MODERN AUTHORS USUALLY want full credit for their work, but the anonymous author of this Gospel wanted only to present the good news about Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. He had no desire to reap accolades from the church for his work. The power and authority of this Gospel do not derive from the prestige or credentials of its human author. Nevertheless, we are curious about the one who first took pen in hand and wove together the oral traditions about Jesus into a connected narrative. The earliest testimony connects Mark’s name to the Gospel. It comes from Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, who wrote the Interpretation of the Lord’s Oracles (written sometime between 110 and 130). His work is lost, but the early church historian Eusebius cites portions of it, including this curious comment about Mark’s Gospel:
And the Elder said this also: “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord, but not however in order.” For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him, but afterwards, as I said, Peter, who adapted his teachings to the needs of his hearers, but not as though he were drawing up a connected account of the Lord’s oracles. So then Mark made no mistake in thus recording some things just as he remembered them. For he took forethought for one thing, not to omit any of the things that he had heard nor to state them falsely.18
Most other patristic comments about Mark are variants of this statement. We will look briefly at Mark as the author, the relationship of this Gospel to Peter, and the statement that he did not write “in order.”
Although some modern scholars question whether Papias knew what he was talking about,19 the early attribution of this Gospel to Mark is credible. Why would the church want to credit someone who was not one of the Twelve for writing this work if it were not so? Hengel argues convincingly that the title “The Gospel According to …” would not have been some late addition but derives from the time when the Gospels were distributed to other communities. They needed a title for hearers to know what was being read and to know what it was that was on the bookshelf.20 Had the Gospels been sent anonymously, each community would probably have given them a different title.
Modern scholarship also challenges Papias’s statement about Mark’s relationship to Peter. But that too may be accepted (see 1 Peter 5:13). Hengel argues that the writing of this Gospel would not have been entrusted to a Mr. Nobody but to a recognized teacher in the church who could appeal to an even greater authority.21 To think that just anyone could write a Gospel that early Christians would accept as authoritative stretches credibility. Matthew and Luke testify to Mark’s authority since they allowed themselves to be guided by him when they wrote their own Gospels. Matthew confers even greater prominence to Peter in his Gospel, which reveals the authority he invests in this apostle. It is not unreasonable to assume that Mark’s Gospel, therefore, reflects the teaching of the apostle Peter, just as Papias reported.
This relationship to Peter does not mean that the author of this Gospel is the same John Mark that we meet in Acts (12:12, 25; 13:4, 13) and the fellow worker of Paul (Col. 4:10; Philem. 24; 2 Tim. 4:11). Mark was one of the most common names in the Roman world, both in Greek (Markos) and in Latin (Marcus), and there were probably several Marks in the early church. One should therefore refrain from any fanciful recreations of the Evangelist’s career on the basis of the disparate New Testament references to Mark. Mark writes so that Jesus will be the center of attention, not himself.
Papias’s comment that Mark “wrote down accurately whatever he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord, but not however in order” is difficult. What did he mean by “in order”? Papias may be comparing Mark unfavorably to Matthew’s more ordered arrangement or the three-year chronological arrangement of Jesus’ life in the Fourth Gospel.22 He does not intend to criticize Mark but to defend the Gospel in spite of presumed inadequacies.
Setting
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW that Mark was written in Rome toward the end of or shortly after the Jewish war is still the most probable setting for this Gospel.23 Wherever it was composed, Mark should be read as a pastoral response to stressful times. The church faced major crises in the 60s. Christians had to cope with the death of eyewitnesses, which created the need to conserve and stabilize the traditions about Jesus. We learn from Tacitus (cited below) that the church in Rome was subject to vicious gossip and hostility (see also 1 Peter 2:15; 3:13–16; 4:12) and needed to fend off attacks from various quarters. Christians had to deflect government suspicion of them as a potentially subversive group. They also had to defend themselves against religious rivals who would foil the church’s growth. What did Christians know of the origin of their faith? How could they respond confidently to the misrepresentations without knowing or having an account of what happened to their Founder, who was executed by sentence of a Roman magistrate?24 Mark compiled a written record of the preaching of Peter and perhaps others to edify the church and to aid it in the task of proclaiming the gospel in the Greco-Roman world.
Mark also composed his Gospel to encourage Christians facing increasingly trying conditions and to remind them of the foundation of their faith. Except for isolated local confrontations, Christians were relatively ignored until A.D. 64. Things changed dramatically, however, after a disastrous fire swept Rome that year. Ten of the city’s fourteen wards were destroyed. After the initial shock, rumors began to fill the still smoky air that the fire had been part of Nero’s urban renewal scheme. Nero attempted to squelch the rumors with a program of tax relief, food giveaways, and rebuilding. When the gossip persisted, he found a scapegoat in the Christians. Tacitus reports:
Neither all human endeavor, nor all imperial largess, nor all the modes of placating the gods, could stifle the scandal or banish the belief that the [great Roman] fire had taken place by order. Therefore to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost exquisite cruelty, a class loathed for their abominations, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom the name is derived, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. Checked for the moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself—that receptacle for everything hideous and degraded from every quarter of the globe, which there finds a vogue. Accordingly, arrest was first made of those who confessed [to being Christians]; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as for hatred of the human race. Every sort of derision was added to their deaths: they were wrapped in the skins of wild beasts and dismembered by dogs, others were nailed to crosses; others when daylight failed, were set afire to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle and gave an exhibition in the circus, mingling with the people in the costume of a charioteer or mounted on a car. Hence even for criminals who merited extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of pity, due to the impression that they were being destroyed, not for the public good, but to gratify the cruelty of a single man.25
The mass arrest of Christians changed things. Admission to being a Christian led to death. This unparalleled suffering resulted in a brave martyrdom for some and a panicked collapse for others. To undergird Christians in their faith, Mark showed the similarity between what Jesus faced and what they were facing. They could hear of how their Lord had been driven into the desert to do battle with Satan (1:12). Mark is the only Gospel to record that Jesus was with the wild beasts in the desert (1:13). As Christians were misrepresented as atheists and haters of humankind, so Jesus was falsely accused of being in league with the devil (3:21, 30). As they were framed by trumped-up charges, so Jesus was framed by false witnesses (14:56–59). As they were betrayed by intimates, so Jesus was betrayed by an intimate friend, one of the Twelve (14:43–46).
Mark also reminds his readers that Jesus predicted that persecution would come (13:1–13). He spoke openly of his own suffering and death and warned his disciples that they would not escape tribulation. Conditions would go from bad to worse. Cross-bearing was an integral part of discipleship (8:34–38); and for some, it had become a literal reality. Mark records that Jesus promised his followers rewards but only “with … persecutions” (10:29–30). He warned that those who have no root in themselves endure for a while and then immediately fall away at the first sign of persecution on account of the word (4:17). He also warned that they would be salted with fire and that salt that loses its savor could not be resalted (9:49). Mark vividly records Jesus’ suffering and his complete abandonment in his moment of trial. One learns from this Gospel, however, that Jesus never abandons his followers, though, at times, he may seem to be absent. The disciples in a boat tossed by the waves may panic in fear and think that Jesus does not care that they are perishing, but he is with them. When he speaks, the winds cease, demons flee, and the dead rise.
Jesus’ presence not only brings peace, his behavior under the most severe persecution sets an example for his followers, who must be conformed to him. He made his bold confession before the authorities (14:62; 15:2). He endured the bone-tipped flagellum of the guards in silence. At the end, a Roman soldier, seeing how he died, confesses, “Surely this man was the Son of God” (15:39).
The church in Rome not only faced virulent persecution, the whole world seemed to be coming apart at the seams with the tumult of civil and international wars as well. People faced danger from within—from false fears, false hopes, and false prophets. Tacitus gravely describes the chaotic times of the late 60s:
The history on which I am entering is that of a period rich in disasters, terrible with battles, torn by civil struggles, horrible even in peace. Four emperors fell by the sword; there were three civil wars, more foreign wars, and often both at the same time…. Italy was distressed by disasters unknown before or returning after the lapse of the ages…. Beside the manifold misfortunes that befell mankind there were prodigies in the sky and on the earth, warnings given by thunderbolts, and prophecies of the future, both joyful and gloomy, uncertain and clear.26
Not only did Christians have to contend with the civil unrest in Rome, they also had to make sense of the disastrous revolt in Judea against Rome. The Jewish rebellion against Rome in A.D. 66 met with initial success, but inevitably the tide turned. The formidable Roman army made its way through Galilee with its scorched earth policy and by the time Mark wrote, had either besieged Jerusalem (A.D. 69) or recently sacked the city and burned the temple to the ground (A.D. 70). Paul’s letter to the Romans suggests that the Roman Christian community had close ties with the Jerusalem community, and the imminent destruction of the city or its recent destruction would strike most believers as a sign of the end of this world. Mark flashes across the screen Jesus’ warning about wars and rumors of wars and the destruction of the temple in chapter 13. Jesus predicts tumults and the destruction of the temple and warns that the end is not yet (13:7, 20, 27). Disciples must keep a constant spiritual vigil and must continue to proclaim the gospel in the face of brutal hostility. The Son of Man’s return to gather his elect awaits an unknown day and hour. In the meantime, Jesus calls disciples to overcome their fear and to bear witness in and through their sufferings. Mark does not complain about the inhumane suffering that Christians undergo but shows that persecution should lead to confession—the confession by Christians that leads to the confession of others (15:39).