MARK’S GOSPEL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK IN THE WORLD! So says Prof. William Barclay of Scotland, the dean of New Testament Biblical commentators. Why? Because, says he, It is agreed by nearly everyone that Mark is the earliest of all the gospels, and is therefore the first life of Jesus that has come down to us. (Daily Study Bible, Phila: The Westminster Pres, 1956. P. xiii.) In other words, if there had been no Gospel of St. Mark there would have been no Gospels. Period. It is an intriguing thought. And I am indebted to the late Prof. Barclay for many of the ideas in this opening sermon in my series on the Gospel of St. Mark.
I. HOW DO SCHOLARS KNOW WHICH GOSPEL WAS THE FIRST? They don’t. Their theory is based on a highly-educated guess. It is a complicated process and I have no desire to bore you to death with the technical details of what is called the Four-Document Hypothesis developed in the early part of this century by Prof. B. H.Streeter in his famous book The Four Gospels (1924). Suffice to say that when we read the Gospels we see that there are many remarkable similarities between them...especially the first three. The first three are called the synoptic Gospels (from a couple of Greek words meaning: with the same eye). The Gospels often contain the same incident told in exactly the same words. For instance, the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand (the only miracle which appears in all four Gospels) is told in almost exactly the same words and the same way. The correspondence between the first three Gospels is so close that we are forced to one of two conclusions: either all three are taking their material from one common source, or two of the three are based on the third. Scholars lean toward the latter view because a careful comparison indicates that Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark, and made their own additions. There are many similarities; but there are also differences. And those differences often reflect the personality of their respective authors.
WHO, THEN, WAS THE AUTHOR? Indications are that he was the son of a well-to-do woman of Jerusalem whose name was Mary, and whose house was a meeting place for the Early Church (Acts 12:12)Mark was also the nephew of Barnabas, one of Paul’s traveling companions in the preaching of the Gospel. And thereby hangs a tale. When Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey they took Mark along with them as their secretary. (Acts 12:25) This journey was most unfortunate for young Mark, for when they reached Perga Paul proposed that they travel inland, but for some reason Mark left the expedition and went home. (Acts 13:13) He may have been afraid of the dangers which were to face them on what was one of the most difficult and dangerous roads of the ancient world. He may have gone home because he resented the fact that Paul was gaining more and more ascendancy in leadership, while his uncle Barnabas receded into the background. St. John Chrysostom (345?-407) the great preacher and Greek church leader of the 4th century, imaginatively suggested that Mark may have missed his mother! Whatever the reason, Paul and Barnabas had to complete their journey without the young man. When Paul got ready for his second trip, Barnabas suggested that again they take along Mark; but Paul would have none of it. (Acts 15:37-40) Once bitten, twice shy, as they say. So serious was their disagreement that they parted company. and, as far as we know, never worked together again. Paul took another man named Silas, and Barnabas took Mark and off they went in different directions. But it all worked out to the glory of God - for now the Gospel had two teams out preaching! This reminds me of the story of John Wesley, who made a very unfortunate marriage late in life. His wife was a nag - never giving him a minute’s peace, so that poor John felt more comfortable saddling up his horse and going about England on preaching missions. But, as Halford Luccock used to say: The whole thing worked out to the glory of God; for England might never have been evangelized if Wesley could have had a quiet cup of tea at home! Surely, God moves in a mysterious way!
Mark drops from sight for some years, and when he appears again it is in a most amazing way. When Paul wrote to the Colossians from Rome, he says that Mark is there in prison with him (Col. 4:10) In another prison letter, Philemon, Paul numbers Mark among his fellow-laborers. (vs. 24) And when Paul was awaiting death and very near the end, he wrote to another young preacher named Timothy, and said: Take Mark and bring him with you; for he is very useful in serving me. A remarkable turn-around of opinion, that! Whatever happened along the way, Mark had redeemed himself. And, notice the vagaries of chance: if Barnabas had not had faith in young John Mark, we might never have gotten this Gospel.
Now, The value of any person’s story depends upon his or her sources of information. So, we must ask: where did Mark get his information about the life of Jesus Christ? From his close associations with the Christian community, no doubt. From his listening to the preaching of Paul and his uncle Barnabas, no doubt. But there is a very early tradition which says that Mark had a source of information better than even those, excellent though they be. Toward the end of the second century there was a man called Papias who said that Mark’s Gospel was nothing less than a record of the preaching of the apostle Peter, the leader of the apostolic band. Indeed, he stood so close to Peter that the Big Fisherman could refer to him as Mark, my son. (I Peter 5:13) If this tradition be true (and I am suggesting that it is) then you can understand some things about the Gospel of St. Mark. Why, for instance, this Gospel does not have any account of the birth of Jesus. Of course not; Peter had not yet come on board and had no knowledge of the events recorded by Matthew and Luke which we read with such delight at Christmas time. It may be that Mark (and, indeed, Peter) spent all of their lives without ever hearing about the miraculous event called the Virgin Birth, which seems so important to some Christians. It gives us something to think about.
There is one further interesting thing about Mark’s Gospel. In its original form the gospel stops at 16:8. We know that for two reasons. One, the verses which follow are not in any of the great early manuscripts. Two, the style of Greek is so different that they cannot have been written by the same person. In some editions of the Revised Standard Version they are in small italics at the end. But the Gospel cannot have been meant to stop there—for they were afraid. That is no place to stop. What happened? It may be that Mark died, perhaps as a martyr, before he could complete the Gospel. More likely, at one time only one copy of the Gospel remained and the ending got torn off mid-sentence.There was a time when the church did not use Mark very much. It may be that they preferred the other Gospels which are fuller and more complete, and they looked with disdain on this incomplete scroll with the torn-off ending.And so it ended up in second place in our New Testaments.
II. EACH OF THE FOUR GOSPELS TELLS THE STORY OF JESUS IN A DIFFERENT WAY. Each has its own characteristic view-point. It is natural that this would be so - and adds to their credibility. If you have four reports of a traffic accident at the corner of State and Huron, and they agree on every detail, then something is fishy. There are going to be differences of detail and emphasis in a true, as opposed to a made-up, story. Let’s just list a few difference we find in this Gospel in which we are going to spend the coming year:
1.) It is the closest thing we will ever have to a report on Jesus’ life. Now,none of the Gospel writers, set out to write biography. Not at all. They were out to write Gospel -Good News. (Mark’s Gospel is the only one that actually calls itself such.) Its purpose, like the purpose of a good sermon is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person. Nevertheless, Mark’s Gospel bursts with realism. You get the feeling of an eyewitness, that the writer was really there-and that you, reading his words, are also there.
2.) There is no Gospel which gives us such a human picture of Jesus. One of Mark’s favorite titles for Jesus was Son of Man,( which, by the way, in the first century meant more than a mere representative of humanity. It had divine connotations to it.) But Mark’s picture of Jesus is so human that the other Gospel writers sometimes alter it a bit because they are afraid of what Mark said. Mark was so impressed with the humanity of Jesus that it became an embarrassment to the other Gospel writers. To Mark, Jesus is simply the carpenter.(6:3) Later on Matthew changes that to the carpenter’s son. No one tells us so much about the emotions of Jesus as does Mark. Jesus sighs, gets angry, gets weary, is moved with compassion, feels the pangs of hunger. In Mark’s Gospel we get the picture of a Jesus very much like us. One fellow Methodist preacher says of Mark: ...for Mark, the real Jesus, the real Christ, the real Lord of our lives, was very much of flesh and blood - very much of emotion and feeling. In the Christ of Mark, the adrenalin can flow, the face can flush, and the voice can be raised in angry tones. For Mark, you did not know Christ - the Christ of God - until you knew that God had expressed Himself through very human features, indeed, like yours and mine.
How comforting that ought to be for all of us! How much we - each of us - need to know that God can be expressed where tears flow, and blood boils, and muscles tense, and bodies tremble.. We need to know God can speak in and to and through our common humanity. For this is who we are, after all. And if God is to be real in our own lives, God must use such human material as we all are! (Paul C.Van Dine, Master Sermon Series, 2/84, Cathedral Publishers, 1984, p. 55) In Mark, the humanity of Jesus shines through!
3.) But so does the divinity! Mark begins his Gospel by clearly stating: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He leaves us no doubt who and what he believed Jesus to be.He reports not only the divine voice at Jesus’ Baptism proclaiming Jesus to be Someone Special, but also the Transfiguration of Jesus. Through the whole story there runs a mysterious undercurrent. There is mystery about this Man. He possesses powers which strike people with awe and astonishment. To Mark, Jesus was not merely a man among men, but God among humankind, ever moving the minds of humanity to wonder and amazement at His words and deeds.
4.) Mark gives us little details that the other Gospels miss. Both Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus taking a little child and setting him in the midst. But Mark tells us that Jesus took the child up into his arms. (Mark 10:13-16) All the tenderness of Jesus comes through in these little touches. When Mark is telling about the feeding of the Five Thousand, he alone tells us that they sat down in rows of hundreds and fifties, and how they looked like vegetable beds in a garden. (6:4) When the disciples were on that last journey to Jerusalem, only Mark tells us that Jesus went before them (10:32) and in that one phrase, Jesus stands out. When Mark tells the story of the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee (whose waves can go from one foot to twelve feet in less than an hour, due to winds from the Golan heights), only Mark tells us that Jesus was in the hold of the ship asleep on a pillow. (4:38) Wouldn’t you like to know who brought along that pillow for the Lord? I would!
Another very minor detail: there is in Mark’s Gospel a strange story of a young man in the garden of Gethsemane who in his haste to get away from the guards, left behind his loincloth...thus becoming the first streaker in history.(Mark 14:51-52 ) Well, consider the possibility that the man who left behind his loincloth, was St. Mark himself, and in this odd passage he has left behind his signature.It is a possibility.
III. MARK’S FAVORITE WORD IS IMMEDIATELY. It occurs in the Gospel some 36 times. Mark was always in a hurry. Mark’s Jesus was always in a hurry (save when he took time to stop to heal and to bless little children.) As Frederick Buechner says, in this Gospel Jesus himself races by, scattering miracles like rice at a wedding. (Peculiar Treasures, New York: Harper & Row, 1979 p. 97) Jesus is in a hurry. Mark’s disciples are in a hurry to respond to Jesus. Immediately they leave their nets and follow Him. Mark rushes on with a breathless attempt to make the story as real and alive to others as it is to him. It is an exciting Gospel! In reading Mark, we are impressed with the relentless activity of Christ. Here you do not meet a Jesus of contemplation and calmness and reflection, but rather a Christ of action who calls others to action. And decision.
The Gospel is filled with the verbs of faith. Down through the centuries most Christians have gotten themselves hung up on the adjectives of faith. But for the Bible, it is the verbs that count. (That is why I prefer the Creed of the United Church of Canada. It is much more Biblical, much more Hebraic in its thrust. It is filled with verbs, rather than adjectives. It does not try to describe who God is, but proclaims instead what God does. It is filled with verbs, not adjectives.) Someone asked the late ambassador W. Averell Harriman, chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam, How is your French? He replied, candidly, My French is excellent, all except for the verbs. (Like A Mighty Army, Selected Letters of Simeon Stylites, Halford E. Luccock, New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, p.127) Anyone who has struggled with French irregular verbs can sympathize. But his remark is paralleled by an admission which might be made by all too many Christians: Our religion is excellent - all except the verbs. We have all sorts of wonderful adjectives: holy sacred, divine, etc., We even have some pretty good nouns to go with them. But we are short on verbs. Mark is filled with the great verbs of our faith: Come! Repent! Go! In Mark, we are faced with a choice. We are called to leave our nets (whatever they may be) those nets that hold us back and keep us from becoming what God had in mind when he created us; called to cast them off, and to rise up and follow Christ. The Christian life is not so much contemplation as it is commitment. I am indebted to the Rev. Paul Van Dine of Cypress Lake United Methodist Church in Forty Myers, Fla. for the following illustration (Ibid., p. 57) He tells the story of a wife who came to the living room one day after having answered the front door. There’s a man at the door who wants to see you about a bill you owe, she told her husband. What does he look like? the husband inquired. He looks like you’d better pay him, the wife declared. Well, this is part of the decisiveness involved in Mark’s portrayal of the Christ. If you ever confront Him, you have to make some decision concerning Him, take some action, DO something. The time for adjectives is over. The time for verbs has come. Go, Come, Follow, says the Jesus of St. Mark. And He looks like you’d better follow Him!
Frederick Buechner writes: Mark ends his book, as he begins it, almost in the middle of a sentence. There was no time to gather up all the loose ends. The world itself was the loose ends, and all history would hardly be enough to gather them up in. The women went to the tomb and found it empty. A young man in white was sitting there - on the right, Mark says, not on the left. He has risen, the young man said. Go tell his disciples. And Peter, Mark adds, unlike Matthew and Luke again. Was it because he’d known Peter and the old man wanted his name there? So the women ran out as if the place was on fire, which in a way of course it was, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. Later editors added a few extra verses to round things off, but that’s where Mark ended it. In mid-air.S (Ibid., pp. 98-99) THE REST, I GUESS, IS UP TO US.