Barclay on the Lectionary: Mark, Year B

William Barclay

• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780861537976
• eBook ISBN: 9780861538003

Based on the Sunday Lectionary pattern of readings set for Year B, these deeply insightful narratives by one of the world's best-loved New Testament commentators are instantly enthralling and ideal for worship leaders, individuals and groups.

The First Sunday of Advent

The Necessity of Thanksgiving and His Coming Again

1 Corinthians 1:3–9

In this passage of thanksgiving, three things stand out.

(1) There is the promise which came true. When Paul preached Christianity to the Corinthians, he told them that Christ could do certain things for them, and now he proudly claims that all that he pledged that Christ could do has come true. A missionary told one of the ancient Scottish kings: ‘If you will accept Christ, you will find wonder upon wonder – and every one of them true.’ In the last analysis, we cannot argue anyone into Christianity; we can only say: ‘Try it and see what happens,’ in the certainty that, if that challenge is taken up, the claims we make for it will all come true.

(2) There is the gift which has been given. Paul here uses a favourite word of his. It is charisma, which means a gift freely given to someone, a gift which was not deserved and which could never have been earned by that individual’s own efforts. This gift of God, as Paul saw it, comes in two ways.

(a) Salvation is the charisma of God. To enter into a right relationship with God is something which we could never achieve ourselves. It is an unearned gift, coming from the sheer generosity of the love of God (cf. Romans 6:23).

(b) It gives to each of us whatever special gifts we may possess and whatever special equipment we may have for life (1 Corinthians 12:4–10; 1 Timothy 4:14; 1 Peter 4:10). If we have the gift of speech or the gift of healing, if we have the gift of music or of any art, if we have the gift to use our hands creatively, all these are gifts from God. If we fully realized that, it would bring a new atmosphere and character into life. Such skills as we possess are not our own achievement; they are gifts from God, and, therefore, they are held in trust. They are to be used not as we want to use them but as God wants us to use them; not for our profit or prestige but for the glory of God and the good of all.

(3) There is the ultimate end. In the Old Testament, the phrase the day of the Lord keeps recurring. It was the day when the Jews expected God to break directly into history, the day when the old world would be wiped out and the new world born, the day when everyone would be judged. The Christians took over this idea, only they took the day of the Lord in the sense of the day of the Lord Jesus, and regarded it as the day on which Jesus would come back in all his power and glory.

That indeed would be a day of judgement. Caedmon, the eighth-century English saint and poet, drew a picture in one of his poems about the day of judgement. He imagined the cross set in the centre of the world; and from the cross there streamed a strange light which had a penetrating X-ray quality about it and stripped the disguises from things and showed them as they were. It is Paul’s belief that, when the ultimate judgement comes, those who are in Christ can meet even that unafraid, because they will be clothed not in their own merits but in the merits of Christ so that no one will be able to impeach them.

Mark 13:24–37

Here Jesus unmistakably speaks of his coming again. But – and this is important – he clothes the idea in three pictures which are part and parcel of the apparatus connected with the day of the Lord.

The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, and they never doubted that one day they would occupy the place in the world which the chosen people, as they saw it, deserved and were bound to have in the end. They had long since abandoned the idea that they could ever win that place by human means, and they were confident that in the end God would directly intervene in history and win it for them. The day of God’s intervention was the day of the Lord. Before that day of the Lord, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgement would come. But it would be followed by the new world and the new age and the new glory.

In one sense, this idea is the product of unconquerable optimism. The Jews were quite certain that God would break in. In another sense, it was the product of bleak pessimism, because it was based on the idea that this world was so utterly bad that only its complete destruction and the emergence of a new world would suffice. They did not look for reformation. They looked for a re-creating of the entire scheme of things.

(1) The day of the Lord was to be preceded by the darkening of sun and moon. The Old Testament itself is full of that (Amos 8:9; Joel 2:10, 3:15; Ezekiel 32:7–8; Isaiah 13:10, 34:4); again the popular literature of Jesus’ day is full of it, too.

And the sun shall suddenly begin to shine at night,

And the moon during the day,

. . .

and the stars shall fall. (4 Ezra [2 Esdras] 5:4–5)

Second Baruch 32:1 speaks of ‘the time in which the mighty one is to shake the whole creation’. The Assumption of Moses foresees a time when:

The horns of the sun shall be broken and he shall be turned into darkness,

And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly into blood,

And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed. (10:5)

It is clear that Jesus is using the popular language which everyone knew.

(2) It was a regular part of the imagery that the Jews were to be gathered back to Palestine from the four corners of the earth. The Old Testament itself is full of that idea (Isaiah 27:13, 35:8–10; Micah 7:12; Zechariah 10:6–11); once more the popular literature loves the idea:

Blow ye in Zion on the trumpet to summon the saints,

Cause ye to be heard in Jerusalem the voice of him that bringeth good tidings,

For God hath had pity on Israel in visiting them.

Stand on the height, O Jerusalem, and behold thy children,

From the East and the West gathered together by the Lord.

(Psalms of Solomon 11:1–3)

The Lord will gather you together in faith through His tender mercy, and for the sake of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

(The Testament of Asher 7:7)

Jesus was working with the only ideas that people knew. But he knew, as they knew, that these things were only pictures, for no one could really tell what would happen when God broke in.

There are three special things to note about verses 28–37.

(1) It is sometimes held that when Jesus said that these things were to happen within this generation he was in error. But Jesus was right, for this sentence does not refer to the second coming. It could not when the next sentence says he does not know when that day will be. It refers to Jesus’ prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, and they were abundantly fulfilled.

(2) Jesus says that he does not know the day or the hour when he will come again. There were things which even he left without questioning in the hand of God. There can be no greater warning and rebuke to those who work out dates and timetables as to when he will come again. Surely it is nothing less than blasphemy for us to inquire into that of which our Lord consented to be ignorant.

(3) Jesus draws a practical conclusion. We are like those who know that their master will come, but who do not know when. We live in the shadow of eternity. That is no reason for fearful and hysterical expectation. But it means that day by day our work must be completed. It means that we must so live that it does not matter when he comes. It gives us the great task of making every day fit for him to see and being at any moment ready to meet him face to face. All life becomes a preparation to meet the King.

Chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel is a difficult chapter, but in the end it has permanent truth to tell us. It tells us that only God’s people can see into the secrets of history. Jesus saw the fate of Jerusalem although others were blind to it. Leaders of real stature must be men and women of God. To guide any country its leaders must be themselves God-guided. Only those who know God can enter into something of the plan of God.

It tells us two things about the doctrine of the second coming. (a) It tells us that it contains a fact we forget or disregard at our peril. (b) It tells us that the imagery in which it is clothed is the imagery of Jesus’ own time, and that to speculate on it is useless, when Jesus himself was content not to know. The one thing of which we can be sure is that history is going somewhere; there is a consummation to come.

It tells us that of all things to forget God and to become immersed in material concerns is most foolish. The truly wise never forget that they must be ready when the summons comes. For those who live in that memory, the end will not be terror, but eternal joy.

(For discussion of verses 1–8 and the prophecies about Jerusalem, see The Second Sunday before Advent, pp. 299–302.)

The Second Sunday of Advent

The Mercy of God’s Delay and The Beginning of the Story

2 Peter 3:8–15a

Here we find three great truths which can nourish the mind and bring rest to the heart.

(1) Time is not the same to God as it is to us. As the psalmist had it: ‘For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night’ (Psalm 90:4). When we think of the world’s hundreds of thousands of years of existence, it is easy to feel dwarfed into insignificance; when we think of the slowness of human progress, it is easy to become discouraged into pessimism. There is comfort in the thought of a God who has all eternity to work in. It is only against the background of eternity that things appear in their true proportions and assume their real value.

(2) We can also see from this passage that time is always to be regarded as an opportunity. As Peter saw it, the years God gave the world were a further opportunity for men and women to repent and turn to him. Every day which comes to us is a gift of mercy. It is an opportunity to develop ourselves, to render some service to our neighbours, to take one step nearer to God.

(3) There is another echo of a truth which so often lies in the background of New Testament thought. God, says Peter, does not want anyone to perish. God, says Paul, has shut them all up together in unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). Timothy, in a tremendous phrase, speaks of God who desires everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4).

Time after time, we see in Scripture the glint of the larger hope. We are not forbidden to believe that somehow and at some time the God who loves the world will bring the whole world to himself.

It is always the case that we have to speak and think in the terms which we know. That is what Peter is doing here. He is speaking of the New Testament teaching of the second coming of Jesus Christ, but he is describing it in terms of the Old Testament teaching of the day of the Lord.

The day of the Lord is a concept which runs all through the prophetic books of the Old Testament. The Jews saw time in terms of two ages – this present age, which is wholly bad and beyond remedy, and the age to come, which is the golden age of God. The change from one to the other could not come about by human effort but by the direct intervention of God. The Jews called the time of that intervention the day of the Lord. It was to come without warning. It was to be a time when the universe was shaken to its foundations. It was to be a time when the judgement and obliteration of sinners would come to pass, and therefore it would be a time of terror. ‘See, the day of the Lord comes,...

Table of contents

• Barclay on the Lectionary Mark: Year B
• Contents
• Publisher’s Introduction
• The First Sunday of Advent