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PART ONE
The Gospel of Mark
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CHAPTER 2
“The Kingdom of God Has Come Near; Repent” (Mark 1:1–4:34)
The Message of Mark
Mark’s simple and stark message is easily obscured if read through an inherited Christmas-Easter lens, a lens of God’s triumphal entry into human history and glorious exit into eternity. For example, Mark omits entirely the birth of Jesus, beginning instead with John’s baptism of the adult Jesus. And Mark’s mention of the resurrection, in a single sentence, serves as prelude to the shock of an ending emphasizing disciple failure (16:6–8a). Mark’s narrative does not end with triumphal words of Jesus’s victory over sin, death, and the devil; instead it ends in fear and unbelief: the disciples, having deserted Jesus, do not get to hear of the resurrection.
Mark’s story begins with a joyous declaration: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ [Messiah, the Anointed One], the Son of God” (1:1). The good news that Jesus brings is, we hear, the good news from God: “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’ ” (1:14–15). The original listening audiences would have anticipated this good news in a way modern audiences may not. Steeped in the scriptures, they, like a character in Mark, would have been “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God” (15:43). For them, Israel’s history converges on the redemption and deliverance of Israel.
Initially, the astounding inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth is matched by astonishingly favorable responses. John the baptizer’s preparation for Jesus and his kingdom is met with eager anticipation: “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (1:5). But the celebratory tone of Mark’s fifteen-verse preface serves as an antiphonal “setup” for a story of increasingly dismal and even tragic responses of all the major characters to the authoritative power and teachings of Jesus. The narrative’s initial joy and promise are dramatically eclipsed by its concluding gloom. At the end of Mark, we hear that three women at Jesus’s empty tomb are told to inform the disciples, who have deserted the Messiah and fled the scene, that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Out of fear they don’t: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (16:8a). End of story.1
What are we to make of Mark’s sudden and apparently inexplicable ending? The disciples’ faithlessness is highlighted in this sudden ending: because of the women’s fearful disobedience and the disciples’ fearful faithlessness, the scattered disciples don’t hear of the glorious news of the resurrection; because of the women’s fear, “they said nothing to anyone” (16:8a). Absent at his crucifixion, the disciples are, after denial and desertion, absent at his resurrection. They don’t get to hear the news.
While Mark surely believes in Jesus’s triumphal resurrection, his narrative underplays it, focusing instead on the tragic unbelief of his closest followers. A Hollywood publicity firm might summarize Mark this way: “Exciting announcement of God’s good news, with impressive endorsements, is greeted with initial but superficial enthusiasm. As pressures increase, enthusiasm decreases, attended by denial and desertion by the disciples and death for Jesus. Although death is defeated, no one remains to carry on the good news.”
Mark’s audiences, several decades after the departure of Jesus, know, of course, that this gospel of God’s kingdom did not end dismally. His audiences know that the disciples repented after all and spearheaded the kingdom mission to Israel and beyond. Some have witnessed this repentance firsthand as strangers and outcasts welcomed by the disciples into their emerging kingdom. Mark, then, is writing for and to this later audience, would-be disciples who may be wavering.
Mark’s central message is one of both warning and promise. Mark’s repeated warnings (8:15; 12:38; 13:5, 9, 33) come with the promise that “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (13:13). Mark drives home his message in four sections, each organized around increasingly complex patterns of authority-response.
The Good News and Its Authoritative Proclaimer (Mark 1:1–15)
Between the preface’s opening (the good news brought by Jesus [1:1]) and its conclusion (the good news of God’s kingdom [1:14–15]), we hear five powerful witnesses to the authoritative power of Jesus as God’s Anointed One, the Christ (1:1):
- Mark the author, who declares Jesus as Messiah, God’s Son (1:1)
- The prophet Isaiah, who foretold the prophet-messenger (1:2)
- John the Baptist, of whom Isaiah spoke, who prepares the way for Jesus (1:3–8)
- God, who states, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (1:11)
- Satan, God’s adversary, who fails to tempt Jesus away from his calling (1:12–13)
This simple repetition of five highly credited witnesses attests to the authoritative power of Jesus. According to Mark, acceptance of the gospel is grounded in the authority of Jesus, which is confirmed by Scripture (divine words), fulfilled prophecy, an authoritative teacher (John the Baptist), and finally God himself. Even Satan, who cannot pry Jesus from his calling, must concede Jesus’s preeminence.
As Mark’s story proceeds, Jesus’s authority as God’s bringer of the good news is further confirmed by both his teaching and deeds. The shape of the preface suggests as much: the good news of Jesus Christ at the beginning (1:1) is echoed at the end by the hearing cue the good news of God (1:14). “The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1) is also “the good news of God” (1:14–15). God, who is bringing his kingdom to earth, has committed the good news from on high to Jesus.
With the full authority to proclaim and demonstrate the good news, then, Jesus challenges his listeners with the proper response: turn your life around (repent) and embrace the good news (believe). Mark’s story moves ahead in overlapping circles of authority and response, a narrative dynamic that increasingly generates an implied question for the listener: How do you respond to the good news of Jesus?
Authority-Response, the Beginning: Twelve Successive Episodes (Mark 1:16–3:6)
Mark begins with a dizzying succession of twelve brief episodes that illustrate characteristic responses to the authoritative power of Jesus. Mark’s quick pace accentuates the authority-response pattern that orchestrates all that follows in the story as a whole. There is no plot as such: if not recognized as a pattern connected by the repeated hearing cue of authority and response, these three chapters might appear choppy, one isolated incident following another with no better rationale than “this happened here, then that happened there.” But if one leans in and listens carefully, one will hear a tightly ordered pattern of authority and response. The pattern holds it all together; intrigue builds according to ways in which various responses from differing quarters play out.
In very rapid progression we hear:
- Authority of Jesus: Jesus challenges four fishermen to follow him.
Response: They do (1:16–20). - Authority of Jesus: Jesus enters a synagogue, teaching.
Response: They “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21–22). - Authority of Jesus: A demon-possessed man responds with horror at the presence of Jesus, whom he calls “the Holy One of God”; Jesus casts out the evil spirit.
Response: All those gathered respond with amazement at such teaching accompanied by “authority” (1:23–28). - Authority of Jesus: Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law of fever.
Response: She responds by serving him and his friends (1:29–31). - Authority of Jesus: “The whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.”
Response: The overpowered demons are not permitted to respond with speech (1:32–34).2 - Authority of Jesus: After prayer, Jesus returns to teaching and healing. He cures a leper, warning him to say nothing.
Response: The cured man’s joy cannot be contained, and he “began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (1:35–45). - Authority of Jesus (a): Jesus forgives a paralytic man his sins.
Response (a): The religious leaders charge him with blasphemy.
Authority of Jesus (b): “So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” Jesus says to the paralytic, “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”
Response (b): “They [the crowd] were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’ ” (2:1–12). - Authority of Jesus: Jesus asks a man to leave his despised vocation—collecting taxes for the Roman Empire—and follow him.
Response: “And he got up and followed him” (2:13–14). - Response: Religious leaders scoffingly complain of Jesus’s fraternization with “tax collectors and sinners.”
Authority of Jesus: Jesus replies, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:15–17). - Response: Religious leaders complain that Jesus and his disciples do not fast, and pick grain on the Sabbath (they can’t recognize and won’t respect the authority of Jesus).
Authority of Jesus: Jesus tells them that he is like the bridegroom with his wedding guests and that now is no time for fasting (2:18–28). - Authority of Jesus: Jesus heals a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath.
Response: “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (3:1–6). - Response: “When his family heard it [that Jesus had returned home, with crowds tightly packed around him], they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ ” (The religious leaders chime in with the thought that perhaps Jesus is in league with Satan.) The crowd says, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”
Authority of Jesus: “And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’ ” (3:20–35).
Just before this climactic twelfth episode in the pattern, Mark has provided a narrative break, involving the investiture of his authority in the “twelve, whom he . . . sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons” (3:13–19).3
We have heard of responses from those accepting the challenge to be disciples, from enthusiastic crowds, from the gratefully healed, and from hostile religious leaders. Mark’s patterned episodes of authority-response conclude with the ominous response of Jesus’s own family. Jesus’s challenge to respond—repent and believe—involves complete commitment to the will of God: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (3:35).
The two main hearing cues, authority and response, emphasize the authoritative teaching and action of Jesus while preparing Mark’s audiences, decades later and listening to this narrative, to assess their own responses. Where do they stand relative to the clear authority of Jesus, Messiah and Son of God?4
Within this pattern of twelve representative episodes, linked by the cues of authority and response, is Mark’s message of repentance and salvation. Mark concludes with a devastating portrait of Jesus’s own family’s failure to respond properly to the offered good news.
Family, House, and Home: An Interwoven Pattern
Woven into Mark’s tapestry of authority-response is a brief but complex pattern of family, house, home. Jesus has just added to the management and mission of the kingdom family by “appoint[ing] twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. So he appointed the twelve,” who are listed by name (3:14–19). The kingdom mission now includes apostles who are appointed with “authority,” which has distinguished Jesus for the past few chapters. “Then he went home” (3:19).
Then he went home? Why include this unexplained detail about going home in the middle of a staccato-like string of episodes oriented around the authority of Jesus and typical responses from crowds, traditional Jewish leaders, and the disciples? Jesus appoints apostles to share in the kingdom task and goes home.
Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” (3:19–22)
His family, concerned by reports that Jesus is out of his mind, wants to “restrain him.” Perhaps they have also heard the rumors from the scribes that Jesus is in league with the devil.
The idea of family was implicit in Jesus’s call of his original four followers, who left family and vocation to follow him. His new “family” has since expanded to twelve (thirteen with Jesus). And now Jesus’s biological family wants to take him “home.”
The story moves on to the mention of house: the house of Satan and the house of God, house against house—God, Jesus, and kingdom workers versus Satan and his minions (both earthly powers and those possessed by unclean spirits). Jesus is accused by earthly power, Jewish leaders, of dominating Satan and satanic power because he is Satan’s own! But Jesus, the demon conqueror, responds by saying that Satan can’t cast out Satan because a house divided against itself cannot stand (3:22–27).5
From kingdom family the narrative moves through references to the home and family of Jesus to the house of Satan and his demons, then circles back to the family of Jesus. The hearing cues, hovering around family and home/house, need to be connected:
- Jesus expanded his kingdom of family workers.
- Then he went home.
- His family sought to restrain him.
- Jesus raided Satan’s house.
- “Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him” (3:31).
With this last we have come full circle from the mysterious going home that began this little pattern—an unexplained event, unless we carefully attend to the pattern that follows.
Writ small, we hear biology: family of father, mother, sons, and daughters on the one ...
