Mark

Hello and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are here continuing it in our 90 Days of the New Testament.
We’re glad that you’re joining us today.
If you are just jumping into this podcast and would like to learn more about the 90 Day in the New Testament Challenge,
you can find the link for that in the description of this podcast episode.
But otherwise we are finishing up the book of Matthew and this week we’ll be going all the way through the book of Mark.
So welcome to the conversation.
We’re going to sort of look at the end and then the entirety of the Marking Gospel.
Yeah, welcome back.
As we get into this end of Matthew,
some hard stuff.
Jesus says a lot of harsh things.
Jesus is pretty hard on enemies.
In fact, I was thinking earlier,
one of the things Matthew provides for us in this section is really the gift of making it impossible to be entirely comfortable with Jesus.
Jesus at the end of Matthew is sharply pointed at some of the Pharisees,
some of the hypocrites.
He is engaged in arguments.
He clears the temple.
He tells judgment parables.
It’s a pretty hard Jesus that we encounter as he turns his face to Jerusalem and as we go through some of the ending part of the story.
If you probably noticed in the reading,
the 23rd chapter, there are seven woes about how hard it will be on the Pharisees and the scribes and how much under judgment they are.
You move into the 24th chapter and there’s lots of talk about the end of the age.
This is sometimes called Matthew’s mini-apocalypse or mini-revelation.
It is, again, hard stuff about how terrible it will be in the day of the Lord,
in the time of judgment.
It’s nobody’s favorite chapter,
I’m going to guess.
Yeah, and I would say,
based on my comments in the last episode,
this is a good place for me to point out the reasons for some of my…
This is the part of Matthew you had in mind.
Yeah, we’ve now gotten there.
But the truth is,
when you read the whole book in its entirety,
and I want to say that this has really been a growth or a learning here for me in this entire reading,
has been that this makes a lot of sense when you frame this away from Jesus picking on the Pharisees and Sadducees,
as much as Jesus prophetically pointing to the thing he’s been saying all along,
and that is that rampant hypocrisy doesn’t go forever.
There’s an end point and it’s going to be literally flaming as Jesus describes it.
Yeah, I think we see pretty clearly that Matthew has zero tolerance for hypocrisy and for the idea that faith is easy and soft and doesn’t really matter.
The faith Jesus presents in the gospel of Matthew is demanding,
and it has moral and ethical standards,
and those who try to use it for their own good are just soundly trounced at every step.
Right,
and that word ethical,
another way of framing that is,
it’s not about what you profess with your mouth.
It’s not just head knowledge.
If it does not live outside of you,
then it is completely worthless.
I mean, it almost is like a revelation kind of lukewarm if you say something,
but you don’t live something that there will be judgments is even the language here.
Yeah, I don’t want to push you into a particular text,
but that 25th chapter is three judgment stories, three parables,
and the one that’s best known,
the sheep and the goats,
where Jesus says at the end of time,
people will be divided into two categories,
those who go to heaven and those who go to punishment,
and they’re divided on their actions,
not their belief, but to the extent that their belief informed what they did.
So the righteous are told,
you took care of the poor,
you saw me when I was hungry and fed me,
you did those things and you didn’t know it.
And the other group says,
well, we didn’t know it either.
And he said, but you didn’t do it.
And so there is that that definite moral sense of it’s fine to believe things,
and it’s good to believe things.
But if those beliefs don’t affect the way that you live for Matthew,
that’s just not enough.
Right.
And this in this gospel makes it pretty plain that in this transition that’s going to come into Jesus’s trial and then eventual crucifixion is that the both the religious authorities,
but also then by extension,
the civil authorities had no tolerance for the kind of supremacy that Jesus is claiming here when Jesus says that it’s not just the letter of the law,
but I am the fulfillment of the spirit of the law.
That’s a breaking point.
That that’s a game over moment for these individuals.
And that sets up the end.
Yeah.
And I think Matthew,
the picture he paints there is a group of also committed to their own power that they can’t see what’s clearly going on around them.
The miracles don’t mean anything to them.
The powerful sermons,
the exorcisms,
they find a way to see past all of that because in their framework it compromises their own authority.
And the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders in Matthew is pretty harsh.
Not quite as harsh as John,
but I think pretty pointed.
Do you think that it’s authority at the center of that conflict or do you think it is more interpretive?
Do you know what I mean by that?
The idea of who’s interpreting the law and what it means.
So that is a form of authority.
But when I hear you say authority,
I also think social authority,
I think religious authority,
the people who get to say what is and isn’t important.
Yeah.
And I think to be fair,
you know, these people think they’re doing the right thing clearly and they actually think they’re protecting people by silencing Jesus.
But I think we can’t underestimate the extent to which when we have some power,
we want to keep it.
And I think we see in the gospel’s portrayal,
I would argue that we see in the gospel portrayal of the scribes and Pharisees,
men who like their station at least as much as they care about ultimate truth.
And this is the criticism in early Matthew,
right?
They stand on the street corners.
They like the best places.
They like to have attention,
but that their hearts aren’t right.
And I think as we move into the core of the conflict and as we move toward the cross,
Matthew paints that more vividly.
And as we really look towards the betrayal and all of the things that ensue there,
it’s interesting because the scribes and Pharisees, it says,
choose to not arrest Jesus at the end of these prophetic otherances because of the fact they’re afraid of a riot.
And then they show up to arrest Jesus.
And the question that he asks is,
am I leading a rebellion that you come with swords to arrest me?
And here’s an interesting example of what you’re saying,
right?
You have men who are responsible for the religious interpretation of the law,
that this is how we ought to live.
And at the end of the day,
they can’t hold muster with Jesus in the temple,
so they show up with swords.
And Jesus calls them on that.
Right.
And to add to that,
Michael, I think you’re a hundred percent right.
They also do that at night,
having bribed one of his followers.
I mean, the gospel just does not give them
an out in this.
They’re doing what they’re doing
for all the wrong reasons.
Though, as Matthew would be quick to point out,
this fulfills the prophecy of the Old Testament.
Every time.
Yeah. And we’re going to read this account of this story multiple times.
I wonder if the account in Matthew,
a thing that stuck out to me,
at least in Matthew’s telling of it,
is there is very much a moment in which Jesus and the Sanhedrin is sparring.
And I found it really interesting how much pain Matthew goes to tell us that this is a sham,
that it’s a complete miscarriage of justice and that ultimately they can’t get anyone to offer anything that is true evidence of Jesus blaspheming.
So they have to sort of try to go Jesus into something that they call blasphemy.
It’s a very Jewish way of looking at this going poorly.
Would you agree with that?
I would a hundred percent.
I think that we see that in lots of places.
While all the gospels tell us a story,
I think Matthew in these last chapters is interesting in telling us the backstory.
That they fabricate the accounts,
that they lie about the witnesses,
that even the witnesses don’t agree with one another.
And then later on they pay people that Jesus disciples came and took his body.
I don’t think the other gospels give us those kind of conspiracy theory details the way that Matthew does.
Because those are likely stories that need to be counteracted.
There needs to be an answer to them.
Right, if I remember correctly in the report of the guard,
yeah, Matthew says it here very near the end of the book.
And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.
So whenever this is being written,
we have already encountered yes he rose or no he didn’t.
And this is the dichotomy that is with us for the rest of history.
Either it happened or it didn’t.
And Matthew already has a version that is established rhetoric of no it didn’t.
Somebody stole the body.
But Matthew is quick to tell us that’s a lie.
I will say that in the reading of this gospel.
I was really struck by this telling of this is Jesus the king of the Jews,
the that that whole lead up where Jesus is getting the crown of thorns put on his head he’s being mocked by the soldiers they he’s hanging on the cross.
And then that charge here’s the king of the Jews,
because the people who are receiving this care a lot about who the king of the Jews is and and the people in the story.
Actually, they all care about it.
They just have very differing understandings of who the king is and why that matters.
And Matthew puts this like right at the I mean,
right that the crucifixion is almost the end of the story.
There’s very little to be told of the story.
If you look back to the number of chapters we read already and this is a pivotal moment because it forces all of us to ask the question,
who is the king?
Could it really be the person hanging on the cross?
That’s not what kings do.
Right in Matthew’s version,
that king is utterly alone as well.
I mean, this is the gospel in which we get the words.
Why have you forsaken me?
Which it is the quotation of a song,
but is no less real.
And then we also get that detail just just before that,
that even the two thieves who are crucified with him also taunt him.
So there’s no story here in which anyone is on Jesus side.
Jesus hangs alone as the crucified king and no one gets it.
Peter doesn’t get it.
Judas doesn’t get it.
Herod doesn’t get it.
Even the other bandits.
In fact, the only one,
and this is I think more significant in Mark and maybe where it came from,
but the only one who gets it is the centurion at the end who says truly this man was God’s son.
But even that is not until Jesus has died.
Which is,
I think one of the central things that makes this book so compelling and interesting really is because simultaneously no one gets it and all of the prophets have already talked about it.
So on one hand,
Jesus is public knowledge in the sense that anybody could have seen those prophecies and saw that they pointed to Jesus.
And ironically,
no one did even in the telling of the story,
which if I’m a gospel writer,
it’s a pretty lousy argument to say everybody who knew Jesus best missed it.
And that’s exactly what this gospel does.
Matthew,
to some extent the gospel says the whole,
but Matthew in this case simply won’t let Jesus share spotlight with anyone.
It is all about him in that moment.
And Matthew has that most dramatic telling of it.
And there’s this historic,
literally earth shattering moment that no one could overlook.
You didn’t get who Jesus was until his death,
but at the moment of his death,
everybody knows that something monumental,
something unbelievable has happened.
There’s no way to deny it in Matthew’s telling after it happens.
Yeah.
And I know that we’re not trying to make this thing a theology thing,
but I mean, the Reformed family can put our flags in the air and wave a little bit here, right?
I mean,
because we look at this telling and we’re going to be,
we’re going to be some of the loudest spokespeople to say that this is exactly what we mean when we say that Jesus reveals God is the fact that Jesus revelation is literally light into darkness,
that we don’t comprehend unless we look at this man,
Jesus, and we humble ourselves enough to actually let him reveal because with all of the prophecies behind us and all the teachings behind us and all the commentaries on our bookshelves,
the truth is we need Jesus to teach us who he is.
Absolutely.
We can’t get there on our own.
Yeah, that’s, I think that’s very reformed and obviously as a Reformed person,
I’d say pretty good.
Pretty Christian.
Yeah, I mean, very helpful.
I want to point out,
Michael, just one detail that people could read past this,
this mention of the temple curtain.
There is within the temple,
a place that only the high priest can go and only on an annual event.
And it’s called the Holy of Holies.
And the doorway to that is a curtain,
a giant heavy curtain.
And so at this note here that says the curtain is torn into from the top to the bottom.
I’ve always understood that to mean that it is as if God rips that curtain himself.
And the significance of that is that now the holiest of holy places is open to all,
that there is no longer a barrier that separates people from the holiness of God.
Essentially,
the holiness of God is now out in the world in the resurrected Christ or the soon to be resurrected Christ at that point in the story.
And I’ve also thought if you’re a first Presbyterian church person,
next time you’re in church,
look up at the cross behind that relief that the sort of jagged edges at the top of the cross.
I’ve always thought part of that architecture is picking up this story of the torn curtain.
So when you hear the curtain is torn in the temple,
which is a place of Jewish worship,
what does that have to say about the Great Commission to all people that’s coming?
Is that what you’re thinking when you say that God’s loose in the world?
I think it’s significant that the most holy and restricted place within Judaism has the doorway ripped from top to bottom.
In other words,
the barrier is now gone.
God’s holiness isn’t for a priest once a year to go in and experience.
It is out in the world.
It is for all.
Well, I don’t know if you’re ready to get there yet,
but the very end of this book,
we go back to a mountain.
In fact, we literally go back to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
And I find this just really powerful.
When they saw him, they worshiped him,
but some doubted.
And this is of the 11 disciples.
This isn’t about the hoi polloi crowd.
And that is the extent to which Matthew goes.
I mean, what you were saying earlier,
literally up to the end,
the disciples are doubting when Jesus gives them the Great Commission.
So I think that gives us some measure of grace as we recognize our own doubts that the people who are literally seeing Jesus on the mountain,
the high place, the place of revelation, it’s complicated.
It is.
And if I could just do one little word thing here,
the word “but” in Greek,
B-U-T, is also the word “and.”
And it is a translation choice,
which one of those is used,
which conjunction is used.
But it’s the same word in Greek.
And I’ve always leaned toward the idea that the gospel writers were saying here,
they worshiped him and some doubted.
In Matthew, it may be the case that you can either worship or doubt,
but I think for most of us,
we have that experience of knowing that we can do both.
That sometimes we worship and doubt,
that sometimes they live together even in the same faith.
I’ve always liked the idea that even there at the mountaintop with Jesus,
the disciples experience that.
There’s true worship and there’s some doubt and confusion right there in the midst of it.
But I wouldn’t personally pair doubt with worship.
I would pair doubt with belief to say that some believed and others doubted.
Worship is an important word choice there, right?
Worship is recognition of something that’s true.
It’s not really necessarily evidence of possession.
In other words, they may not get it.
“And” may be the exact right word there.
Could you argue that in Matthew it would be very hard to separate praise from practice or to separate worship from belief?
I mean, this is the criticism of the Pharisees.
Right.
Yeah, it’s an interesting word for sure.
But the practice is about to come when Jesus gives the action word.
Yes,
100%.
So worship is not isolating.
That’s not the right word.
Worship is not stagnant.
Worship has motion.
Yeah. And again,
as I see it in the text,
and this may be my own in my own looking into it.
But I think worship always leaves some room for doubt.
Doubt is okay.
There’s a place where doubt can be tolerated in worship and a place in which worship helps us know Christ beyond our doubts.
And certainly if the disciples who are standing with the resurrected Christ had some questions,
the rest of us may as well.
Jesus just finished possibly the last question in the book.
Is that true?
Is Jesus’s words from the cross the last question in Matthew?
I’m not certain about that,
but certainly one of the last questions,
why have you forsaken me?
If you have not read Psalm 22,
it is worth it to take the few minutes it would take.
Read that passage from Matthew 27.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then read the Psalm because the Psalm itself is the journey of the crucifixion story,
especially I think in Matthew.
And let’s be honest,
entire books and tomes have been written about the Great Commission,
the very last part of the book of Matthew.
So we’re not going to be able to really peel back too much there.
But I do think it’s worth saying in my reading of the Gospel this time,
with all of Jesus’s critique of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the division between what they say and what they do,
the fact that Matthew’s parting word is so therefore do or so therefore go,
it’s a this is therefore what our lives should look like because of what we see in Christ.
That makes total and complete sense.
I mean, that’s – it really – it’s a perfect encapsulation of this entire story.
Yeah, and again, not to go too deep in the weeds,
but there is I think an interesting word thing here.
The word go in English.
In English, we have a hard time having something that is a commandment attached to an ongoing action.
So if I say when you go to the store,
get milk,
that sounds like a request and not a commandment.
In Greek,
that works a little better,
legitimately be translated as you are going.
And what I think is interesting about that the last couple of decades,
we’ve worked hard to try and recapture this sense that every Christian is a missionary.
So this commandment go into all the world sounds like,
oh, these are the people we send to China and Africa and wherever.
And that is true.
But as you are going into the world,
reminds us Christians are also the people sent to your office,
your home,
the school,
wherever it is that we go,
we carry with us this calling, this charge,
share the good news,
proclaim Christ,
share Christ with others.
And I think that I think that helps.
To me,
that’s a helpful insight.
I may not go to Africa specifically with the purpose of being missionary.
That doesn’t make me any less missionary.
Right.
And I think that’s a helpful remembrance for the church.
And I appreciate that the Great Commission gives us room for both.
Right.
And to read this in context,
we need to remember that this wasn’t first written to First Presbyterian Church of Spirit Lake,
where we might think of that mission field being going to China.
This was written to people and this book was a majority written to people who understand Jewish custom and law and the idea of being the people of Israel.
The idea of going into all the nations at the end of Matthew is huge.
This isn’t just about convincing Jewish believers that Jesus is the highest and the greatest.
It’s to say you are exactly the people who are missionaries.
And that then does translate directly back to where we are today to say we have this long legacy of faith that’s been handed to us.
We need to do,
just as you were saying,
continue the tradition that has been handed to us,
the people who are now reading Matthew and not the Old Testament.
And that’s really good.
And what’s fascinating about that,
Michael, is that there’s not a great deal of international,
let’s call it, flavor in the gospel.
That comes almost exclusively after the resurrection.
The cross and the resurrection change the tone of that language in this gospel.
I think that’s really powerful.
Any final words on Matthew?
No.
I hope you found something in it engaging.
I hope there was something that spoke to you.
If we didn’t get to something you were hoping we would,
remember we have a Facebook discussion online.
We’d be glad to answer any questions or look into something if you had some thoughts on it.
Let us know.
We can’t get to everything,
but if there’s something we missed,
you were hoping you’d hear.
We’ll be glad to try and do our best.
Absolutely.
And so now we transition to the book of Mark and buckle up,
friends, because in this week’s reading,
we are going to make it through the entire gospel of Mark.
And at least in this room,
I think we have some people who are pretty excited about that.
Is that fair?
Yeah.
If I had a favorite gospel,
well, I do have a favorite gospel.
It’s Mark.
I enjoy Mark.
Luke and Matthew, I think are pretty polished,
pretty scripted.
They, they, they hold together.
They’re cohesive.
Mark is rough.
It’s loose.
There’s lots of question marks about it.
Some of the things that we see in Mark,
I think are almost there specifically to just make us scratch our heads.
And as a person who studies scripture,
Matthew and Luke are probably more productive as a person who preaches scripture.
Mark just gives us these wonderful places to jump in and ask ourselves what is going on here.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And I will say that from the ending of Mark,
which is spectacular in its own right,
and some of the scholarly questions about that all the way through the immediacy of Mark.
If you’re reading this book,
keep an eye towards some of those tricky,
small things that seem like they might not matter,
like transitions from one story to another.
Mark just seems to be full of action words.
Jesus is not loafing around in this book.
He is, he is moving and the story is just punctuated by these quick next things that are coming.
Mark is not a slow book.
No, and what’s interesting is that he will take major stories of Matthew and Luke and they will be impressed to only a few verses.
But then there will be a random detail that’s not included in their stories and you have to wonder what that is.
So in Matthew,
Jesus heals a paralytic.
Mark takes the time to tell us,
yeah, his friends led him through the roof.
And that kind of thing happens often.
And Mark, there are these very strange additions that you have to stop and think about.
Yeah.
And Mark,
I believe this is fair to say,
is really the gospel that’s least interested in some version of the beginning story.
Matthew and Luke share sort of your Christmas program kind of stories.
John, I think, offers a beautiful entree,
which we’ll get to,
to Jesus and how he’s situated.
Mark starts with John the Baptist and Jesus comes out firing day one.
Yeah, and Mark says the beginning of the good news,
implying there’s more to come.
But then he says nothing about the actual beginning of the Jesus story,
jumping right to John the Baptist.
Mark seems only interested in the Jesus who does the ministry and is the Messiah.
And really, other than those years of his life,
that ministry period of his life,
Mark doesn’t seem particularly concerned about that at all.
No,
right.
Hear what you’re saying about the sort of rough hewn edges of Mark,
and that’s certainly true.
Is there not, though, another sense in which in some ways Mark is not condensed?
That’s not the right word.
Mark has a through line,
which is really razor clear in some sense.
Jesus has a purpose in Mark,
and he doesn’t know all the gospels,
but that purpose of getting to the cross and demonstrating his willingness to give of his life,
there’s really,
it seems like Jesus is moving quickly towards that end in this book.
I think I have this right,
Michael.
I’m trying to look it up.
I believe half of this book takes place in the last week of Jesus’ life.
I think we move into Jerusalem very early in the Gospel of Mark,
and much of this teaching,
much of the conflict,
that stuff for Mark is all part of,
he almost rushes ahead to get to that stuff and spends a lot of time with it proportionally.
I’ve got to admit to you,
this is kind of embarrassing,
but reading through Mark in its entirety this time really illustrated for me something that I hadn’t really seen in my own readings very much,
and that is how often Jesus will have a narrative thing occur,
like a story, a healing counter, a person, or he’ll come into a healing situation.
And then immediately following that,
we’ll have a section of teaching,
or some kind of discourse in which Jesus really offers some interpretive meaning to the thing that happened before.
When you’re just like in the Bible study mode,
and you go and you read the little section with the heading,
you miss that.
You miss that this whole thing is knit together with a purpose.
Yeah, there’s definitely a flow to this book.
There’s definitely some subtlety in it,
and some things that Mark does very intentionally in the midst of what looks like looseness.
There’s some real purpose.
You know, one of the best examples of that is something that people will notice whenever they read Mark.
Jesus is always telling people,
“Don’t say who he is.” If a demon identifies him, he silences it.
If he heals somebody and they’re amazed,
he says, “Don’t tell anyone.” When he shares some piece of information with the disciples,
he ordered them not to tell anyone.
And that can be off-putting as you read it,
and you’re thinking, “Why in the world?” You just came out of Matthew,
right?
Go into all the world and tell everybody.
And now Mark’s Jesus keeps saying,
“Don’t say anything.
Don’t say anything.
Don’t say anything.”
And I don’t want to give it away maybe just yet,
but as you get to the end of Mark,
that’s reconciled in, I think,
the most masterful way and by far,
I think, the most powerful gospel ending,
at least the most personally challenging gospel ending because of the way Mark does that throughout the book.
And by the way,
nobody listened to Jesus over and over and over again.
Jesus tells them, “Don’t tell.” And I mean,
in fact, that may have been better PR just because they went out and did it and people flocked to Jesus.
And that was the thing that stuck out to me, Clint.
People throng Jesus in Mark in a way that it’s not described in Matthew.
Almost suffocating.
I mean, just the crowds will not let him get a moment in Mark.
That seems important to Mark for some reason that we understand the kind of popularity,
the kind of draw that Jesus was to people.
I almost had this imagination of reading this kind of like a campaign,
like you bring the person in,
the crowds swarm.
He has to get in the boat so that he doesn’t get completely squished.
And then Jesus goes into these little mini retreats where he and the disciples scoot off to a mountaintop to pray because the need is so great and he’s on such a tight schedule.
I mean, it was interesting.
Yeah.
When I read Mark,
I just feel like I get clobbered with something every few verses.
You know,
something sticks.
For whatever reason,
Mark, I encounter Mark in these little sound bites almost to just thing after thing for me to think about and for me to wrestle with.
I’m not sure why,
but in a way that doesn’t happen as frenetically,
I guess, I mean, as constantly in the other gospels.
Is that because there are so many things happening in such quick succession that that’s meaningful or?
I think so.
And I think it’s maybe it’s having ADD and that’s well suited to the way that Mark writes where we just Mark doesn’t spend a lot of time crafting transitions.
Or lengthy discourses.
No, this story is over.
Time for this one.
Now you got that one.
Time for this one.
And for some reason that works for me.
I don’t know if you would agree with this.
For me,
the central question of this book seems to be delivered pretty,
pretty close to the center of it.
Who do people say that I am?
Jesus asked the disciples and it comes up in a lot of different words.
It’s said differently, but that’s the first time in that clarity.
Jesus asks and the disciples respond,
you know, well, this is what other people say.
And Jesus says, yeah, but what about you?
Who do you say that I am?
And Peter says the Messiah and that’s going to change in wording when we get to the end of the book.
But would you pin that?
Would you give that as high interpretive meaning as as I have that question or is there another question that you see?
No,
I would, Michael.
And then toward the middle of the 14th chapter,
about verse 61,
when Jesus is being confronted by the high priest,
unlike Matthew and Luke,
where this sort of dance around the question is Jesus the Messiah.
He doesn’t really answer to Herod straight out.
He kind of does to the chief priest.
In Mark, verse 61 here,
are you the Messiah,
the son of the blessed one?
And Jesus said, I am.
And I am is a loaded phrase in the Bible going all the way back to Exodus when God says,
I am who I am to Moses.
But here, Jesus just puts it out there in a way that I don’t think is quite as blunt in the other gospels.
Matthew, Jesus was far more lawyer ish in sparring.
You said you’ve said it.
So you said it.
I didn’t say it here in markets.
Absolutely.
Not only not only yes,
but I am, which again is in the scripture,
a strong pairing of words.
I am always points beyond the person saying it to the God who first said it.
I mean, so differently.
I am is a name.
Yes,
I am is a is a proper name.
And so when Jesus says,
I am in Mark and the high priest tears his clothes,
I think the inference.
You’re pretty safe to say the high priest got it.
Right.
I mean, the high priest heard that as well.
Yeah, and that’s that seals his fate in Mark.
Is this safe to say,
or is this fair to say we’re we had the trial in Matthew that in Matthew,
Jesus is being tried as a prophet.
But in Mark, Jesus is being tried as the son of God.
I’m not trying to put too much weight in that.
But is there some truth in that?
I think so.
I think, again,
Mark seems only interested in the details closest to what he considers the heart of the story.
And so I think he doesn’t provide as much of the political maneuvering and the kind of stuff that was happening swirling around the event.
He goes right to the eye of the hurricane and says,
this is what’s at stake.
And here’s how it happened,
which you could read as less nuanced,
but you could also read as more direct.
And again, in Mark, we get the thieves on the cross.
Those were crucified with him.
They also taunted him.
Matthew seems it’s thought that Mark was probably the earliest of the gospels written.
And that Matthew and Luke used some of his material.
Matthew seems to have used that material if it’s accurate.
Again, there we get them.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
The Mark version of Jesus’ death is,
I would say, pretty close to Matthew’s version,
lending some credence to the idea that Matthew may have used Mark as one of his major sources of information.
If you’re reading these gospels,
maybe for the first time,
or maybe you’ve read them sporadically,
and maybe you haven’t read anything in the Old Testament,
you may miss some of the important emphasis that’s happening in some of the name dropping that happens in these texts.
And I’m looking specifically here at the crucifixion story in Mark,
but this has come up throughout this book as well as Matthew,
specifically the name Elijah.
In both of these,
the idea of Jesus calling out Eloi,
Eloi, there’s some thought that that may have sounded like he was calling the name Elijah.
The people think he is.
Right. And so with that,
you need to know that Elijah is an important figure,
and in fact represents to the people,
Elijah is the prophet who didn’t die but was taken by God in a flaming chariot.
And so the idea is that Elijah is still out there waiting to come back,
and Mark,
and this is true,
Matthew, but we’re in Mark,
Mark makes it absolutely clear.
The crowd makes the mistake of thinking that Jesus is calling for Elijah.
Mark is not making that mistake.
Absolutely. The idea was that Elijah would herald the coming of the Messiah,
which is, if you remember in Matthew,
or maybe you’ve glanced into it in Mark as well.
This idea that Elijah has already come and is specifically equated in Matthew with John the Baptist.
Right.
That John the Baptist is the Elijah that announces the coming of the Messiah.
The other thing I think is interesting,
as you mentioned, names,
is Mark has this sense that he’s writing to a specific community and that some of the details he provides mean something to them.
So at Jesus’ arrest,
we’re told that there was a young man following him,
and when they grabbed a hold of him,
his robe came off and he ran off naked.
And then when Simon of Cyrene is compelled or forced to carry Jesus’ cross,
it tells us that this was Simon of Cyrene,
the father of Alexander and Rufus,
as if whoever Mark’s writing to knows Simon’s kids.
And Mark has that sort of inside the circle feel to it,
like he’s writing to people that he knows and that know each other more so than the big universal story for the world.
It’s for a specific group of people,
and maybe that’s what gives Mark part of its flavor.
Yeah, you could almost hear Mark writing that and then turning aside and saying,
“Yeah, and Rufus is a knucklehead.”
Right,
yeah.
I’m sure he’s not.
I’m sure he’s a great student.
I’m sure Rufus was a great guy.
I’m sure Rufus was a great guy.
While we’re here,
let’s circle back to that secret business.
So in the Gospel of Mark,
again, we mentioned this.
They call it the Marking Secret.
Don’t tell anyone.
Don’t tell anyone.
Don’t tell anyone.
And then there are two things that happen that bring that around and that sort of bring fruit to it.
The first is,
verse 39 of chapter 15,
when the centurion who faced him saw that it was in this way that he breathed his last,
he said,
“Truly this man was God’s son.”
And you could easily read past that,
but Bible scholars have long thought that when a Roman centurion says out loud,
“This man was the one,” it’s at that point that the secret’s out.
There is no secret anymore.
Even the Roman soldiers get it.
Even this man who works for the enemy,
who oppresses God’s people,
looks at the cross and says,
“That man is the son of God.”
So there is no secret anymore.
So then a chapter later,
one of the crazy things about Mark is all of the oldest versions that have ever been found end at verse 8,
which reads,
“So they,” the women,
“went out and fled from the tomb,
for terror and amazement had seized them,
and they said nothing to anyone,
for they were afraid.”
And it’s almost like Mark circles back around and says, “The secret’s out.”
Or is it?
Did they end up telling anyone?
Did they end up sharing this incredible news that they had gotten?
And of course we know they did because we’re reading it.
But that then turns the question to us.
What do we do with this news?
What do you and I do with this incredible proclamation that this is the son of God?
Do we go and share?
Or do we say nothing to anyone,
for we are afraid?
And I’m one of those people that thinks the original ending is genius,
and I kind of wish they would have left it there.
Not that the rest of it isn’t okay as well.
But I like that it ends at verse 8.
I like that it hangs there with that question mark of what happens in the story because you think that’s a question of the text,
and then you realize it’s a question to you.
So this is really just to keep adding to what you’re saying because I feel the same way about the earlier ending.
But a reflection on the longer ending,
which I think is also great for its own reasons.
And one of the reasons I really like the long ending is because I think this is what everybody would want the ending to be.
Because there’s some awesome stuff in this about driving out demons,
speaking tongues, picking up snakes with their hands.
I probably wouldn’t be on the snakes thing.
That’s not my deal.
But drinking deadly poison,
it won’t hurt them at all.
The idea is that believers are empowered to go out to proclaim the good news that just a few verses before the people who were literally there were afraid of.
And if I was writing the ending in Mark,
if I’m being honest,
I would much rather end with the empowering,
encouraging command that God is going with me,
and I can be drinking poison and I’m going to be okay,
then that hard cold reality that when you stand facing the empty tomb,
each and every one of us is faced with a very clear and even more complex question.
Yeah, I don’t disagree with that at all.
In fact, I love verse 20.
They went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.
That’s a wonderful verse.
It’s a beautiful part of the story,
but you can read that and think it’s about them.
It’s very hard for some reason.
It’s very hard to read verse eight.
They said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.
And you start thinking,
well, why didn’t they say anything?
I would have said something.
Well, would you?
It feels more pointed,
and I think that’s why I’ve always appreciated it.
It seems to me just a masterful place to end the gospel with a giant question mark.
What happened next?
Which is the question for each of us.
What happens next in our life with the Jesus story?
Right.
And there’s lots of debates among scholars that we can’t pull back of who were the people intended here?
Were they persecuted?
Was this more of like an apologetic kind of track?
There’s actually lots of discussion,
regardless of nailing that down exactly.
There are some things in this book that you will see themes and it’ll be easy to see.
Mark takes a lot more care of than Matthew to explain the Jewishness of Jesus,
like traditions.
Mark will actually give you a little bit of a disclaimer of this is why this matters and things like that.
And when you get here to the end,
we might, because of our time and place,
miss the gravity of it.
But the authoritative witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection were women.
That’s a big deal.
That’s a big deal,
not just for Jews, but for Gentiles.
And then on top of that,
the people who see it,
there’s not another 16 chapters describing their confidence.
It’s all left out to your imagination.
And towards your point, Clint,
I think it’s hard to read this book and to not see this ending as an invitation for you to start putting your life into the story.
Because you’re going to answer the question,
is this going to be a secret or not?
Yeah,
I think in that way,
Mark reads all the Gospels are evangelical in that sense,
but Mark perhaps the most in the way that he crafts the ending.
And as you mentioned,
it’s hard to pigeonhole this book.
Scholars have argued about it for a long,
long time and don’t have a great consensus.
And again, I think maybe that’s one of the things I appreciate about it.
It’s hard to say that it is any one particular thing.
It’s the story of Jesus from Mark.
That’s about the most confident thing we can say about it.
When you read Mark,
I think you will find in its denseness many opportunities to stop and ask,
huh,
kind of questions.
And of course, do that, go into the Facebook group and drop them in and let’s talk about them.
But also be attentive to the longer arc that’s happening here.
And that arc is pretty close to the center of it.
The question,
who do you say that Jesus is?
And Mark, I think, gives one of the clearest tellings of Jesus story to help us process that question for ourselves.
Yeah.
Interestingly, Mark tells two long parables,
some short parables, but he tells the parable of the sower and the parable of the wicked tenants.
In both cases,
parables about sharing the good news and the inability of some to receive it,
so it’s offered to others,
especially in the parable of the wicked tenants.
But even in the parable of the sower,
the sower goes out and what does he do?
He throws seed everywhere and he hopes that some of it will grow.
And whereas the other,
well, not all the other gospels,
John doesn’t have parables,
but Matthew and Luke tell lots of long parables.
Mark has only those two and then scatter some shorter ones in with it,
but they seem to be the most significant to him.
And they’re both just fundamentally
Jesus parables.
Jesus is the sower and charges others to go out and sow.
And then the son is killed,
so the vineyard is given to other tenants.
Mark, as always, is very close to his key themes.
I will say there not to get into the weeds,
but that’s chapter 12 in Mark,
the parable of the tenants.
And both in my reading of Matthew and then again in Mark,
that parable in particular struck me for its incisive clarity.
There is no ambiguity of who Jesus has in the crosshairs there.
No mystery who the characters are in those parables.
And in Mark,
that is the moment in which they start looking.
It literally says they start plotting to kill him.
Last thing I’d say,
as you read the gospel,
Mark, pay attention to question marks.
Lots of wonderful questions in this book.
Lots of places where Jesus asks things like,
“What do you want me to do for you?
What do you think?”
And Mark himself asks lots of questions.
This book is loaded with question marks,
and I think if you are sort of aware of them,
they can be thoughtful.
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