Mark Study

Journeying through a story....

Guiding questions we should ask ourselves while reading the Gospel of Mark:

Who is Jesus Christ?

What affirmations about the uniqueness of Christ can we make in the midst of the pluralism of American culture and world religions?

What does it mean to confess that Jesus Christ is savior of the world?

What do we mean when we say that in Jesus Christ God became human and that in Jesus Christ God forgives human sin and reconciles the world?

How does this good news change the way we live and the structures of society?

How does this good news change the way we worship, the way we confess our faith as a local congregation?

(Taken from Darrell L. Guder: The Continuing Conversion of the Church)


Story Time:

Mark is a book of secrets, of veils, of mysteries.

Mark, supremely among the gospels, highlights the notion of a secret to be penetrated, of a mystery to be explored and grasped.

The reader is constantly invited by the gospel as a whole to do what the disciples are invited to do the parable-chapter, that is, to come closer and discover the inner secret behind the strange story.

Mark opens with a stark sequence of events: within twenty verses we are introduced to John, witness Jesus’ baptism, hear the kingdom announced, and watch the call of the first disciples…eight chapters to say who Jesus is and eight chapters to say how he is going to die.

(Quotes taken from N.T Wright’s The New Testament and The People of God)



Gospel:

“Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance (excelled even our anticipations), surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came by reason of him which Asia resolved in Smyrna.” 9 BC, Priene, Asia Minor. This was written under a statue of Ceasar.

Compare Mark’s opening:
“The beginning of the proclamation of the good news about Jesus Christ—Son of God.”

Kingdomof God:

He announces the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, teaches what that kingdom is in his words and actions, and calls people to follow him and become his witnesses, “fishers of people.” (Guder, 80)

Healings:

Read Isaiah 30:26; 33:24; 35:5-6; 57:18 and compare to what Jesus is doing. Imagine yourself present, witnessing these events, how would you feel knowing your people’s history and current situation under foreign rule?

New Family:

Old Wine vs. New Wine. “Jesus and his movement became a sign of contradiction. Many individuals separated themselves from the old structures and joined the new family of which Jesus spoke. Thus there arose in the midst of ancient Israel-unobtrusively at first and yet irreversibly-the new society panned by God.” (Lohfink, 44)


What do we learn about who Christ is in the first two chapters? What are the major themes you find? What’s new to you that you haven’t seen before?