Today I started the Book of Mark, chapter 1. Mark, as best as I can tell, was written to the Romans, those who were not familiar with the concept of a Savior and who did not look for His coming. One of the articles I read about Mark states that his audience was particularly those who placed a lot of emphasis on action and doing. As such, Mark has always kind of felt like the cliff notes version of the Gospels to me. He just speeds along and touches on quite a lot of things the Savior did without dwelling on them too much. Now, Mark was not one of the Savior's Apostles but rather was a young man during the time of Jesus. It is commonly thought that Mark's family owned the house that the Savior and the Apostles used to hold Passover on the last night of Jesus' life. Some believe that Mark actually learned all he did from the Apostle Peter and that the focus on the miracles and the actions of the Savior were Peter's and not Mark's own. Some day we will know for sure, but as we mentioned, Mark does read very quickly and has a tendency to focus on the miracles and the actions of the Savior as opposed to His teachings like Matthew and Luke did.
In the first chapter, Mark cover's the Savior's baptism, His sojourn in the wilderness where He is temped of the devil and the calling of His disciples, most notably Peter, James and John. And that's just the first 20 verses! The rest of the chapter focuses on miracles that Jesus performed in and around the city of Capernaum.
When I was younger and was going through seminary, I had the unique experience to have a different teacher all 4 years. For the New Testament I had the wonderful opportunity of my teacher being my very own mother. She is very knowledgeable of the scriptures and a good portion of my knowledge comes directly from her, as is probably true of most people. But I remember in seminary reading the Gospels and at times being confused about certain things and it was a real treat to be able to discuss them at length with my mother even after class was over. But I bring this up because I used to be confused by the story where the Savior cleanses a man of unclean spirits and the spirits loudly acknowledge the Savior as being the Son of God and Jesus rebukes them to be quiet. I had always wondered why when He was trying so hard to get the Jews to recognize Him for who He was that He would silence one who could most assuredly proclaim who He was.
I asked my mom about this and she told me that it was the wrong type of endorsement. Yes, the unclean spirit could, and in this case, did proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, but it is not a good thing to have the testator of who you are to be a devil. I like to think of it as if you were on trial for something and the only character witness they could find to vouch for you was a drunken drug addict. Would that look very good upon you? Absolutely not. So it is in this case. I certainly would not want to be associated with an unclean spirit in any form or fashion. So I can understand that while yes, Jesus' mission was to save all mankind and He was the promised Messiah to the Jews, He did not want endorsement from the wrong crowd.
The next miracle that Mark records is Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law. You know, the scriptures do not often talk about women or even bring them up except in a few notable instances such as Ruth and Esther. But you kind of have to wonder in this case with Jesus' Apostles, what did their wives think of them just up and leaving their livelihood like that to follow after Jesus? Now, I may be guilty of analyzing this under New Historicism and imposing American culture upon the 1st Century Jews, but it seems to me that if I came home one day and told my wife that I had quit my job in order to follow around the Messiah, she'd have me locked up and shipped off to the funny farm! But perhaps Jewish society was not that way and the women were very understanding and perhaps when Peter's wife saw Jesus heal her mother, any doubts she may have had were dispelled. We are just not told. But we do know that Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and word spread quite rapidly and Jesus spent all the rest of that day healing all those with infirmities and when night came He left the city to go into the wilderness to be alone.
The final miracle Mark records in this chapter is Jesus cleansing the leper. The leper had great faith stating that he knew Jesus could heal him if he only wanted to. Jesus replied that He did wish to heal the leper and did so. He then tells the leper to go show himself to the priest but to tell no one about how he got healed. The leper does not heed this counsel and immediately begins to tell everyone he meets how Jesus healed him and Jesus is soon swarmed to the point that He has to leave the city. This is another one when I was younger that I was a little confused. Why would Jesus not want the man to tell anyone. Somehow I managed to miss the very next verse where it answers that very question. Jesus did not have any problem healing all those that came to Him, but when it because known that He could heal leprosy, He knew no peace. People came from all around to see Him and to be healed by Him and there were so many that Jesus could not stay in the city but rather retired outside the walls of the city.
You can definitely tell Mark had a much different audience in mind than did Matthew. Mark does not even touch on the divine circumstances concerning Jesus' birth and instead jumps straight into His ministry and the miracles that Jesus performed. We will see more of this focus over the next 15 days as we read the book of Mark. But it will be a very worthwhile journey as Mark has a few stories not in the other Gospels and a different take on some of the same stories. Until tomorrow.
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