an introduction to Mark's gospel a major sermon series at HopeWhangarei. his sermon was not recorded so there is no link to the audio.
Today we start a new major sermon series here at Hope
Whangarei. Over most of the next year, with gaps in summer and between Easter
and Pentecost, we are going to be working our way through the gospel according
to Mark.
AS I’ve been getting ready for this series, and using Mark in
my daily devotions one of the things that has revolutionized my thinking and
reflecting on this book, is the fact that it was written not primarily for
people who did not know Jesus but to a church community. People
who knew Jesus teaching, one of the motifs of Mark is that Jesus is always
teaching but we don’t have much of that teaching recorded, there is a
presupposition that the original audience knew Jesus teaching… Also Mark was
written to a community that had committed themselves to Jesus, but they had
some very clear cultural expectations of what it meant that Jesus is the
messiah and saviour, as I have read through the gospel, I find myself standing
with the disciples, which is quite uncomfortable because even though they are
closest to Jesus, they come across as really struggling to understand who Jesus
is. Mark writes to remind and reorient his audience and us to realise that
Jesus messiahship was radically different than those expectations. In Mark
Jesus is presented as the suffering servant. Key passages focus on Jesus coming
not to be served but to serve, giving up his life for the people, Jesus
coronation as King is his crucifixion, and to follow Jesus is equally to walk
‘the way of the cross’: service, self-sacrifice and love even when it hurts
even to the point of death.
Our vision at HopeWhangarei is to be a flourishing Christian
Community with the mission of connecting
people with God and with one another. Maybe it is easy for us to have a picture
of that idea of flourishing that is full of cultural expectations. Numbers, influence,
full bank account…When I read through Mark, there are times when we see great
crowds around Jesus, and you can think, this is Jesus being successful, flourishing.
But Jesus is always focused not on the pull of the crowd but doing the will of the
Father. We’ve just finished a sermon series on loving one another as Jesus
loves us and I believe Mark invites us to continue on that theme, to see afresh
what Jesus love for us looks like, that it means the way of the cross, his
suffering and dying to reconcile us with God, but also how to live as one
commentator puts it to be an army who realises our only weapons are service and
self-sacrificing love. To flourish in Christ, as a Christian community, is to walk the way of the cross.
That’s quite a heavy introduction… and I really struggled to
know how to start this series…Of course… when it comes to the text we start at
the beginning… and I can’t help but have a sound of music moment… A very good
place to start… ABC … 1,2,3… do re me.. our reading today Mark 1:1-8. One of
the features of Mark’s gospel is its fast paced nature. There is a break neck
speed, it is full of immediately Jesus did this, then Jesus did that. So I
thought it would be appropriate to start today like you start a race on your
Mark (hey It’s Father’s day so I’m allowed a dad joke kind of pun), Get Set…Go.
On your Mark. Let me introduce Mark…
Mark is most probably the first of the gospel’s written, it’s
the shortest, the other two synoptic gospels, which is a fancy way of saying
similar gospels, Matthew, and Luke, contain most of the material that Mark does,
and follow a similar pattern for the story of Jesus life. So it assumed that they
were aware of Mark when they were written. John of course comes later and has a
totally different structure.
It is traditionally seen as being written by John Mark. There
is some speculation that John Mark was the young man mentioned in Mark 14:51-53,
the original Streaker, who was in the garden of gethsemane when Jesus was
arrested, and who when they tried to detain him ran away leaving his lined
cloth behind him. We know Mark was part of the early church in Jerusalem, His
mother Mary had a house there. That is where Peter goes to join the community as they
pray for him, after he is released from prison in Acts 12. He is also identified with the Mark who Paul
and Barnabas fall out over in Acts, Paul calls him Barnabas’ cousin in Colossians
and later Paul asked for him to come to him in Rome. In Rome he is thought to have also been with
been with Peter and that his writing is a recounting of Peter’s eyewitness memories.
It is to the church in Rome that Mark is believed to have originally written.
Dating these writing is always difficult and the matter of
much debate. Scholars tend to agree that it was most probably written during or
just after the time of Nero as emperor. The original apostles are being killed
and so their accounts are important to preserve, but also to a church that was
going through or had just gone through persecution it was important to remind
them of Jesus himself and his own suffering, and how Jesus acted in response to
persecution and descent, to remind them in a world where their was a clash of
empire and the abuse of power that Jesus walked the way of sacrificial service
and love.
As we move through the gospel there are significant changes
in emphasis, it starts with Jesus public ministry declaring the kingdom of God
is at hand, and demonstrating that through various actions and miracles, then
it shifts to focus on how three distinct groups react to Jesus, the crowd, the disciples,
and his opponents, primarily the religious leaders of the time. And asks How do
we react to Jesus? Then Jesus focuses on teaching his disciples what it means
for him to be king, he tells them of his death and resurrection three times and
they don’t get it. Finally we have the climax of the story as Jesus enters Jerusalem
is betrayed, suffers and is crucified. There is a prologue which tells of his
resurrection. On your Mark…
Get set.
The open verse of Mark, Give us the setting for the whole
gospel. In fact it is seen as being the title of the book. As the NIV
translation puts it ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus the Messiah, the
Son of God.’ Not all manuscripts contain Son of God. We might call it Mark’s
gospel, but it is primarily from start to finish focused on Jesus and what it
means that he is God’s chosen and anointed one, the Son of God. That is what we
are to focus on as we read it.
The beginning really sort of stuck out to me as I read this
verse. Not just because this is the start of the book, but because when you
hear that it brings up the words of Genesis… in the beginning… while John uses
those same words to speak of Jesus pre-existence, here that echo of genesis alerts
us to the fact that in Jesus, God is doing something new. This is a new start,
however as right after this opening verse we are taken back into scriptures of
the Old Testament, to what we are told is a quote from Isaiah, but also
contains a line from Exodus and possibly Malachi that this new thing is a
continuation of what God has been doing. The story of God here is continuing.
But also the fact that we are talking of the beginning here
of the good news of Jesus Christ means
that what is started here, the inbreaking of the kingdom of God into the realms
of humanity, is also continuing, the good news of Jesus Christ, was continuing
in the lives and times of mark’s original audience and it is continuing on to
us today. We are part of the ongoing story of Jesus the Messiah. We are part of
the Kingdom of God establishing itself in our world… today. He is good news for
us as well.
Likewise for the gentile audience in Rome, they would have cultural
expectations when they hear good news, anointed one and even son of God,
because the roman emperors would use this language to speak of themselves and
their rule. Good news was used to celebrate emperor’s birthday, it was good
news that this emperor reigned and even that they conquered you as it meant
peace and prosperity. There is a great scene in Monty Python’s life of Brian,
if I may be so bold, where the Jewish zealots are complaining about roman rule
and ask the question what have the romans ever done for us! And after some
thought an embarrassing long list of the positive impact of roman rule come
out. Roads, sanitation, aqueducts, wine…
but still they finish with what have the romans ever done for us!
So Marks opening in the setting of Rome was quite political,
it invites us to see the Good News of what the reign of king Jesus will look
like. Again a rule that is not backed by military power and might, political intrigue
but that is established on a roman cross, in service and love. Something that
is as equally challenging and revolutionising in our world today. The good news
of Jesus Christ invites us to stripe away our expectations as well to see Jesus
the Messiah.
In this introduction we are also introduced to the title the
Son of God, pointing to the divine nature of Jesus, his unique relationship
with God. Mark’s gospel reads like a mystery novel, as while we are let in to
this secret right at the beginning, right through out the gospel, it is only
spiritual beings, demons and God himself who recognize Jesus as God’s son. Jesus healing miracles, his authority to
forgive sin, his mastery over nature, his feeding miracles, walking on the
water, power over evil spirits point us to who Jesus is. Jesus is continually
telling the spirts to be quite and for those he heals not to tell. It is not
until the cross that we truly see Jesus, then the climax of the gospel (spoiler
alert) is that a gentile roman soldier sees in Jesus death that surely this is
the Son of God. ON your Mark, get Set
and finally
Go…or maybe you could say the Go to guy…
Unlike Luke and Matthew who start with Jesus birth and his
whakapapa, and John who starts way back before the beginnings, Mark starts his
gospel with John the Baptist. John, john Mark tells us, is the fulfilment of
the prophesy in Isaiah of the one who will come before the Messiah, who will herald
God’s coming to save his people. He acts as an Old Testament prophet. In Marks
description of his attire, we are to see a similarity between John and Elijah,
the one whom Israel expected as the messiahs herald. John acts as a prophet as
well by calling the people to repentance. Both individually but as a nation to
set themselves apart for what God was going to do. John baptized with water,
but his call to repentance was because he believed that soon would come the one
who baptized people with the very spirit of God. That call to repentance also
seems to be a call away from the temple centered
Jewish faith, which he saw as
corrupt. For the Jews it was significant that John was calling people to come
out into the wilderness, as it was in the wilderness that God showed himself to
the people and fashioned them into his people. We can actually find ourselves
caught up in our own religious space as well and we need to hear John calling
us out into the wilderness again… to freshly encounter Jesus.
but there is a ‘Go’ here for us from our reading for our
study of Mark’s gospel. A Go to be ready
and expect to meet God doing a new thing. A Go to meet the good news of Jesus
the Messiah. A Go to adopt the correct posture for when we come to the gospel. Not
simply settling for the way things are and have been, but being open to change,
God doing a new thing. A Go to be about repenting, that is stopping from simply
going our own way and to turn round and to seek the things of God. A Go of longing
for and looking for God’s Kingdom as it breaks into the world. As it breaks
into the world then and as it continues to break into our world today. A Go to
look to examine our cultural understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ and
allow Jesus to show us what it means afresh… A Go to follow Jesus in service
and self-sacrificing love to walk the way of the cross. Are you ready for that…
are you ready to encounter the good news of Jesus Christ and to walk the way of
the cross… well…On your Mark, get set, go…
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