Bible Study: Gospel of Mark

This summer we will read the Gospel of Mark as a congregation, and this book will be the basis for worship (10am) and Bible study (11:15) on Sunday mornings, May 27-Sept. 2.

A few things to keep in mind as you begin to read:

Mark is short—only 16 chapters. There are no wasted words, no frilly adjectives or adverbs to fill out the sentences, no conjecture on the part of the narrator. Mark knows what he wants to say, and says it concisely and quickly. The story moves fast, beginning with an adult Jesus being baptized. The story moves a lot, from The Galilee in the north, around and across the Sea of Galilee, to Jerusalem, Judea in the south. We will meet many characters along the way, but most of them are cameo appearances; only a few will stay with Jesus throughout the story.

Mark is old—believed to be the first of the four gospels, composed in the late 60s AD. Because there is so much material that recurs in Luke and Matthew, Mark is thought to have served as a source for those gospels.

The timing of this gospel is significant, being presented just during or immediately after the Roman-Judean War, 66-70. Much as we might mark time before or after the Holocaust of WW II or before or after Kennedy was assassinated or before or after 9/11, this rebellion was a pivotal moment in the history of Israel. The occupied and oppressed Judeans (Jews) revolted to try to free themselves from Rome. They were squashed, and Rome destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in retaliation, creating a larger crisis for the Jewish population. If there is no temple, no place for God to dwell, where is God? If there is no temple, no place to observe Torah, how are we connected to God? Mark’s answer to these questions is clear: Jesus. Jesus is where God is; Jesus is the connection; Jesus shows the way by being connected to God and connecting the world to God.

In Mark, we will see Jesus portrayed as a worker of wonders—he casts out demons, heals the sick, raises the dead, feeds the hungry, and controls nature. He is a maker of promises, invoking the promises of the prophets and embodying their fulfillment (sometimes). And he is a teacher,1 of Jewish tradition, of faithfulness and obedience, and of challenge to authority. He travels around the Galilee, crossing the sea between the Jewish towns and the Gentile towns, being the presence of God for people who had not noticed all these wonders of God while the temple stood. The temple stands in the story, as the story happens during Jesus’ lifetime, the first 3 decades of the common era, but it is captured, composed, shaped, and told 3 decades later; so the listeners are hearing stories of the promises of God as they sit in a city that is utterly destroyed, evidence that God has not kept that promise. The quick pace of Mark’s gospel holds that tension, all the way from Isaiah’s invocation as the beginning of this Good News, to the abrupt and disconcerting ending in silence and absence of chapter 16.

scale model of Second Temple, 530 BCE - 70 CE

Aerial View of the Dome of the Rock, built 688

size comparison of the Temple and the Dome.












READ CHAPTER 1 FOR MAY 27

1Thanks to Richard Swanson for these categories. Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year B. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2005.

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