THE GOSPEL OF MARK PART 2 BY PAULA GOODER

somewhat conveniently Mark's Gospel falls into four Lots of four chapters and although the the sections don't quite run with our chapter numbers so it's not quite one two four and five to eight it is around that and it helps you get an in a sense of where we are in Mark's narrative so the first section of Mark's Gospel is the introductory section and if you read your way through the introductory section then you realize that you get sample features of Jesus's ministry so you get a key miracle you get a key piece of teaching you get a key piece of controversy and so on so if you have a look at the first four chapters mark gives you one of each of the features of Mark of Jesus's life so that you get a sense of what you're going to look forward to for the rest of the gospel Tamar basically introduces you to the themes of it that you're going to encounter in the rest of the gospel in the first four chapters he then begins to focus on particular themes so right at the end of the first section of in Chapter four we have a discussion between Jesus and the disciples about parables and who understands and how they understand and one of the features that Jesus says in chapter four is that to you meaning the disciples shall be revealed the secrets of the kingdom of heaven so what you have therefore is the expectation is the disciples are going to understand who Jesus is in a way that the other hearers of Jesus do not so the next section of Mark's Gospel is a section in which discipleship is explored where you have some key encounters between Jesus and His disciples and then between Jesus and other people and as they have these key encounters you begin to engage with something of the nature of discipleship what Jesus expects of his disciples and this is something that I'm going to talk about again later on but we'll just notice it for the moment that actually you have this discipleship section which is characterized by how you respond to Jesus and how you learn it's worth of just reminding ourselves at this particular point that the word disciple doesn't mean a follower of Jesus as our some people assume that it means but the word disciple means a learner the Greek word Moffitt ace is simply somebody who learns and that is taken over into the Latin word to skip ulis from which we get our word disciple so a disciple is somebody who learns from Jesus they have become a follower because that's how you do your learning but actually the disciple doesn't mean follower it means somebody who learns so the those chapters of Mark's Gospel four to eight are reflections on how you learn who Jesus is which brings you into the third section of Mark's Gospel in which Jesus is turning his attention to the cross and so you have their four in four to eight what does it mean to be a learner from Jesus and then in the next section you have therefore the expectations if you are going to learn from Jesus what is this going to mean it is going to mean that you follow Jesus all the way to the cross so the third section of Mark's Gospel is what you might call the shadow of the Cross where you are looking forwards to the big moment of jesus's life of his own crucifixion but we're in the recognition that actually that requires us as disciples to follow him to the crucifixion and then the fourth section is Jesus's death and resurrection in which mark reaches his climax of the gospel and you understand something about who Jesus is because of his death and resurrection and so therefore you have this building narrative all the way through to the death and resurrection Jesus dies you have the big moment of recognition by the Centurion and then we move onwards into the resurrection whether do the women are just told to go and proclaim now who Jesus is so you can see them actually there for Mark's Gospel is structured very carefully to lead you in your responding to Jesus we have an introduction to who he is then we have an extensive reflection about what discipleship is then you have a reflection on what the consequences of discipleship are following Jesus to the cross and then you see Jesus going to the cross with his death and resurrection and it is quite helpful whenever you are reading Mark's Gospel to remember whatever bit of mark remember where it is and where it comes in the overarching sweep because by and large Mark is trying to push you towards the end standing of this sweep of the gospel so to hold that simple fourfold structure in your mind can often help you to understand what Mark is trying to imply by the particular narrative that he's telling at any one moment one of the key themes of Mark's Gospel is discipleship and how you respond to Jesus and it's worth is at this point stopping and having a look at Mark's reflection on the nature of discipleship as it features in chapters 4 to 8 because that's the section of the gospel where you have discipleship referred to particularly and it is almost at that point as though mark is doing an extended reflection and what does it mean to be a disciple what does Jesus expect from his disciples and consequently we need to go back into the end bit of chapter 4 in order to be able to set up and understand precisely what's going on so you have a conversation between Jesus and His disciples in chapter 4 about the parable of the sower and you have that element well from not really understanding what Jesus is talking about and then Jesus at the end of that section we have mark referring to with many such parables he spoke to them as they were able to hear it he did not speak to them except in parables but he explained everything in private to his disciples so we teed up at that point for the next bit of the narrative because we know that the outsiders are not going to understand Jesus but it's alright because he's going to explain everything in private to the disciples they will comprehend all will be well and we can therefore understand how the narrative unfolds once you get into the heart of chapters 4 to 8 however you realize that something really strikingly different is going on Jesus may be explaining everything in private to the disciples it doesn't mean their understanding and if we remind ourselves that the name disciple means someone who learns you then get into marks reflection about what a disciple is are you someone who is actually learning it seems to me that what's going on in Mark's Gospel is the disciples are learning or hearing all sorts of things but they're not learning and this comes to a high point in three particular points in Mark's Gospel particularly in these four chapters of four to eight because in these four chapters you have three boat scenes and very strikingly you have a boat scene in Chapter four one in Chapter six and in Chapter eight so this second section of Mark's Gospel is punctuated with boat scenes one at the beginning one in the middle and one at the end and in each of the boat scenes you have an encounter between Jesus and the disciples almost have you understood yet are you there how you comprehended so our first boat scene is the stilling of the storm in mark four verses thirty five to forty one when the disciples are terribly afraid and they have this conversation with Jesus and interestingly enough Jesus comments to the disciples in most of our English translations it comes across as why are you so afraid which to the modern reader seems an old question to ask because some they've just been nearly drowned in a storm we can work out without too much difficulty why it is that they were so afraid but actually that probably isn't the best translation of the Greek at that point because Jesus asks them not why are you fops which is the normal word for being afraid but why are you Dale us and the word de los means timid likely to be afraid why are you the kinds of people who were always being afraid and that therefore gets you into one of Jesus's expectations of discipleship that disciples of Jesus are people who should not be de los we should not be timid always likely to be afraid of course there are good reasons to be afraid from time to time but we shouldn't be drawn into that dynamic of fear which it seems to be one of the things that stops the disciples from understanding who it is that Jesus's so our first boat seen the stealing of the storm Jesus asked the disciples this crucial question why are you so timid we then move on to the next boat scene which is in mark 6 verses 45 to 52 which again a very very well-known story is the story of Jesus walking on the water and again you have those echoes of the stilling of the storm that we encountered in mark 4 jesus walks towards them they were afraid and he says to them don't be afraid here using the normal words for fear but then you have Mark's comment on the disciples he says and the disciples did not understand the word is there is for perceiving or comprehending so the disciples didn't understand about the feeding of the five thousand so the disciples were still not understanding who Jesus was so we have disciples in Chapter four who are timid and therefore unable to understand who Jesus is chapter six similar replay of the stealing of the storm this time with the walking on the water the disciples do not understand we then get the most important boat scene of all which is the least famous but in my view the most important in Chapter eight in mark eight fourteen to twenty-one and this boat scene immediately follows the feeding of the four thousand you may remember in Mark's Gospel there are two feedings one of the 5,000 which is just before the walking on the water and the feeding of the four thousand which is just before this third boat scene and they nothing dramatic happens they're simply crossing the sea in the boat but they have in a conversation with Jesus and Jesus at that point says to them be aware of the leaven of the Pharisees and it's at this moment that I think we need to remind ourselves that mark is ironic and I would say at times comic because you end up with this glorious misunderstanding between Jesus and the disciples Jesus says beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the disciples say he's complaining about not having bread again so they totally misunderstand the conversation I think it's one of mark's comic moments where we're men to understand this kind of that there is this kind of complete missing of minds going on between Jesus and the disciples and then Jesus engages with the disciples so an interesting question well he whether he tells them off or whether it's just a reprimand there's no account in the story of him being cross with them but he does ask them some key key questions and the key questions that he asks them are do you not think and understand are your hearts hardened have you not seen eyes not hearing ears and do you not remember remember he has this string of questions for them and what is really very striking is if you compare at 2:00 what Jesus says in chapter 4 about the parables then you begin to realize that mark is picking up a really important theme because when Mark explains in chapter 4 about why Jesus speaks have been in parables he says he speaks in parables so that people will not perceive they will have eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear but it's alright because Jesus explains everything in private to the parent to the disciples you get to the end of this four chapter section where they've been following Jesus around they've seen these miracles they've heard his teaching and they're all of a sudden it turns out that those who are on the inside the disciples I have not seeing eyes not hearing is and they haven't perceived so actually the insiders are really functioning as the outsiders in Mark's Gospel and that alerts you to something really very important that the people who should understand don't understand we then go back and have a look at the rest of the chapter of chapters of 48 you realize that something really very striking happens is that in between these three big boat scenes Jesus also has some very important encounters with a string of people and these strings of people are I think are really very intriguing people indeed the first thing to notice is that they are individuals and not groups I've already noticed the importance of groups in Mark's Gospel we've noticed the scribes and the Pharisees the crowds and the disciples a mark has characteristically responses of groups in between Jesus's boat scenes in Mark's Gospel you have some very important encounters with individuals these and what you have are so quite strikingly after the first boat scene and encounter with three people different people after the second boat scene an encounter with two after the third boat scene an encounter with one so you have a kind of working downwards these three are after the first boat scene Jesus first encounters the Gerizim demoniac then he has gyruss the leader of the synagogue then you have the woman with the hemorrhage then he had the second boat scene then Jesus encounters the syrophoenician woman and the man who was deaf and has a speaker and then you have the third boat seen then you have the man who was blind who initially sees menace trees walking and then he's them healed by Jesus and the very striking thing is each one of those understands who Jesus is in a different way and Jesus commends them for their faith and their understanding things to notice about them is they're individuals and not groups but intriguingly as well they are all Outsiders in their various different ways so you've got the garrison demoniac who is an outsider because he's filled with demons but also because he's a Gentile he's in the Decapolis on the other side of the sea you've got the woman with a hemorrhage who is an outsider because she is a woman who was permanently bleeding has to be cast out of society the syrophoenician woman a woman who is a Gentile has no right within Judaism and Jesus of course makes that very explicit by asking why it is that he should do anything for her because she is so much of an outsider we have the man who was deaf and the man who was blind who again because of their impediments would have been cast out of the society of first century Palestine probably the surprising character in that is gyrus because gyrus is the only one of those who strictly speaking is not an outsider he is nevertheless a fascinating character because he is an outsider from his group in that as a leader he should have been responding negatively to Jesus and in fact was responding positively it's worth reminding ourselves that gyrus was the leader of the synagogue in Capernaum of which there are still traces today to be seen in Capernaum the thing to remind ourselves about Capernaum is that that was a synagogue that was built by a Roman and not by a good Jew so it is possible that his reputation is in some way tarnished by the fact that he is the leader of the synagogue in Capernaum we don't know white Jairus is in this list but the others are all very strikingly outsiders and what you have therefore is this really interesting contrast jean-marc and jesus said the disciples up to be the insiders in chapter 4 they then go through chapters 4 to 8 demonstrating that they might be set up to be the insiders but in fact they are the outsiders because they don't understand to Jesus is you then encounter a string of outsiders who dis demonstrate themselves by their response to be insiders because they respond to Jesus and recognize the significance of who he is so you have this very very interesting dynamic going on in this particular section of mark's gospel with the question hanging around it doesn't matter who you are who you were what most matters is who you will be so it doesn't matter whether you start as an insider or as an outsider the question is in your response to Jesus do you mark yourself out as an insider or an outsider are you going to be more like the woman with the hemorrhage or more like the disciples who don't get it so again what Mark is doing is drawing us into the flow of the narrative and reminding us what's important for him about the nature of discipleship one of the themes of Mark's Gospel of which many people are aware is the theme of the Messianic secrecy it is a very striking feature of Mark's Gospel then at key moments in Jesus's life Jesus says don't say anything don't mention this keep quiet and so much so has this become a theme that there is a description of this which was first suggested by William Greider but then picked up by many many scholars subsequently that mark's gospel is a gospel of Messianic secrecy and to a certain extent i would want to agree with that but i would also want to remind us that alongside this very important strand of masonic secrecy is in my view a strand of Messianic revelation and you only understand the secrecy if you understand the revelation as well if you have a look through Mark's Gospel as indeed through Matthew and Luke's Gospel you will notice that there are three key moments in the gospel in which revelation takes place they are moments when Jesus's is revealed to be who he is they are at his baptism at his Transfiguration and at his crucifixion and it seems to me that those three moments punctuate Mark's Gospel very strikingly it is even clearer in mark than it is in Matthew and Luke because of course Mark's starts straight in without a birth narrative so therefore you get the baptism of slap-bang at the start of the Gospels you then have in the middle of Mark's Gospel the Transfiguration in mark 9 where you have the moment another moment of Revelation and then crucially again at the crucifixion right at the end of Mark's Gospel so beginning middle and end these big moments of Revelation and what happens in these moments of Revelation is various different things but they're all gathered together to a certain extent you have in the baptism the tearing apart of the heavens a voice coming out and God declaring this is my son the beloved with whom I am well-pleased and consequently you have that theme of heaven opening and of a voice of God from heaven declaring who it is that Jesus is of course in Mark's Gospel it isn't entirely clear who hears the voice the suggestion as it might just be Jesus and not anybody else but by the time you get to the transfigure it is clear that it's very very clear it's not just Jesus then you have the disciples over company Jesus to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration again you don't so much then have the rending of the heavens open but you have a cloud coming down and you have a voice coming from heaven with a very very similar phrasing of words that Jesus is his son that he is beloved and that they should listen to him so you had these two big moments of Messianic revelation punctuating the gospel reminding you that Jesus may be saying not to mention anything but he is his Messiah Messiahship is very very clearly revealed so in the crucifixion narrative you have a very similar string of events you have the tearing of the curtain of the temple and then you hear a voice and the voice declares that this is the Son of God the thing that is striking however in the crucifixion narrative is for the first time in Mark's Gospel unlike in the baptism of the Transfiguration the voice is not God's voice this time it is the voice of the Centurion who is crucifying Jesus he's the one responsible for jesus's death and yet then says this is the son of God of course there is big discussion among scholars about precisely what he means by saying this is the son of God the Greek is not entirely clear not as clear as it might be he could be meaning this is a son of God this is just any old special person my view would be that given that you've had the baptism of the Transfiguration mark is intending you to hear the words in the stream that you've already heard this is God's son spoken by God in the baptism this is God's land spoken by God in the Transfiguration this is God's start son spoken by the Centurion at the crucifixion and what is very important there is you have a big moment of Messianic revelation if we theme that back to our theme of discipleship that we've looked at in chapters 4 to 8 one of the things that you will remember is that the insiders were the ones who were unable to recognize who Jesus was and the outsiders were the ones who recognized you get to the crucifixion the big moment the one person who is the ultimate outsider the one who is responsible for crucifying Jesus then become and insider because he becomes the voice like the voice from heaven declaring this to be God's Son and so again you have this theme of Messianic revelation rumbling its way through the gospel so that while the seek the Messianic secrecy theme is there you have it punctuated with these three big moments of Messianic revelation again the question is raised are you going to be somebody who can carry on the torch of Messianic revelation and say this is god son this is the person who is recognized to be God's son in the world so the question remains why is it that Jesus does tell people not to declare who he is it remains the oddest part of Mark's Gospel why would Jesus actively prevent people from saying it who he is in the world one possible answer is given to you in the Angels declaring to the women that they must now go tell if you put together that with the disciples Frank lack of comprehension in chapters 4 to 8 then you begin to understand something really quite important and also put it together with Peters conversation with Jesus at Caesarea Philippi which is that we have as human beings all too easily jump to the wrong conclusions we miss understand so very very easily and what Jesus wanted was for them to have all the pieces of the jigsaw before they went off to do the proclamation and the problem was if they saw little bits about Jesus and miracle worker Jesus is a political figure Jesus has somebody who was significant within 1st century Palestine they could and of course did all too easily drum jumped the wrong conclusions about who he was he was going to be a triumphal king well no he wasn't he was going to drive the Romans out well no he wasn't he was going to be the person that everyone recognized to be who he really was well no he wasn't and it seems as though one of the themes of the messianic secrecy is just wait until you have the capacity to understand it all once you have the whole of Jesus's life all of his miracles all of his teaching he's death very importantly followed by his resurrection then you have all the pieces of the jigsaw then once you've got all the pieces of the jigsaw then you can go and tell it is just worth reminding ourselves however that against that you have a really striking bit that happens in mark chapter six which is when Jesus sends out the disciples to proclaim the kingdom and at that point those of us who were reading Mark's Gospel with our eyes open would surely want to say are you mad you are sending the disciples out to proclaim the kingdom when they have no idea who you are they don't understand what the kingdom is they haven't got all the pieces of the jigsaw and say you have this kind of odd dynamic which is worth just reminding ourselves of yes the Messianic secrecy is important until you get all the pieces of information that you need but at the same time you can still go out and proclaim the kingdom and I think this is a really interesting corrective for many of us in our modern ways of engaging in ministry the tendency we have today is that you do your extensive study you study for years and years and years and then you do a bit more study and you wait until you're absolutely ready you're absolutely clear until about everything that you know and then you go out and proclaim the kingdom seems to me that Mark's Gospel offers us a really important and helpful corrective actually you don't wait until you're ready because Jesus didn't Jesus sent the disciples out way before I would have said they were ready but nevertheless said go out and proclaim the kingdom the call of Jesus is that we go and proclaim he waits we can be ready later we go first which is the most important thing but back to the theme of the Messianic secrecy the key thing about understanding who Jesus really is and being able to say this person is God's Son he is the Messiah is you need the whole story of Mark before you begin and that's why mark would really like you to read the whole gospel in one go rather than the small chunks

Channel: Timeline Theological Videos

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Keywords: THE, GOSPEL, OF, MARK, PART, BY, PAULA, GOODER

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Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 04 2012