A brief investigation into Marks evangelion

The evangelion of mark is one of the shining beacons of Christian culture and spirituality yet any
thoughtful reader of this document immediately ends up lost in a mist of tantalising questions
brought forth by our cultural and chronological distance to both the events portrayed as well as
the writer reporting them. One might wonder what is the evangelion, the good news, that Mark
brings us and how does he present it in his gospel? In this brief inquiry an attempt is made at
pulling out a few provisional answers to the previously acknowledged questions. While trying to
keep a particular focus on the identity imposed on Jesus by Mark as well as the way Jesus
interacts with his social context.

The initial answer to our first question seems to be as obvious as it is grand. What is the good news of
Mark but the proclamation of Jesus as the Christ, the son of god. Already in the first sentence we read
The beginning of the good news of Jesus the Messiah, the son of god1. The scope of the story is even
further expanded when mere sentences later a voice from heaven verifies Marks claim by proclaiming
Jesus to be my beloved son, with whom I am wellpleased2. In this duo of decisive affirmations of Jesus
nature as the son of god we may form ourselves a picture of an exalted figure to be glorified, yet to
Mark this viewpoint is at best a half truth and at worst an outright lie. Throughout the gospel Jesus is
consistently misunderstood, maligned and ultimately sentenced to the humiliation and torture of
crucifixion. For Mark the existence of such events is not an error but a feature of the life of the true
messiah. According to Mark Jesus needs to be laid low before he can be lifted on high as the son of god
and foretold messiah. Through the voice of Jesus Mark even explicitly underlines this He then began to
teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests
and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again3. We can now
clearly see that Marks good news is that of the anointed messiah come to bring salvation onto the
world but that his vision of being the messiah as being an outcast, a living sacrifice is radically different
from the intuitive kinglike vision of a saviour, the type that would will destroy this temple made with
human hands and in three days will build another4

The previous conclusion that Marks good news is the life of the suffering Christ naturally leads
to the question as to how Mark presents the mental and physical misfortune of Jesus. In order
to properly grasp this side of the subject we must first turn our eyes to the aspect of Christ as
an outsider among outsiders. Proceeding on the note on which we left the previous paragraph
we may focus on the intellectual isolation of Jesus. The reverential incomprehension of his
friends and the confused antagonism of his opponents towards his messianic nature, both miss
the point regarding the humbling that he must undergo. The general misconception held by the
antagonists of Jesus is that he in declaring himself the messiah has revealed himself a pretender
to worldly power. This is most clearly shown when after being sentenced by Pilate Jesus is put
before the soldiers and mocked as if he was an insurgent who had aspired to become the king
of the Jews; They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him.
And they began to call out to him, Hail, king of the Jews! . Falling on their knees they paid homage
to him5. Now having briefly laid out the form of the antagonistic misconception of what Jesus is
as the messiah, the more interesting case of how Jesus is misunderstood by those who should
be closest to him will be examined. In analogy to the antagonistic view of Jesus as one aspiring
to worldly power at least some of his apostles believe Jesus will be raised unto a glory in which
they may one day share.

This is seen in the request of James and John the sons of Zebedee that Jesus might Let one of us
sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory6. The reply of Jesus to this request You
know not what you ask. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized
with?7 puts the notion of what Jesus is and what his disciples want him to be in direct contrast, as Jesus
responds to their reply by implicitly saying that his glory is the glory of martyrdom and not the glory of
royal triumph and conquest. Yet the apostles are not merely unaware of Christs sacrificial destiny.
When Jesus attempts to finally fully reveal to apostles what agony the messianic road will entail Peter
took him aside and began to rebuke him 8They are actually still incapable of aborting the mental image
of a glorious messianic king with which they have been culturally impregnated. In reaction Jesus
exclaims Get thee behind me Satan! You do not have the concerns of god in mind but merely human
concerns declaring that he does not recognize Peter as a disciple if Peter does not recognize that Jesus

needs to suffer to be the Christ. The passage attains a very ironic feeling when one remembers that
Peter who has just said to Jesus You are the messiah9 is now rebuking the person whom he has just
declared messiah as if he were a mere mortal, implicitly contradicting his first statement, denying Jesus
as the Christ and foreshadowing his eventual triple denial of Christ. Another interesting collection of
associates that albeit but briefly mentioned are nonetheless of great personal importance to Jesus are
his family whom went to take charge of him, for they said, he is out of his mind10. It is particularly
interesting to note that the reply of Jesus to their accusation of madness by declaring that not they But
whoever does gods will is my brother, sister and mother11 hooks neatly into his reply to Peter You do
not have the concerns of god in mind

In both cases Jesus seems to declare that as long as those close to him as Jesus are not close to him as
the Christ they are not really close to him and that even his family and Peter fail to recognize him
strongly underlies how isolated he is as the messiah. Moving on beyond those inimical or close to the
Christ we may now look to how Jesus as the messiah stands in relation to the general public. The general
public seems to quickly realise that Jesus is a person of importance as he taught them as one having
authority13 yet they dont seem to be aware of the fact that Jesus is anything more than a rabbi, healer
or prophet. A state of affairs Jesus seems to wish to maintain as he silences demons who call him the
son of man and impels a beggar whose blindness he has healed to merely remain silent and pay his due
at the temple as is proper. Jesus seems fairly strongly bent on not openly revealing himself as the
messiah during the first half of the gospel even if he does not object to the messianic chanting that
greets him when entering Jerusalem such as blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord14. Yet
for
all his distance from the crowd it is only at the very end that Jesus is truly seen as the messiah that he is
when an anonymous centurion looks upon Jesus breathing out his last breath and remarks surely this
man was the son of god15.
In

In summary: The good news Mark seeks to spread is the good news of Jesus the Christ, the son of god. A
messiah who was as unlike the contemporary image of a messiah as could be. A messiah who was
humiliated, beaten and crucified, who conquered not in life but in death. Mark presents Jesus as
someone whose destiny defied the internal logic of the world around him up to his closest disciples and
had to carry the weight of noble destiny on his shoulders in a loneliness we can scarcely imagine.