The Gospel of Mark
Outline - Schedule
Today
March 8
March
a c 15
5
March 22
March 29
April 5
April 12
The Miracles of Jesus (Chapters 2 & 3)
The Parables of Jesus (Chapter 4)
The
e Preaching
eac g of
o Jesus
(Chapters 5 & 6)
Faith & Discipleship (Chapters 7 & 8)
From Galilee to Jerusalem
(Chapters 9 & 10)
The End Times (Chapters 11,
11 12,
12 & 13)
The Last Supper (14), Crucifixion (15),
and The First Easter (16)
1
Review – Chapter One
• Mark is a gospel, (eu = good; aggelion =
messenger)) nott a biography
bi
h or history.
hi t
• Concern – to re-present Jesus, the
Messiah/Christ, the Son of God, that people
may follow Jesus “way” to God.
THE “MIRACLES” OF JESUS
Chapters 2 and 3
“Miracles” in quotation marks, because it is
nott a word
d Mark
M k uses. He
H speaks
k ten
t times
ti
off
dynamis (‘deed of power’), five times of semeion
(‘sign’), and once of teras (‘omen’).
Today, “miracle” is defined as ‘a violation of
tthe
e law
aw of
o nature’
atu e (Richard
( c a d Swinburne,
Sw bu e, The
e
Concept of Miracle,1970). In Biblical times,
there was no concept of the ‘law of nature.’
God does everything, and somethings God
does rather rarely.
2
The World View of the 1st Century:
Dualism and the Cosmic Struggle
The World marked by dualism and cosmic struggle
E th
Earth
-
H
Heaven
God
-
Satan
Present Age
-
Age to Come
Good
-
Evil
Children of Light
-
Children of Darkness
Health
-
Illness
The Cosmic Struggle: Good and Evil
3
Disease and Illness
Jesus’ healings understood within this dualism
and within this cosmic struggle. God is not
absent- all p
part of God’s p
plan/providence.
p
John Dominic Crossan distinguishes between
disease (Cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.) and illness
(how it affects you – cuts you off from people
and from God, leads you to despair). Jesus does
nott heal
h l our disease,
di
b
butt h
heals
l our ill
illness.
Jesus came not to heal us (from disease) but to
save us (to give us hope and confidence that
nothing can separate us from God).’ (Crossan)
The Cosmic Struggle
Battle: God (good health) v. Evil (disease)
Mark is telling his First Century audience that
J
Jesus
intervenes
i t
in
i the
th cosmic
i struggle
t
l to
t
defeat Satan, to defeat death, and to usher in
the Kingdom of God.
‘Thy Kingdom Come’
Future eschatology
not yet
Realized eschatology
already
4
The Cosmic Struggle
Mark’s Gospel is ‘future eschatology’; he is
writing to a generation that believed that the
end was imminent
and some of them
would not die before
the Kingdom came.
In the Cosmic struggle,
God has not gone to
sleep – even if it seems
that evil triumphs.
Reading the Miracle Stories in the
Context of the Cosmic Struggle
PURPOSE: to lead to amazement (and
sometimes
ti
to
t faith
f ith and
d sometimes
ti
not;
t some
say ‘yes’ and others walk on by)
Secrecy Motif: Mark explains that Jesus does
not want the people to know yet who he is; this
explains
e
p a s why
w y everyone
eve yo e doesn’t
does t follow
o ow him.. The
e
reader learned in verse 1 who Jesus is; Evil also
knows (1.24) – the disciples won’t know until
chapter 8, and at the end….. the reader must
decide!
5
The Key Story at the Beginning of the
Gospel: The Healing of the Paralytic
Mark 2:1-12
1And
when he returned to Capernaum after
some days,
y , it was reported
p
that he was at
home. 2And many were gathered together, so
that there was no more room, not even at the
door. And he was preaching the word to them.
3And they came, bringing to him a paralytic
carried by four men.
men 4And when they could not
get near him because of the crowd, they
removed the roof above him, and when they
had made an opening, they let down the bed
on which the paralytic lay. 5And when Jesus
The Healing of the Paralytic
saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son,
your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the
scribes were sitting there, questioning in their
hearts, 7“Why does this man speak like that?
He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but
God alone?” 8And immediately Jesus,
perceiving in his spirit that they thus
questioned
ti
d within
ithi th
themselves,
l
said
id tto them,
th
“Why do you question these things in your
hearts? 9Which is easier, to say to the
paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say,
6
The Healing of the Paralytic
‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? 10But that
you may know that the Son of Man has
authority on earth to forgive sins
sins”—he
he said to
11
the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up
your bed, and go home.” 12And he rose and
immediately picked up his bed and went out
before them all, so that they were all amazed
and
d glorified
l ifi d G
God,
d saying,
i
“W
“We never saw
anything like this!”
Common Characteristics of
Healings
1. Encounters person with demon
2. Forces demon to leave - Jesus speaks
directly to demon
3. Person returns to normal life
4. In each healing, there is a WITNESS.
“A
“Amazement,”
t ” “Fear,”…may
“F
”
or may nott
produce Faith.
7
Exorcisms in The First Century
Context: Exorcism and demon possession can
only be understood in the context of dualism.
People believed that there was good (God) and
evil
il (S
(Satan).
t ) S
Satan
t now reigns.
i
G
God
d has
h come
in Jesus Christ to challenge that reign. The
demons are the first to recognize Jesus’
power. The battle for the ‘cosmos’ begins at
Jesus’ baptism when Jesus is given the Spirit to
defeat Satan (evil/death).
(evil/death) For those who
follow Jesus, the resurrection is the
demonstration of God’s victory over
Satan/death…that we will someday (future
eschatology) realize.
Exorcisms in The First Century
The Gospel of John, in contrast, has no demons
and no demon exorcism. John’s gospel is one
of triumph!
p His eschatology
gy is much more
‘now’ than is Mark’s which is ‘future’.
Today Christians deal with eschatology by
making it an ‘already–not yet’ paradox.
8
Exorcisms in Mark
1:21-28 The Man with the Unclean Spirit
5:1-20 The Gerasene Demoniac
9 14 20 The
9:14-20
Th Boy
B Who
Wh is
i Possessed
P
d (epileptic)
( il ti )
Today: Is demonic possession real or but a
fantasy, a relic of ancient man who saw all
illness as demonic-possession?
The Gerasene Demoniac
Mark 5:1-20
The longest and most fully developed exorcism
story in the gospels
Geography: Gerasene is in Gentile territory
and thus impure (not ‘holy land’)
Possession: an “unclean spirit” has taken
control
Proximity to corpses: according to custom,
stepping on a grave made one impure (he lives
in cemetery)
9
The Gerasene Demoniac
Name: his name is “Legion” – a legion is a
Roman military unit (usually 6,000 troops); as a
pagan and impure power had controlled their
part of the world, so it is that both the land
and the man are ‘possessed’
Animals: pigs – lots of them..pigs are unclean
Meaning: Jesus overcomes impurity. Though
impurity is contagious, the power of the spirit
in Jesus is stronger than impurity.
Key is Authority of Jesus!
First Century did not pretend to ‘know’ God or
understand the mysteries of the
universe. They approached God in awe, even
fear. They knew what they didn’t know and
were not ashamed of their ignorance.
John Calvin: “God cannot be known; God is
mystery.”
Augustine: “If you understand him, he is not
God.”
10
Jesus Has Authority over the Dark Side
Mark is saying that in Jesus God has appeared –
the blind see, the dumb hear, the sick are
healed…The old order, ‘The
The Dark Side’
Side (in
Star Wars terminology) is losing. The
exorcisms are not important for what is done
as much as they tell us who Jesus is. Jesus is
one with ‘authority.’
The New Adam (Paul’s image)
Jesus has power/authority to restore mankind
to its relationship with God.
For Paul
Paul, Jesus is the ‘new
new Adam
Adam’
Believed that all suffering is rooted in our
separation from God
GARDEN - all is perfect, we live in bliss
FALL – pain, death, suffering enters the
world
HEAVEN – restoration of GARDEN/BLISS
TODAY: already…. But not yet
11
Healing and Calling the Twelve
Mark 3:7-19
7Jesus
withdrew with his disciples to the sea,
and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and
Judea 8and Jerusalem and Idumea and from
beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and
Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he
was doing, they came to him. 9And he told his
disciples to have a boat ready for him because
of the crowd, lest they crush him, 10for he had
healed many, so that all who had diseases
pressed around him to touch him. 11And
whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell
down before him and cried out, “You are the
Healing and Calling the Twelve
Son of God.” 12And he strictly ordered them
not to make him known. 13And he went up on
the mountain and called to him those whom
he desired, and they came to him. 14And he
appointed twelve (whom he also named
apostles) so that they might be with him and
he might send them out to preach 15and have
16He
authority
th it to
t castt outt demons.
d
H appointed
i t d
the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name
Peter); 17James the son of Zebedee and John
the brother of James (to whom he gave the
name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder);
12
Healing and Calling the Twelve
18Andrew,
and Philip, and Bartholomew, and
Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of
Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the
Cananaean, 19and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed
him.
Nature Miracles
The ‘mighty deeds’ of Jesus are usually placed
in two categories:
1. Healings and exorcisms
2. Stories in which the non-human world is
affected: stories of Jesus stilling the sea,
multiplying a few loaves of fish to feed a
large crowd (and,
(and in the gospel of John,
John
changing water into wine at a wedding)
13
The Sea (Mark 4:35-41)
35On
that day, when evening had come, he said
to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”
36And leaving
g the crowd,, they
y took him with
them in the boat, just as he was. And other
boats were with him. 37And a great windstorm
arose, and the waves were breaking into the
boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38But
he was in the stern,
stern asleep on the cushion.
cushion And
they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do
you not care that we are perishing?” 39And he
awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the
sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased,
The Sea (Mark 4:35-41)
and there was a great calm. 40He said to them,
“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no
faith?” 41And they
y were filled with great
g
fear
and said to one another, “Who then is this,
that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
14
Sea of Galilee
• The Sea of Galiliee
is 12 miles long
and 7 miles wide
(more accurately,
it is a lake)
• The ‘sea’ as
metaphor
The Sea and “The Deep”
• Genesis 1 – chaos/darkness/sea covers the earth,
God’s spirit/breath ‘swept over the face of the
waters.’ The deep
p waters represent
p
the first thing
g
that God put in order (as Jesus does so again)
• Exodus – God parts the sea to deliver the
Israelites to safety
• Psalms – home of sea monsters (Leviathan)
15
SUMMARY
People who came to Jesus who were ill in one
way or another, left transformed. The
‘transformation’ meant not only that they ‘felt
better’ but that they were restored - restored
as members of the community from which
they had been excluded.
Looking for ‘naturalistic’ explanations to all the
events in Mark is futile (Albert Schweitzer,
Schweitzer
The Quest for the Historical Jesus,
explainsthat Jesus didn’t walk on water but was
walking on the shore behind a mist).
March 1 – The Miracles
Gunther Bornkamm feels that Mark errs in so
much stress on miracles, leaving the listener to
y must accept
p the miracles to
believe that they
accept Jesus as the Messiah. The Bible, he
argues, has no such dogmatic intentions – it is
Gospel (not history/biography). The Bible is
diverse! In theory, John is the only ‘orthodox’
Gospel (pre
(pre-existent
existent Jesus); Bible not
concerned that we all believe the same way
about Jesus but that we believe that in Jesus,
‘God reconciled the world to himself’.
16
March 1 – The Miracles
Eduard Schweizer: “There should be no doubt
about the fact that Jesus performed miracles,
particularly
y acts of healing.
g Nevertheless,,
and p
it is no longer possible to determine which
specific details are historical and which are not,
since the stories have passed through a long
process of development in the course of the
decades.
decades.”
The Wonders of God
Roughly half of the verses in the first ten
chapters (200 out of 425) concern what we
might call ‘miracles’ – overall, there are l8
‘miracle stories’, 8 healings’, 4 exorcisms, and 1
raising from the dead – almost all of them in
the first half of the book.
17
In Christ,
God has Invaded the World
• Jesus’ ministry is that of binding and
plundering
l d i the
th demonic
d
i forces,
f
both
b th spiritual
i it l
and physical, which have taken up residence
in God’s earthly ‘house’.
• Put another way – at Jesus’ baptism, God
invaded
vaded tthe
e wo
world
d to e
exorcise
o c se the
t e world
wo d –
through Jesus and now through his followers!
Summary : How Do We
Read/Understand the Miracles ?
Like an onion
Bultmann – demythologize
it, rid it of demons and
such, make its “core truth”
available
il bl and
d
understandable to
contemporary people.
18
BOTTOM LINE
• However we understand it…God was in
Christ.
• In
I Jesus
J
the
th Messiah,
M i h the
th New
N
Adam,
Ad
health
h lth
and wholeness was and is restored to the
creation that God loves.
• May we have eyes to see…
19