Second Sunday in Advent: Mark 1.1-8

Tomorrow's Gospel reading is Mark 1.1-8.  In our Sunday Adult Seminar we will be working through the Good News of Mark because important selections from Mark's Gospel will be read in Year B.  As our Seminar's moderator, I usually prepare a three- or four-page handout, sometimes distributed in advance.  Here's is the handout for Mark 1.1-8:

Today we begin our reading of Mark in earnest.  And the very first awareness we must have about verse one is that Mark’s first sentence is radical, especially from a political point of view.  Understand the contexts.  First, there is the political context.  The powerful Roman government has been telling everyone that it has the “good news”!  Second, there is a smaller context: that of young Christian community, the scattered “house churches” established by itinerant missionaries throughout the Mediterranean.  For two decades, from the early 30s until the early 50s, there has only been talk, preaching, and “house communions” held on every Lord’s day, Sunday.  Paul and other Christian missionaries have been walking, traveling, sailing, and planting small church groups all around and throughout the Mediterranean world.  Importantly, in the year AD 50, there is no Christian Bible.  While in prison during the late 50s, Paul, often in prison, has been sending letters out for circulation among the tiny congregations.  During their times of worship, they have been reading their Hebrew and Greek (Old) Testaments. 

When does Mark write his Story?

At the time when Mark writes, there is no New Testament.  Paul’s letters are simply being copied and sent on to nearby towns where again they are read, re-copied, and sent on again.  There is no “life of Jesus” available for reading or study.  Preachers pass on what they have heard from other preachers.  People no doubt take notes and try to remember what they have heard.  For two decades, everything has been “word of mouth.”

And, of course, time is going by rather quickly.  And disturbingly, the promised return of Jesus does not take place.  In early 50s, Paul writes to the Thessalonians, the first letter included in the developing New Testament; he tells his Christian friends not to worry too much. The end will come when it comes.  Jesus will keep his word. Meanwhile, although details about the life of Jesus are precious, some of them are fading away.  Lost.  Here and there, folks begin to write down what they can remember. The sayings and teachings of Jesus get special attention and are preserved.[1]   As time passes, there’s a good bit of talk as to how best to preserve the story of Jesus.  And again, disturbingly, here and there one hears stories circulating that don’t quite match up to what is generally held to be true.[2]  As the original apostles and disciples begin to get old and some die off, the pressure to make a record of things gets more and more intense.  Somebody needs to write up what happened.  That first somebody is Mark. 

To whom is Mark writing and telling the Story?

Now imagine yourself listening to Mark’s story about the good news.  Who are you?  As the audience to whom Mark writes, who are you?  For many reasons, most Biblical 
experts think that you and those around you in your “house church” are Palestinean farmers living in and around Galilee.  
You are not wealthy.  You are not an aristrocrat.  You are not elitist, well-educated, or prosperous.  You have a wife and kids to support.  You may or may not own some land or a small home.  You are probably a day-laborer, a stone mason, a field hand, a fisherman, or a carpenter.  In other words, you live harvest-to-harvest, fish-catch to fish-catch, hand-to-mouth.  You have no savings, and you are dependent on family and community support when things get tough.  In short, you are poor.

What do the first house-church listeners really hear?  News in your little church community tells us that somebody has written a story about Jesus and you can hear it being read at the house church for the next couple of Sundays.  So you go to worship, and this is what you hear:

1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way; 
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight,’”

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

What do the first-listeners really hear?  Listen, as they did, to the introduction, phrase by phrase—as a poor Galilean peasant, day laborer, stone mason—and imagine what those words mean to you as a poor working man.  If it helps, take a look at these pictures.  They were taken in the backhills of Haiti, in the small village of Ranquitte.  These people are much like first-century Palestinean Jews. 

Look hard, listen well.  What do you hear as Mark is read to you in your house church?  Let’s  go phrase-by-phrase and find out.  Ask yourselves: Where have I heard these words and phrases before?  And what do I make of them now?

“The beginning”?  A clue:  Genesis!  A radical new start! 

“of the good news”?   It is difficult for us to hear the phrase “good news” without automatically thinking “Gospel.”  But in Jesus’ time, the term “good news” was primarily a political expression; good news was the propaganda that the Roman government promoted about Caesar.  Here, for example, is the text of the so-called Priene Inscription; it sums up what everybody was supposed to believe about a Roman ruler:

 It seemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance excelled even our anticipations, surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came by reason of him, which Asia resolved in Smyrna. [3]

This is but one sample of the “good news” that Rome kept sending down for all to hear, read, and believe.  From Rome, the “good news” is that our almighty Emperor is God’s son and the savior of the world.  Be grateful and obey his royal commands!  Pay your taxes and bow your heads when he or his representatives come by.  Always act like an appreciative citizen.  Above all, don’t question his  authority.

Now with Mark comes another political announcement!  Using political language to begin his story Mark is about to reject all the current “good news” about Caesar.  Disagreeing with his own government’s propaganda, Mark is about to present an alternative view of life, just as “political,” but with an entirely different set of values and a different vision about who’s really important.  Mark is about to introduce Jesus the Anointed, God’s politician.

          What happens next is astonishing.   Working from memory, Mark quotes from Isaiah the Prophet (actually the first two lines are from Malachi 3.1) 40.3,   

 “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way; 
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight,’”

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A “voice” loud, roaring like a lion, in the wilderness.  A “be-wilder-ing” man!   Isaiah is speaking through a loud speaker.   A messenger is bulldozing a way in the wilderness.  His voice roars out: “Prepare for God’s arrival!  Make the road smooth and straight!”  When emperors enter a city, their advance teams of horsemen, guards, and trumpeters sound the warning.  Caesar is on his way!  Stand aside, the Divine Royalty is approaching!  Get ready to meet your Ruler!

Mark will have none of that.   His trumpeter is a crazy man who comes out of a wild place, the “wild”-erness.  He’s preaching.  Get “watered” and change your lives!  You need forgiveness.   He appeals to enormous crowds.  They come not only from the country, but stream out from the capital itself.  Some are gawkers.

John looks like a bum.  He eats like a homeless man.  He probably stinks.  It’s a good thing he works in water.  Our Sunday School pictures of him are much too nice.  His skin is baked like leather.  He’s rough looking, gaunt, muscular, and fiery.  He’s  the equal and more than any Baptist revivalist; he is The Baptist!  He’s off his rocker.  He’s eccentric.  He eats bugs.  And he’s the herald of God’s politician, Jesus.  For the local authorities, he’s a pain in-the-you-know-what.  They don’t like him, never will.  Best to send the CIA or somebody to get him behind bars.

What he says is startling.  “I’m just a stagehand, a front man.  The star in this drama is Jesus!”  He will blow on  you the Breath of God.  And change you from the inside out.  You will change your political views once you get to know God’s personal “politician”: the life-changing Prince of Peace.

Now, having established that we are listening to radically political “good news” in our first-century house church, let’s go to 1.9-15 next Sunday.  As you read these verses, perhaps one verse, day-by-day, using the method of “sacred reading” (lectio divina), let these six verses sink deep, word by word, into your heart and life.  For guidelines, see http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org. 

See you next Sunday!  And don’t hesitate to bring your coffee and donuts in with you!  Maybe somebody can lug in a big coffee urn for our refills!   ~ Andy

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[1]   Many scholars believe that we can see what one of those documents looked like; in New Testament studies, it’s called “Q,” the abbreviation for the German word Quelle (in English, “Source”).   Paul in his farewell address to the Ephesian elders reminds them of one of Jesus’ saying that is not recorded anywhere in the Gospels: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20.35).  There were apparently many stories about what Jesus did and said that were not preserved in writing; our historical knowledge of Jesus is at best partial, but we have been given all we need to know (see John 21.35).

[2]   For texts of many “competing” Gospel, see The Complete Gospels Annotated Scholars Version.  ed. Robert J. Miller (San Francisco: Harper, 1994).  This book contains texts from the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Peter, and many others.

[3] For a detailed examination of 1.1, see the following: Craig Evans, “Mark’s Incipit and the Priene Calendar Inscription: From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 1 (2000): 67-81; and Adam Winn, The Purpose of Mark's Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe), Nehren, Germany: Laupp and Gabel, 2008.