2nd Sunday in Advent: Mark 1:1-8 and the Shocking Gospel, Part 1

1The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
³the 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.”

In these seemingly simple verses, the author of the message we have come to know as the Gospel of Mark has opened a narrative that would take the world by storm.  Over the centuries we have been so drugged by the repetition and dulling of the words, that when we hear them read as we will again on Sunday, it will most likely sound to the average hearer something like, “The beginning of blah, blah, blah…Jesus Christ…blah, blah, blah…John the Baptist….blah, blah, blah….baptize…repentance…baptize…Holy Spirit.”

That is a freakin’ shame, if not borderline blasphemy.  Yep, you read right, pardner.  To take this gospel and turn it into the mush and pablum spoon-fed to parishioners in this feel-good age of Buddy Jesus and Papa God is tantamount to serving up a pot of spicy green chile without the spicy green chile.

But before we go any further into this text, perhaps a historical detour is in order.  The Gospel of Mark hasn’t been looked upon too kindly by church theologians and scholars until quite recently.  The classic supposition has been that Mark is the inferior predecessor to the more spit-polished narratives you find in Matthew and Luke.  The first commentary on Mark didn’t show up until the sixth century and held forth as the only one until a second was written in the ninth century (see pg. 159 of Luke Timothy Johnson’s “Writings of the New Testament”).  The Early Church Father, Papias, was the one on record who advanced the notion that Mark was basically a work of stenography by John Mark in capturing the remembrances of the Apostle Peter.  It’s hard, but necessary to remember that Papias was a man of his time, a Greco-Roman of the second century, and bereft of the good scholarship and critical analytical tools that have been built up over the last nineteen centuries.  It’s hard, but necessary.  Otherwise upon emerging from a serious reading of Mark, one might be tempted to consider that Papias, or anybody else who came to the conclusion that Mark was a simple stenographer was someone who had their head firmly planted up their…..well, you get the idea.

The mid-twentieth century saw an explosion in Markan scholarship, most of it coming from American scholars.  My take on this: it was the literary revolution led by Ernest Hemingway that led to the American leadership in revisiting and excavating the hidden genius of Mark.  The language in Mark is lean and spare, much like Hemingway’s breakthrough writing style.  Until Big Ernie broke this ground, most folks thought Mark to be simple-witted and not up to snuff with the more classically written works of Matthew and Luke.

But the century that produced Hemingway also produced an explosion in books and commentaries about Mark that all were inspired by the powerfully spare narrative and lean language of this ancient writer.

OK, we’re about to get to the verses at hand for the upcoming Sunday, but first one more bit of housekeeping regarding the probable situation in which Mark was written.

Using techniques developed to assess and interpret biblical texts, most scholars now place the date of Mark’s writing somewhere between 64 and 70 CE, and most likely in the 66-70 range.  It was written most likely by someone in the early Jesus Movement to an audience that would have included Jews and Gentiles.  The place of its writing is still debated.  Some say Rome.  Others Antioch.  Still others say Alexandria.

The two key historical issues at play during this time would have been:

1. The Jewish revolt against the Romans that began in 66 CE and ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Great Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

2. This second issue is connected to the first:  the mounting fervor and unrest, particularly among Judeans, that was connected to the apocalyptic expectation that God was soon to enter the world stage.  God would then use his anointed Messiah (Christ in Greek), the one heralded by the return of Elijah, to purge, then purify Judea and all of Palestine from the evil scourges of foreign occupation and internal corruption.  It would be a bloody campaign, but the expectation was that it would be God who would be shedding gallons upon gallons of unrighteous, wicked blood.

The occupying Romans levied oppressive taxes, brutally supressed any perceived activity that might lead to insurrection, and took the resources they wanted (the fish harvested from the Sea of Galilee were enjoyed throughout the empire).  The Temple religious hierarchy was seen as in collaboration with the Romans, and also as corrupt and oppressive in the way it too levied taxes.  The Temple Mark knew was the rebuilt-rebuilt Temple of Solomon, first rebuilt upon the return from Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE, later rebuilt by Herod the Great just prior to the birth of Jesus.

Okay, thanks for your patience.  Now, on to the text.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest manuscripts containing Mark, does not include “the Son of God.”  Because it is left out, some folks spend a lot of time conjecturing whether or not Mark’s Jesus is the divine/human person the church has made him out to be.  I look at how the centurion sees Jesus’ death on the cross in Mark 15 and says, “Truly this was God’s Son.”  For me this makes the argument about the opening verse a bit irrelevant.

Here is another historical detail worth noting:  the historical evidence suggests that first-century hearers of a proclamation that began, “the good news of…..” would have typically heard a proclamation read by some herald about some accomplishment of the Roman Emperor.  The Greek word we translate as good news is “euangellion.”  This word was in common use in the first century, but most often associated with news of a Roman military conquest, or some victory of Caesar’s worth spreading news about throughout the empire.  The suppression of the Spartacus-led revolt would have been proclaimed “good news.”  So would the eventual victory in the Jewish War.  Caesar, like other rulers throughout the ancient world, was seen as having divine status.  So when you take all these things into account, you see that Mark begins his gospel with a bang.  The beginning of the euangellion of Caesar Jesus.  Then Mark fuses the title Messiah, or Christ, to his name.  Julius Caesar?  No, Jesus Christ.  This opening verse in Mark’s gospel is nothing less than a military throw-down directed to an audience acquainted with such language being applied to other principalities and powers.  Does this sound like “blah, blah, blah” to you?  Me either.

Thanks for hanging with me on this.  Part two comes tomorrow.