The First Time
First things are significant. I vividly remember the birth of both of my children. Each memory is incredibly precious. Yet when my first child was born, I was unprepared for what a profound experience it would be. When the midwife passed my newborn daughter to me for the first time, and I lowered this beautiful, vulnerable little baby girl into the water of her first bath, she looked up at me. I was overwhelmed. This little one was mine to care for!
What are some firsts that you have experienced? Do you remember your first car? Mine was a 1976 white and red Datsun 180B. It was a bomb that burnt oil and left a trail of smoke behind. But I was proud of it. I had wheels, I could go places. What about your first crush? Do you remember how your pulse quickened when you saw that special person enter the room?
What about trying new foods? I have found that one of life’s joys is discovering different cultural cuisines. I remember tasting Thai food and thinking, ‘What have I been missing!’ In a similar way it is a real joy when you discover new music styles or new musicians for the first time. Firsts are significant.
How do you capture who Jesus is? How do you communicate it faithfully?
Mark was First
Of the four gospels, most scholars agree that Mark was the first. Imagine Mark deciding to pen an account of Jesus’ life. What a task! Think of the pressure and weight he would feel. How do you do this? Mark had no adequate precedent. How do you capture who Jesus is? How do you communicate it faithfully? What do you include? What do you leave out? How do you structure it? How much do you say? Even more challenging than this is how to convey what can’t really be conveyed because it is too big, too vast, too profound, too deep, too wonderful for words. How does one drink the ocean? How does one count the stars? How does one cool the sun? How does one measure the cosmos? How does one embrace whole mountains? How do you do the impossible?
The truth is you can’t. But even if you can’t drink the ocean–you can swim in it! You may not be able to count all the stars, but you can fill your eyes with as many of them as possible. Mark knew he just needed to introduce Jesus to us. He just needed to allow us to catch a glimpse. So he set out to do that.
The Opening Verse
Mark throws us into the deep end. We have no choice but to swim. There is no ancient cosmic story like John, no genealogies and birth narratives like Matthew, and no chatty introduction like Luke. Mark begins like a jet breaking the sound barrier and does not slow down. Once Mark has started, we can barely catch our breath until the final chapter. Mark does this by using the Greek word “euthus,” often translated as “immediately” or “straight away,” 41 times. We move rapidly from one amazing story to the next. Instead of resolving things, the mystery keeps building as we wonder who this Jesus is. Mark is simultaneously a slow, unfolding mystery but narrated at great speed.
Mark tells us who and what his book is about in the first verse. But the opening lines only really disclose their meaning when you’ve gone all the way to the end. This is because Jesus is unprecedented. Even if you tell everyone who He is initially, no one will understand it then and there. Jesus cannot be properly grasped with preexisting categories. You must narrate Him so people can simply see Him. Mark is eager for us to discover this, so he moves rapidly through events in Jesus’ life. Dropping clues and hints, but never stopping or tarrying to develop them. This is because so many pieces of the puzzle are needed to begin to grasp who Jesus is, and only with all of them in place can we see it.
Nevertheless, Mark introduces his gospel with one powerful verse and squeezes entire worlds into it. The first word is arché or “The Beginning.” The same word that starts off the Old Testament (Genesis 1:1). Here, Mark tries to accomplish the impossible task of introducing us to who Jesus truly is. What else is of comparable size and significance to Jesus? Of course, the opening verses of Genesis, where God begins creation and history itself. Yes, the story of Jesus is that big! This alone is of comparable scale. Mark introduces Jesus by hinting that something like creation is happening again; some kind of new history is starting.
What is this New Beginning?
What is this new beginning, more precisely? It is not the making of land and sea or birds, bats, and bison, as in Genesis 1. No, this new beginning is the appearance of good news or the Gospel. The word gospel carried profound connotations in Mark’s day for both Jews and Gentiles. For Gentiles, the word gospel could be used to announce the appearance of a new universal ruler or Caeser. For Jews it was even deeper. Centuries earlier, Isaiah had prophesied good news by asking Israel to “Behold your God” who would redeem them (Isaiah 40:9). In Isaiah 52:7, the feet of the person bringing ‘good news’ are described as beautiful because they bring a message of salvation which evokes happiness, peace, joy, and singing. What is the message? “Your God reigns!” Salvation happens when God inaugurates His kingdom. In Isaiah 61:1, we are told that a Spirit-anointed servant of God will bring good news to the poor, blind, heartbroken, and captive. God will heal the world itself through His own King, the Messiah.
Having alluded to Genesis 1:1 and Isaiah’s images of a universal messianic King, Mark then names who it is. “The beginning of the gospel of … Jesus” (Mark 1:1). Ancient first-time Jewish and Gentile readers sensitive to the allusions Mark has evoked must have been shocked. A Jewish reader might ask, “Am I to believe that everything we’ve hoped for is bound up with some man called Jesus?” A Gentile reader might declare, “Wait a second, I’m pretty sure Caeser’s name is not Jesus.” While puzzling over this, Mark then tops it all off by adding that this Jesus is the Son of God. He has a very special relationship to the divine. These are big claims. Only reading on will reveal their accuracy.
Re-Reading and Re-Discovering
Reading Mark’s terse, fast-paced, sparsely explained gospel re-creates the mystery and excitement of discovering Jesus for the first time. Mark is a gospel that wakes us up. It catches our attention. It hurries us along and leaves us stunned with a crucified and risen Messiah. Some ancient manuscripts of Mark end at 16:8 with the women afraid of the angels’ words which tell them that Jesus is risen.[i] The risen Christ is implied in Mark’s short ending but never explicitly seen. With the short ending, readers are left to finish the gospel’s trajectory of revealing the mysterious, incomparable Jesus Christ by drawing the logical but astonishing conclusion that Jesus must have indeed risen. The effect of this on the first-time reader is to encourage them to read Mark again with a better understanding of what the opening verse proclaimed about Jesus. By faith, this leads to an encounter with the risen Christ. I hope when you read Mark that you can catch something of the revolution that was the first gospel. I also pray we all meet again the revolution Himself, “Jesus Christ the Son of God.”
[i] Many ancient writers tell us that several early manuscripts of Mark ended at 16:8. It seems some devoted scribes added verses 9-20 to bring Mark in line with the other gospels, which explicitly mention Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. The extended ending is in a different style to Mark and seems to be drawn from the other gospels and Acts.
