"After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news'" (1:14-15).
In the Gospel of Mark everything happens suddenly. The gospel begins abruptly with the sudden appearance of John the Baptist. He comes out of nowhere, and then he is abruptly swept aside to make room for the one "more powerful" (1:7) than he. Then just as suddenly Jesus breaks upon Galilee like a storm, "proclaiming the Gospel"—for Mark the Gospel Jesus proclaims is Jesus himself.
The evangelist has traditionally been placed among the companions of St. Paul. We don't know if Mark actually traveled with Paul, but his point of view is certainly like that of the gentile churches Paul founded. The evangelists Matthew and Luke are more closely related to a Jewish obedience-centered religion. In their gospels Jesus comes to teach a new way of living, and he does this through teachings and parables. But Mark's gospel is a story of mighty actions. Jesus is the man of Power who comes to defeat the powers of evil and to proclaim that God is about to establish his Kingdom on earth. In Mark we listen in vain for the kind of ethical teaching we find in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. What we do hear—and see--is Jesus "proclaiming the good news" with power and authority.
And what is the content of this good news? In Mark's gospel it is a message of destruction and renewal. The radical transformation of the present, corrupt era into a new and purified one is the theme of all the apocalyptic books of the Bible, books like Daniel and Revelation. Mark's gospel is apocalyptic; Jesus proclaims the good news that the old eon is about to end and another is about to begin.
In Mark's gospel the moment of Jesus' coming is the cusp of time; it is the moment when God lowers the curtain upon an epoch marked by strife and opposition, and clears the stage for a new age to begin. "The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has come near," Jesus says. God sends His Man into the world to effect this change; Jesus believes that his life and death are crucial for that change to take place. And when Jesus rises from the dead, the early church, of which Mark was a part, sees Jesus' proclamation validated, and interprets the resurrection as the beginning of the new eon, a time when old certainties are called into question and the established order is reversed, when the dead rise and anything can happen.
So in such a world what should our lives be like? "Repent, and believe the good news," Jesus replies. Repentance is not a very important theme in the rest of Mark's gospel. As in Paul's gentile churches his emphasis is not on what we do, but on what God has done. For Paul and Mark, Jesus Christ is God's rescue act, redeeming a helpless and lost humanity from its slavery to the power of death. Repentance implies a real freedom on the part of human beings, but the Gospel of Mark focuses not on human freedom but upon the powerful Son of God who conquers the enemy we could never overcome. As it is expressed in the words of a Sunday school hymn—"we are weak but he is strong." Repentance lies beyond our powers, but the second half of Jesus' command, "believe the Gospel," is closer to the heart of Mark's message. Jesus is the Gospel; to be a Christian is to believe the story of God's rescue, and to respond in faith by becoming his disciple.
And that is exactly what happens next in Mark; Jesus calls his first disciples. This is not just an account of the call of the Galilee fishermen. It is also an ideal picture of what our response should be to the preaching of the Gospel. When Jesus calls us we should drop everything else and follow. The imminent coming of God's kingdom demands an immediate response. So Mark tells the story of the calling of the disciples twice, as if for emphasis, and both times their response to the call is immediate. And this sets up a pattern in Mark of immediate responses. The word "immediately" is used by the evangelist again and again to stress that the only appropriate response to the Gospel is an instantaneous one.
And that wonderful summons Jesus gives them—"Follow me and I will make you fish for people"—is the key to everything. These words come to us directly from the mouth of Jesus, remembered by the disciples to whom they were spoken. They are both a call to labor in the Kingdom and an assurance of the powerful Son of God that he will share his strength and courage with those who share his mission. It was a promise he kept to those Galilee fisherman, and keeps to us.
No comments:
Post a Comment