Mark Part Two Deep Dive
MARCAN AGENDA | RYAN KERRISON
The Gospel of Mark’s being the shortest of the four gospel accounts in no way restricts what Mark gets up to with his narrative arrangement. Mark’s audience play a key role in understanding and unlocking the treasures within his strategic agenda – the Gentiles, predominantly in the city of Rome, had certain expectations of divine figures. The prevailing worldview was deistic (a detached Creator, a God who no longer intervenes with the universe), and so the contrast of a divine agent, God Himself, coming to Earth to act and be with His people says a lot about God. As outlined in last week’s Deep Dive, the critical factor when evaluating the substance or value of one’s life in Ancient Rome was actions. Hence, Mark fixates on the actions of Jesus, emphasising their efficacy and their immediacy over and against their verbal eloquence or religious pedigree.
The primary agenda for Mark was to display Jesus as a servant; the perfect Servant. The One who never faltered or failed, who kept Himself occupied with the service of His Father. To do this, Mark employs much of the Isaisic Tradition from Chapters 40-66, focusing on the ‘Suffering Servant’ theme from Isaiah 53 in particular. A brief aside, that as this gospel is essentially the account of Peter the Apostle, the perspective runs in unique unison with Peter’s own epistles, and often carries overtures and themes that blend together in harmony to create a theological soundscape.
Mark achieves this by pivoting his gospel on a story in Chapter 10. Picking up in verse 35, Mark recounts a discussion between Jesus, James, and John (part of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples) who appear to be competing for the right and left-hand position of Jesus. The positions, particularly the right-hand, represent authority and power–an important theme within the Jewish Messianic tradition. However, it is Jesus’ response to this that really displays Jesus’ understanding of servanthood. Jesus repudiates the notion of an earthly kingdom model in favour of a redefinition of the messianic mission. The parameters are shifted to that of ‘giving His life for many’ and Jesus calling Himself a ‘servant’.
M 10:42-45 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.
This conscious choice of the word ‘servant’ to a Gentile audience had dense sociological repercussions. Slaves were considered socially inferior and, in many cases, were ranked by society as the lowest of the class system. Jesus’ aim with these statements was to reject the idea of His Messianic mission being one of earthly political and militaristic glory and imbue it with subversive and counter-cultural divine connotations that reconfigures the current prideful models of thinking and behaving to one that is ‘others-focussed’, and entered into via surrender and ultimately death, even death on a cross.
Another key to discovering Mark’s agenda lies in his wholistic attempt to persuade the people reading or listening to this account to recognise Jesus as their Saviour and realise a new kingdom has been unleashed upon the Earth. He does this by arranging the story into a kind of drama with three parts, loosely categorised by theme and location.
based in galilee
focusing on who Jesus is
moving toward the final goal
this is where Mark shows Jesus revealing Himself as Messiah and challenging the people’s misconceptions about what this means
based in jerusalem
articulating the apparent paradox of how Jesus ultimately fulfills the expectation of Messiah.
It’s clear whether you’re racing through Mark at his own break-neck pace, or burrowing down on some of the exegetical nitty-gritty, that there is an arrangement at play. Mark is showing his audience the actions of Jesus, as the ultimate Servant, and challenging some of the misapprehensions that surround what it means to be called Messiah. Mark does this brilliantly, and his work had gone on to help not only the early Church and their struggle to incorporate this new-found unexpected Kingdom that has burst forth onto the scene, but also continues to help those who suffer for the sake of the gospel, and as an encouragement for those who are being persecuted, to remain active and to respond quickly to the commands of God–just as Jesus did with His time on Earth.
recommended
The Greco Roman World
Mark part two
Mark part three…coming soon