The case for reading Mark's Gospel
The best introduction to Christianity?
I’ve now read the gospel of Mark with several people who are interested in Christianity. It’s probably the best introductory gospel because it’s:
short and action-oriented
strange, yet coherent
sophisticated
Let’s explore those in more detail.
Immediacy, action
Of the four gospel accounts, Mark is the shortest and most direct. The word Mark seems to use the most is “immediately”; it’s an action-packed sixteen chapters. To be clear, lots happens in the other gospels, but in Mark there’s no Sermon on the Mount, no high priestly prayer — no sooner has Jesus healed someone or left his disciples baffled by his teaching, he’s moving on to the next town or region.
This high tempo might be because this gospel was mainly Peter’s account of Jesus ministry, who comes across as a hothead throughout the gospels. Or perhaps, as one friend suggested, Jesus was in founder mode and unwilling to be distracted from his mission: “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” (1:38, emphasis added.)
Whatever the reason, its immediacy makes it an easy read; you can get through it in about an hour.
Strangeness
Mark isn’t as esoteric as John, but there are still plenty of downright strange episodes in it.
The start and the end of the gospel are somewhat unusual: first, Jesus bursts onto the pages as an adult — Mark feels no need to tell of his origins in Bethlehem like Matthew and Luke do. The end of the gospel is abrupt: just as the empty tomb is discovered, the narrative stops.1 You’re left wanting more, wondering what happened next.
Questions present themselves as you read. For instance, why does Jesus curse a fig tree? And why doesn’t he want to reveal himself? He repeatedly instructs people not to tell others about him.
Many of these questions are in fact answered by the text itself. That’s perhaps the most compelling single thing about Mark: how the book explains itself in complex and clever ways. (This is true of the whole rest of the Bible, in fact, especially as a whole, but that’s for another post.)
For instance, let’s take the fig tree. A couple of verses afterwards, Jesus is in Jerusalem and ejects moneylenders from the temple, judging Israel for its spiritual bankruptcy. Then he and his disciples pass by the fig tree and Jesus tells the disciples to have faith and pray for the impossible.
This context explains the fig tree. It’s a metaphor for Israel: Jesus found no spiritual fruit in the temple, so judged them.2 He then warns the disciples to have faith in order to escape judgement.
Sophistication
This brings us to one of the biggest misconceptions about the gospels overall. Growing up, I imbibed the idea that they were a random collection of good stories about Jesus. That’s how they are regularly taught, isolated examples of great truths Jesus explained to us. He’s a great teacher, etc.
But a closer reading of Mark shows there’s much more going on. In fact, it reveals the actual point of the gospel.
The most obvious example of this is Mark’s hinge. The gospel started by saying it was all about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but none of the other characters really understand this at the start. However, halfway through the text, 8:29, Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, a moment you might expect to be triumphant — the disciples finally get it!
Immediately, however, the narrative takes a turn. Jesus says that the Son of Man (a name he uses for himself) must be killed. The rest of the gospel builds up to Jesus’s crucifixion, where a centurion declares “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Just a few verses later, the empty tomb underlines his divine status.
From beginning to end, then, Mark has written his gospel to tell us who Jesus is.
Or how about Mark’s use of the Old Testament? In 6:31-44, Mark strongly emphasises that the place they’re in is desolate — three times in five verses. Soon after, Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people in this desolate place.
The whole scene points to Exodus 16, when God’s people also needed food in a desolate place and He provided it for them in the form of manna. Mark is telling us that Jesus is fulfilling the role of God in the new version of the Exodus.
And what about Mark’s sandwiches? This refers to where he arranges his material in an “ABA” structure, like in the fig tree story: tree, temple incident, then back to the tree.
Another sandwich is in Mark 6. In verses 7-13, Jesus sends out the disciples to preach to people, along with a warning about rejection. Then there is a seemingly unrelated flashback to John the Baptist and Herod, before the disciples return in verse 30. Mark is giving a worked example of the consequences of rejecting Jesus’s words: Herod was urged to repent by John, but dillydallied and lost his opportunity to do so, instead brutally executing John. The episode is stated rather baldly, but Herod’s actions makes more sense in the context of a warning about rejection — which is why Mark has included it here.
Lastly, consider the depth of Jesus’s teaching. To take just a single example, the story of the rich young man is often taught moralistically: you need to sell everything that you have to be a real follower of Jesus. This is a tall order. Jesus actually says as much: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
But he has more to say: “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” His point isn’t that you have to sell everything you have, but a miracle of God is required in order to change people. It’s not moralism (obey the rules) that Jesus teaches, but grace (God’s free, unmerited favour).
Further resources:
Mark Dever’s overview sermon on Mark
Mark resources from St Helen’s Bishopsgate
Mark 16:9–20 probably wasn’t originally in Mark, but there is debate about how to handle it (see here). I don’t have a strong opinion about it.
This is confirmed by Old Testament passages like Hosea 9:10 and Micah 7:16, which show God looking for fruit from the fig tree of Israel.