Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Beginning of the Gospel
Commentary
for the July 6, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"My
fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin
of Barnabas. (You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you,
welcome him.)" Colossians 4:10
John Mark the Evangelist is an
enigmatic figure. While not central to any book of the New Testament, he is
mentioned in several of them, sometimes as John, sometimes as Mark, and also as John Mark. Nonetheless, the "Gospel According to
Mark" is foundational to the synoptic gospels, appearing to have been written first with Matthew and Luke drawing upon and
expanding Mark's narrative in their gospels. It is interesting that Acts,
written by Luke, is the only record of the dispute between Paul and Barnabus
over Mark's effectiveness as an evangelist. Some have interpreted this as an
effort to diminish Mark's gospel in importance compared to Luke's more
exhaustive two-volume work. Since there was bickering among the twelve
disciples when Jesus walked with them, such competition could be expected to continue even after Jesus ascended to heaven.
Luke's account does not say much
about the falling out between Paul and Barnabus, only that Mark returned to
Jerusalem, leaving them to work in Pamphylia without his assistance. As a
result, there has been much speculation. His mother, Mary, owned a large house
in Jerusalem, so his upbringing may have been one of privilege and not
privation. Lucille Knapp, instructor for the first two years of New Testament
Greek for all theology majors during the time I attended Walla Walla College, liked
to point out that Mark was a city boy. She based this on his account of Jesus'
temptation in the wilderness. Mark is the only writer to describe the site of
the temptation as being "where the wild beasts are." She also felt that in
chapter 14 of his gospel where, he mentioned a young man following Jesus who, when
Jesus was arrested, fled naked, leaving his garment
behind, this was Mark referring to himself, since no other gospel mentions this
incident.
All of this, while not proof, is
evidence of a young man with a tendency to flee confrontation and hardship,
very much the opposite of Paul's headstrong, direct method of confronting his critics.
Such a person might well see Mark's timidity in a negative light. Mark might
have seen Paul's temerity as provoking conflict. Unable to overcome Paul's
expectations, a person such as Mark would often flee the conflict, and a
strong-willed person like Paul would refuse, at least initially to allow that
he was in any way responsible for the falling out. When later, Mark sought to
rejoin their missionary journeys, Paul would not allow it, pairing instead with
Silas. Mark then joined with his cousin Barnabus, who stood up on his behalf,
on a separate missionary trip.
As is often the case with
strong-willed individuals, when the heat of the moment was past, and Mark had
proven his worth despite the earlier confrontation, reconciliation appears to
have taken place as he is mentioned several times as being in the company with
Paul in the epistles. Without citing any sources, "Foxe's Book of Martyrs"
claims that Mark served as Peter's amanuensis, writing his gospel based on
Peter's dictation. Peter in his first epistle refers to Mark as his son, which
may be taken by some as an indirect support of this idea. Foxe tells us that
Mark was martyred by being drug through the streets of
Alexandria, Egypt, until near death, tossed into prison where he died of his
wounds, and then his body was burned. His bones were collected by his followers
and eventually found their way to Venice. He became the patron saint of that city,
and the citizens erected a large basilica in his honor.
Mark opens his gospel with John
the Baptist as the messenger promised in Isaiah 40:3, "A voice of one calling: 'In
the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a
highway for our God.'" This is a fulfillment of the prophetic chronology of Daniel
regarding the coming Messiah. "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and
your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for
wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and
prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Know and understand this: From the
time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One,
the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will
be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the
sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be put to death and will have
nothing." (Daniel 9:24-26) Artaxerxes gave the command to rebuild Jerusalem in
457 BCE. If we view the sevens' in Daniel as weeks, that gives us a total of
sixty-nine weeks from that commandment to the beginning of the Messiah's
ministry. Nothing of significance happened in 388 BCE which leads us to believe
that the 'sevens' or weeks are prophetic time based on the year-day principle.
When the spies went into Canaan
for 40 days to spy out the land and brought an evil report back to Moses that
discouraged the people, the people were
sentenced to wander for 40 years in the wilderness, a year for each day. If we
use that same principle for Daniel's timeline, those sixty-nine weeks or 483
days become 483 years. This takes us to 27 CE (remember there is no zero year).
This coincides with John the Baptist's proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah.
However, the seventieth week seals the deal, for the prophecy says that in the
middle of that week the Messiah would be put to death. Jesus' ministry lasted
three and a half years. He died on the cross in the middle of that prophetic
week. That final prophetic week was completed with the stoning of Stephen and
the beginning of the work for the Gentiles. Driven from Jerusalem, Christians
sought refuge from persecution by the Jews and carried the Jesus narrative with
them, evangelizing the Roman Empire in the process.
John the Baptist and Jesus both
attempted to reach the descendants of those who rebuilt Jerusalem, but they
rejected the message, making Jesus the stone the builders rejected. (Psalm
118:22) Jesus identified himself as that stone in each of the synoptic gospels.
After Jesus' ascension, a final warning was given when the Jews began their
persecution of Jesus' followers. Their stoning of Stephen signified they would
in no way accept Jesus as the cornerstone of their salvation, but with the
intensifying persecution, fleeing Christians carried their nascent faith like
dandelion seeds on the wind, taking root everywhere. To further accentuate the
point, Saul,who became Paul, a leader in persecuting
the Christians and who acquiesced in the murder of Stephen, converted to Christ
to become the most prolific missionary of the early church, both in terms of
converts and in the body of writing he left. Pauline theology has shaped the
church and its personality to the present. His Epistle to the Romans even
sparked the fires of Reformation in the heart of a medieval monk, Martin
Luther.
Daniel prophesied that one day a
stone cut out without hands, would replace the kingdoms of this earth with the Kingdom
of God. That stone is Jesus. Rejected by the builders but nonetheless defeating
the kingdoms of this world, that stone has grown to fill the entire earth. Many
have continued to reject the stone. Competing religions have attempted to
displace the stone, but still, it endures and perseveres. The Bible, containing
the "Gospel According to Mark" is sold at the rate of more than six copies
every minute. Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" comes in a far distant second.
Surprisingly, even the Harry Potter books far outsell the holy writings of the
other major faiths but not the Bible.
The Bible has been
written off by so many over the centuries, but it is the very foundation
of Western perspectives on morality. Even the uneducated, the illiterate who
have never cracked open the pages of the Bible know that somewhere in its pages
it says "Thou shalt not kill." Its influence is pervasive. Even the atheist must
deal with the influence of the Bible despite their denial of the God presented
in its pages. Despite attempts to relegate it to obscurity and Christianity
extinct, it endures like an anvil that bears the blows of many a smith but continues
to shape the metal put upon it. Hammer blow after hammer blow raining down
reveals a new creation shaped both by the steadfast anvil, and the hammer blows
that form a new creation in the process. While it is possible to never appreciate
or accept the Bible, our world continues to be shaped
by its influence on the lives of those who read its pages and are changed by
what they read. We may reject Jesus and the Bible that tells us of him, but still
we are told, that kingdom will fill the earth. We can reject it like the Jews
who rejected Jesus as the cornerstone of their faith, or we can embrace it like
Paul. We are free to choose. Love allows us that.