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Mark's Purpose
- 16-01-2009
The key feature, and principal theme in the Gospel is to assess and uncover the identity of Jesus.
What is this Gospel about? This is mentioned very clearly in the very first verse. “The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. If this was a murder mystery, that first line would say, “The butler did it”.
However, to see into the Gospel, we need to look at it in three time frames:
the time of the story, Galilee and Judaea in about 33AD;
the time of the Community of Mark, probably Antioch in 68-70AD,
and finally our own time as the current reader.
I think it is vital to be able to see these three levels as we read through the Gospel.
Mark's Gospel is written as a story. His narrative is immediate and captivating, and despite being the shortest of the Gospels, his scene setting is the most vivid and some of his stories are much longer than the versions in the other Gospels. Mark is a storyteller, and he captures the imagination, telling people about Jesus.
Mark plays the role of a narrator who stands outside the story, and because he knows the ending, he is able to tell us anything he likes about the story, keeping the reader interested to find out what happens at the end. Because Mark is not in the story, merely a narrator, he can lead us through it, revealing aspects of the person of Jesus and his mission.
So many of us hear bits of it at Mass, but how often would we consider sitting down with it and reading it all the way through? It is only here that the characters come alive and the plot thickens. It is when we read the story that we see how it unfolds.
Mark gradually unfolds that story, as the story of the identity of Jesus. As we read through the Gospel, that theme is slowly unpeeled, from the element of the Messianic Secret, where Jesus warns the demonic spirits to be silent because they know who he is, through the misunderstanding by Peter and the other disciples as to who Jesus is, what it means to be a Messiah, why he must suffer, and how he manifests his glory in the resurrection, yet being the same person who died on Calvary three days earlier.
Comments (2)
#1
moira shaw
Said this on 02-03-2009 At 07:49 am
made me pick up the Bible and start reading Mark,s gospel, what more do I need to say!
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#2
Margaret McFarlane
Said this on 15-03-2009 At 02:00 pm
I am currently studying Mark's Gospel and find these articles very helpful . It would be great if the series could be continued. They are set at a very user friendly level and I am sure many people would benefit . Many thanks
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