The first gospel of Mark is ‘Jesus Christ the Son of God’ in passages two and three Mark quotes a passage from the prophet Isaiah “I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the lord make his paths straight.” Mark’s gospel is about the way of the lord, and since that passage comes from the ancient Jewish experience in exile it is also about the way of return from exile or a place of estrangement and felt separation. Secondly, and still based on the overture is about the kingdom of god, these are Jesus’s first words in Mark’s gospel, his inaugural address. All the writers of the gospels use the first words of Jesus within their gospels to explain what their gospel is most centrally about. In Mark those words are “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of god has come near repent and believe in the good news.” The gospel is about the kingdom of god and the way.
The Gospel as the Way
The way in Mark and in the New Testament generally is not about how to get to heaven. The afterlife and how to get there are not central to the message of Jesus, though he apparently did believe in an afterlife. Paul also believed in an afterlife but neither Paul or Jesus made the afterlife their central proclamation. Instead of a path to the afterlife the way is about a path of transformation this side of death, in this world. One of Mark’s favorite ways of talking about the way or the path is that the path involves following Jesus. The image of following someone is a common early Christian metaphor. We are to be followers of Jesus or in Paul’s words, we are to be imitators of Jesus. What does it mean to be followers or imitators of Jesus? The first thing we see is a radical centering in God, we see this in the figure of Jesus himself. In Marcus’s opinion Jesus was a Jewish mystic. Mystics commonly have vivid and typically frequent experiences of god or the sacred, so for mystics god is an experience not simply a deeply held belief. As a result, mystics become deeply centered in god and that way or path is the reconnecting with god through a centering in the sacred. This is the theme of Jesus’s wisdom teaching.
The way means following Jesus to Jerusalem. This is a section in Mark that takes up three chapters and both begins and ends with a blind person regaining sight. This is of course a metaphor for how different the experience is when on and off the path. Jerusalem has many meanings, for one, it is a place to confront the authorities and the powers that ruled his world. In this section Jesus never says, I must go to Jerusalem and die instead it is always the son of god will go to Jerusalem and the authorities will kill him. The authorities were a combination of temple and imperial authorities. The temple had become the center of the roman rule of the land, the roman governor appointed the high priest who essentially determined how the all of the outlying land was used in collaboration with the roman authority. In short Jerusalem was the point of confrontation with the domination system of Jesus’s time. The second significance of Jerusalem is that it was the place of death and resurrection which is a twofold meaning. One is that death is a metaphor for that internal transformation at the very center of the Christian life and way. Paul speaks of this transformation as dying and rising with Christ. That is how Mark and Matthew understand that final journey to Jerusalem. Mark says whoever will follow after me let them take up their cross and follow after me. Luke adds the word daily when he talks about this, indicating this is a metaphor for an internal dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being. The second meaning of Jerusalem is the place of execution by the imperial domination system and also resurrection which is vindication by god. That is the way, the path of following Jesus. It is a path of personal transformation but also a challenge to the domination system of the time.
The Kingdom of God
This is the second focal point of Mark’s understanding of the gospel. Marcus asks, how do we remind people of how central this is to the message of Jesus? One way is to remind people that these are the opening words of Jesus’s public dialogue in Mark’s gospel. “The kingdom of god has come near, the kingdom of god is at hand” Marcus references the work of a New Testament scholar who said “ask any one hundred new testament scholars around the world, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or non-believer ‘what was most central to the message of Jesus?’ and all one hundred of these experts would respond, ‘the kingdom of god'” So the question becomes, what’s the kingdom of god. Firstly it is about god and centering in god as king and lord and not in the kings and lords of this world. Mark quotes Jesus who is quoting Deuteronomy which makes this another point of continuity with the Jewish tradition in which Jesus lived. The commandment being quoted is “you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, life force, strength and mind.” This might be considered the internal or personal meaning of the kingdom of god. It has an external political meaning as well but the personal meaning has to do with a radical centering in god. To radically center in god is to enter the kingdom of god which Jesus speaks about many times. Secondly the kingdom of god is not just about god but it is also about kingdom. Kingdom was a political term in the world of Jesus. It was the most common term of social, political, economic organization at the time. His listeners knew about the kingdom of Herod and Rome now Jesus comes along talking about the kingdom of god, it must be something different from those kingdoms. Jesus could have spoke of the people, community or family of god but he didn’t, instead he brought us this religious-political or theo-political metaphor in the message of Jesus. The metaphor is both about god and life in this world. In an aside, this combination of both the religious and the political adds a to the characteristic to the bible as a whole. The old testament from beginning to end is a massively political document even as it is also of course religious. Think of how that story begins, the story of ancient Israel begins with the exodus from Egypt, a liberation from an ancient empire that was simultaneously economic and religious. The unity of a religious and a political meaning in the phrase a kingdom of god is absolutely characteristic of the Jewish tradition.
The kingdom of god is for the earth, it’s not about heaven. Marcus is not bashing the idea of an afterlife simply pointing out that the kingdom of god is about life on earth. One way to remind people of this is by reminding people that it is in the Lord’s prayer “Thy kingdom come on earth,” as it already is in heaven. Here Marcus quotes his colleague Dom Crossan “heaven is in great shape, earth is where the problems are.