by Joan Mitchell, CSJ
Capernaum is a fishing village on the north of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus lived here and taught in the synagogue. Dark stone foundations of the houses from Jesus’ time surround ruins of the synagogue which was built in the 2nd century.
Forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, many eyewitness disciples who followed and served him are dead or growing old. The Emperor Nero — famous for fiddling while half of Rome burned on July 18, 64 — persecuted Christians for causing the fire and put to death both Peter and Paul.
Two years later Jews in Israel rebelled against the Romans. The Roman Tenth Legion lay siege to Jerusalem and in A.D.70 ended the Jewish struggle for independence by burning and destroying the temple.
Destroying the temple ends the religion of the Old Testament. Jesus’ followers and other Jews can no longer join together to worship, celebrate feasts, and offer sacrifices at the temple. From this time the Christianity and Judaism of today begin evolving.
Who will tell the stories about Jesus that disciples who knew him have been telling? Who will dare to lead the Christian community when its first leaders have been killed? What will hold Christians together with no common center of worship like the temple?
At this moment in history a Christian named Mark creates the first gospel. Mark collects stories the community has been telling about Jesus and arranges them into the narrative that has traveled through time to us. His gospel begins with John the Baptist preparing a way for God’s coming and Jesus receiving John’s baptism. The narrative ends with three of Jesus’ women disciples finding his tomb empty and a young man in white explaining Jesus has been raised up and is going before them to Galilee.
A gospel is not like a newspaper story or biography. Mark does not write to tell us simply the who, what, where, when, and why facts of Jesus’ life. Mark puts together this unique form of literature to tell people Jesus is the messiah. The gospel is a testimony. The word gospel means good news. This first gospel proclaims its good news in its first line. It testifies: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
Christ is a title that makes a claim about who Jesus is. The word messiah in Hebrew and the word Christ in Greek both mean the anointed one. In Israel the anointed one is a title for the king. The people of Israel anointed their kings with oil rather than swearing them into office or crowning them. To call Jesus the Christ is to claim he is the Spirit-filled king that Israel’s prophets promised and Israel’s people awaited.
Jesus’ public ministry begins with his baptism, a scene which shows us in symbols that Jesus is God’s Spirit-filled, beloved Son. As Jesus comes out of the water, he sees the heavens split open. The Spirit comes upon him like a dove. A voice from heaven addresses Jesus, “You are my beloved Son. I am pleased with you” (Mark 1.10-11).
Jesus’ disciples realize fully he is God’s Son and Israel’s messiah only after his resurrection. But Mark, who is writing the story 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, knows how the story turns out. The first verse and the voice from heaven and the Spirit let us in on the secret of who Jesus is from the beginning — he is the Christ.
Often in the gospel, Mark has characters in the story ask rhetorical questions that no one in the story answers. That is because Mark wants his audience in A.D. 70 and us to answer. For example, when Jesus saves his disciples from drowning in a storm, they ask, “Who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?” (Mark 4.41). When Jesus frees a man from a demon at sabbath worship, people ask: “What is this? A new teaching — with authority?” (Mark 1.27).
Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” Mark wants his hearers to answer like Peter, “You are the messiah” (Mark 8.27,29).
The way Mark characterizes Jesus’ disciples makes them look like failures. Mark doesn’t tell about Peter spreading the gospel but about Peter refusing to believe Jesus must suffer and die and denying he ever knew Jesus during his trial. Mark tells us that James and John promise to drink the cup Jesus drinks but they sleep through his agony in the garden and run away at his arrest.
Mark tells us Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome stand by Jesus at his crucifixion, witness his burial, and find his tomb empty. But they tell no one he is risen because they are afraid (Mark 16.8).
Mark wants the hearers of the first gospel to know they aren’t the only ones to feel awed and excited yet afraid and confused about following Jesus. That’s how Peter, James, and John start out. That’s how Mary Magdalene and the other women feel outside the empty tomb. Faith begins in awe and fear.
When the chief priest arrests Jesus and asks if he is the messiah, the son of the blessed one, Jesus says, “I am” (14.61-62). I am is God’s name.
Jesus is condemned for blasphemy, for putting himself in God’s place. Like the voice at Jesus’ baptism, this trial scene near the end of Mark’s gospel testifies that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God.
The risen Jesus goes before us who follow him. Because of Mark’s written story, countless Christians believe in Jesus and discover as they follow that he is with us as he promised.
