THINK ALOUD On the Mark

‘MATTHEW, Mark, Luke and John./ Bless the bed that I lie on.’ I learnt that old rhyme when I was little –and the four Gospel writers have indeed blessed me over and over again. Each of them gives us a different slant on the story of Jesus. John begins in eternity, before the ‘big bang’ of Creation. Luke hopes to reach a wider audience, perhaps including non-Christians, and begins with a preface in elegant Greek style. Matthew begins with Abraham and records our Lord’s teaching in four great blocks, the most famous of which we call the Sermon on the Mount.

But I’d like to say a special thank you to Mark, who gives us the shortest of the four Gospels. People used to think that his work was an abbreviated version of Matthew’s. But modern scholarship has concluded that Mark was the first to write his account, probably for an audience of Christians in Rome. I imagine that his book would have been read aloud, perhaps in a crowded room by the light of flickering oil lamps.

Unlike the other three, Mark plunges straight into his gripping story with the dramatic scene of John baptising great crowds by the River Jordan. Among them is Jesus – and we learn straight away that he is God’s ‘Son, the Beloved’ (1:11 New Revised Standard Version).

Mark’s story continues at a cracking pace and three times –like a great clanging bell – come predictions of the Lord’s forthcoming Passion (see 8:31; 9:30 and 31; and 10:33 and 34).

What Mark Leaves Out

Mark wrote the shortest Gospel, which means we must look to the other evangelists to fill out the story. Many of our Lord’s best-known parables – such as the good Samaritan and the prodigal son – were recorded by Luke. Mark does not tell us about the faithful women who helped to finance our Lord’s mission, provided for him out of their resources (see Luke 8:1–3), and Mark never said a word about our Lord’s physical appearance. Neither, of course, did the other Gospel writers –obviously they didn’t think it mattered.

What Mark Puts In

I’m grateful for Mark for several small details that seem to take us closer to what actually happened. For example, some of Jesus’ nearest and dearest seem to have thought that the man of Nazareth might have been mentally unwell: ‘His family ... went out to restrain him, for people were saying “He has gone out of his mind”’ (3:21 NRSV). The other Gospel writers leave out this extraordinary detail – perhaps they thought it just too shocking.

Mark also tells us that the five thousand who took part in that miraculous feeding were ‘men’ – the Greek word andres, meaning ‘men’ (6:44 NRSV). What was that great body of men doing? We find a possible clue in John 6:15: ‘When Jesus realised that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king’ (NRSV). Our Saviour came as the Prince of Peace but it seems that some really tried to recruit him as a kind of warlord.

Then there is Mark’s unique mention of Alexander and Rufus in his account of our Lord’s fall on the way to Calvary: ‘They compelled a passer-by ... to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus’ (15:21 NRSV). Why does Mark bother to mention Simon’s sons? It seems fair to assume the target audience in Rome must have known who they were.

Most intriguing of all is one puzzling detail in Mark’s account of the arrest of Jesus: ‘A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked’ (14:51 and 52 NRSV). What’s the point of this apparently irrelevant detail? If I could travel back through space and time, I’d ask that young figure: Mark, was that you? Is this your way of saying you were there?