The Sundays of Lent aren't actually part of Lent. Every Sunday is a little Easter, so each Sunday of Lent is a break from whatever sacrifice (or addition) someone has made for Lent. So, on the Sundays of Lent, I'll possibly divert from the daily readings in Jeremiah.
About 8 years ago, I started a series of Sunday YouTube entries I called, "Through the Bible in Ten Years." I would do video commentary for a chapter of the Bible. I managed to get through Mark, Luke-Acts, Hebrews, Revelation, and more. However, at least in the format I used, it didn't gather too much interest. I think much of it was the fact that I went verse by verse. The "Explanatory Notes" I have published to go along with that overall venture have never sold much either.
There are various reasons you could suggest, but I think most people aren't up for verse by verse analysis. It's too much. It's too detailed. People want commentaries to look up a verse now and then but they don't read straight through. Even then, commentaries aren't set out to be group studies.
So, I've modified the project in my mind. I now see it more in terms of a daily read in various forms. At a chapter a day, there are 1189 chapters in the whole Bible. So. that's a little less than 3 years for the OT (929 chapters) and a little less than a year for the NT (260 chapters). I don't exactly have a devotional in mind but a "Surprises" approach -- what you didn't know about the Bible.
In any case, I have a Google Doc going, filling in chapters here and there. The notes from Jeremiah could find themselves there, for example. I've written an introduction to Mark. So, on this Sunday during Lent, I thought I would sketch out Mark 1.
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1. Mark hits the ground running with the story of John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke, which build their Gospels on top of Mark, added distinctive stories of Jesus' birth. As ancient biographies, a birth story would be normal. Rather than some Freudian revelation of Jesus' formative influences, ancient birth stories revealed a person's destiny.
Matthew shows that Jesus was destined to be king. Luke shows that he was destined to save his people -- especially making whole and delivering those whom society had cast away, the "lost sheep."
Is Mark a biography? That's still probably the best ancient category, but it's not clear that Mark himself thought of it that way. Rather, it would become a "Gospel," a new kind of literature that tells the good news inaugurated by Jesus the Messiah.
2. "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ [the Son of God]" (1:1).
That's how Mark begins. I suspect this verse relates to chapter 1. What is a "gospel"? It is good news of an extraordinary sort. Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor, saw his birth as a gospel for the Romans. A gospel might be a victory at war. It might be the birth of a successor to the throne.
For Jesus, the good news probably found its roots in Isaiah 52:7 -- "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news... 'Our God reigns!'" More on that soon enough.
3. The good news began with John the Baptist preaching at the Jordan River that the kingdom of God was soon going to arrive. John preached that Israel needed to prepare itself for this arrival. God was going to restore his people. To be part of the restored kingdom, all the people needed to repent of their sins and get ready.
Quotes from Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 situate John's message in terms of the return of Israel from exile and preparation for the arrival of the Messiah, the one God was anointing to be Israel's king. Before the exile in 586BC, Israel had a king. In the southern kingdom, that king had been a descendant of David.
But since their return, they had not had a bone fide descendant of David on the throne. There had been a few Maccabean kings in the century before Christ. Herod the Great was considered a king by the Romans. But a true Davidic king -- an expectation had been rising in the decades before Jesus was born. John the Baptist shouted this expectation from the place where Israel had once entered the Promised Land.
Although it is hard for us to get our heads around it, John the Baptist was far better known in the mid-first century than Jesus was. When Paul ministered at Ephesus in the late 50s, there were followers of John the Baptist's teaching who either did not know Jesus or did not believe he was the one John the Baptist preached (Acts 18:25; 19:3-4).
4. So, Jesus comes to the river Jordan to be baptized by John. He assents to John's teaching and movement. Mark is a "rawer" form of early Christian theology. He doesn't seem concerned to explain how Jesus who is without sin participates in a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. It is as much a corporate confession of sin as an individual one, but it still potentially wreaks havoc with our theology. Matthew is sure to explain that Jesus is not baptized because he needs to be (Matt. 3:13-15).
As Jesus comes out of the water, Jesus hears a commissioning by God the Father -- "You are my Son." In Old Testament thinking, the Son of God is the king, the Messiah, in Psalm 2:7. This is Jesus' ordination, his anointing. In Mark, only Jesus hears the message, which is in keeping with a theme in Mark called the "messianic secret." This is the trigger for Jesus' early mission.
5. An interesting theological question is the relationship between Jesus' human knowledge and his divine knowledge. Presumably, Jesus in his humanity did not fully access all the knowledge of his divinity at all times. As a human, he learns (cf. Luke 2:52). He did not come out of the womb speaking Aramaic. He discovers things as a human that he already knows as divine. He discovers who has touched him.
It is hard not to reach this conclusion if we take the Gospels at face value. It is our later theological faith that requires Jesus to be eternally omniscient. We tend to read this omniscience into the Gospels when it is not obvious from the text itself. The Gospel of John comes closest, but it is also a highly "spiritual" Gospel -- it is probably not exactly how Jesus looked from a human perspective at the time.
The best way I know to resolve this tension has struck some as semi-Nestorian, but I think it holds together. The eternal Son puts much of his knowledge into a "divine subconscious" of sorts that he does not fully access while he is on earth. To do otherwise would impede his goals as a human. He is not two persons (the Nestorian heresy), but he is one mind that temporarily isolates a small portion from the rest. These parts of Jesus' mind are not in conflict with each other. They are just distinguishable for a brief time.
In this light, Jesus may only discover that he is the Messiah at his baptism. Or perhaps he only discovers that he is the second person of the Trinity at his baptism. Whatever the specifics, Jesus' baptism is a key turning point, a trigger for his destiny.
6. His calling is immediately followed by temptation. How often a high moment is followed by testing! He goes to the wilderness just as Israel was tested in the desert for 40 years. His tester is none other that the Satan, the Adversary. Will he yield to God's calling?
The angels minister to him (1:13). God will make a way for us to endure every temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). From a theological perspective, Jesus did not intrinsically need any help to overcome temptation. However, he is playing it by the human rules. He is showing us how to be a human in whom the image of God is restored. He has been filled with the Spirit at his baptism as we can be filled with the Spirit.
We are not surprised by his answer to God. He will obey. He will lead Israel from the wilderness into the Promised Land. He leaves the wilderness with resolve for his mission.
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