Mark 1:14-15
Mark 1:16-45
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1. The chapter divisions of the Bible were added over a thousand years after these scrolls were first written. [1] You might be tempted to separate Mark 1 from Mark 2 in your minds, but there wasn't a significant break here originally. At the end of Mark 1, Jesus cleanses someone with a skin disease. At the beginning of Mark 2, he heals a paralytic man. Both stories are in a single flow of Jesus' healings and activities.
The Gospel of Mark does have a literary structure. That is to say, it is not entirely a collection of stories about Jesus mixed together. For example, the first eight chapters hang together as a clear literary unit.
However, in these first few chapters, it is not entirely clear whether there is a reason why one story comes before or after the other. It seems more like a collection of related stories. In Mark 1, Jesus calls some disciples. He preaches the kingdom of God. He heals some people and casts out an unclean spirit.
In Mark 2-3, he heals some people. He preaches the kingdom. He calls a disciple. And we hear about the fact that he casts out demons. There isn't so much a progression as a repetition of similar actions.
However, in Mark 2-3, we do have an added dimension to Mark 1 -- conflict. In Mark 2, Jesus begins to get into conflict with scribes and Pharisees. Near the end of Mark 2, Jesus begins to get into conflict over the Sabbath. There are several examples of conflict in Mark 2-3. So, there is a sense of heightening tension as we move forward in Mark, even if these early chapters feel a little like a loose collection of similar events.
2. The first twelve verses of Mark 2 tell us the story of the paralytic. Jesus is in Capernaum. He is "at home." The wording raises the question of whether Jesus was living in Capernaum at the time. I've already mentioned that Peter may have had a house there, and Jesus may have lived with him.
The house is packed as Jesus preaches about the kingdom of God. The men carrying the paralytic can't get in. They climb up on the roof and dig through so they can lower the man down.
Jesus pronounces that the man's sins are forgiven, which offends some scribes who are present. This is the first instance of conflict in Mark's Gospel. They consider it blasphemy for Jesus to proclaim the man's sins forgiven.
They are wrong, of course. As Christians, we usually think they are wrong because Jesus is God. He has the divine authority to forgive sins. But they would be wrong even if Jesus were merely human. It was not blasphemy to recognize and announce God's forgiveness. Indeed, in John 20:23, Jesus gives the disciples the authority to declare or reject the forgiveness of sins as his agents on earth.
The point of the incident in Mark is to show that Jesus' authority extended beyond physical healing to spiritual healing. He not only has authority over the physical realm. He not only has authority over the demonic and spiritual world that is the enemy of God. Jesus has authority over sin on God the Father's behalf, and as God's agent can speak and act on behalf of God the Father.
3. Mark 2 tells the story of the calling of Levi as a disciples. Levi is usually equated with Matthew because the Gospel of Matthew uses the name Matthew when it tells this story. Similarly, tradition equates this Matthew with the author of the Gospel of Matthew.
These are assumptions of varying weight here, although we often make them without a second thought. For example, only later tradition equates Matthew with the author of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew is technically anonymous -- the title was added later. Similarly, the identification of Levi as "the son of Alphaeus" makes us think of James the son of Alphaeus -- Levi is not mentioned in the list of twelve in Mark 3:18. If we didn't have Matthew's Gospel, we would probably think that Levi was this James.
Here we have another instance of conflict. Jesus eats with Levi the tax collector and with other "sinners." The Pharisees question such association, but they ask his disciples -- an interesting avoidance of confronting Jesus himself. Presumably, this is a recognition of his growing status as a prophet. His power makes them think he might indeed be God's representative, but he is not behaving the way they think he should.
Jesus saw the unseen. He saw the "sick" that the healthy usually didn't see or didn't care to see. He saw the possibility of redemption where others saw people getting what they deserved -- or people about to get what they deserved. The Gospel of Luke will especially expand on this dimension of Jesus' mission: "Those who are well do not need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (2:17).
Jesus was filling in the gaps of the kingdom. If he came today, it would be as if the people who go to church were offended that Jesus spent most of his time trying to restore those whom the church liked to talk about as obviously unsaved. He would accept the church people's invitations too, of course. But name some group that is "obviously" lost and imagine how disgusted some in the church would be that Jesus spent time with them or accepted their invitations. Jesus didn't seem to care.
4. The question about Jesus' disciples fasting is yet another point of conflict. Jesus is not behaving the way they think he should. The followers of John the Baptist fast. Those who apprentice with the Pharisees fast. Jesus' disciples don't. The difference is that John anticipated the coming of the Messiah. The Pharisees awaited the coming of God's anointed.
But Jesus was God's anointed. Jesus was the arrival of the kingdom. That called for celebration. Nevertheless, Jesus anticipates his destiny. He will be taken away soon enough. Then his followers will fast, awaiting his return.
5. There is considerable discussion of the meaning of Jesus' metaphors about new cloth and new wineskins, especially in the light of Luke's version of the saying (cf. Luke 5:39). Many wonder if Jesus is aligning himself with the old cloth and the old wineskins rather than the new, and Luke may very well read this way.
However, I'm not sure that Mark does. Mark as a whole aligns more with discontinuity with the old than with continuity. And the flow of the story seems to align Jesus more with the new than the old. On this one, I remain on the side of the traditional reading of the sayings -- at least in Mark.
6. The chapter ends with another point of conflict with Pharisees over the Law. [2] Jesus' disciples are eating some of the unharvested grain in the fields through which they pass. The criticism is that they are doing it on the Sabbath, which these Pharisees interpret as work. This is Jesus' first conflict over the Sabbath in Mark.
Jesus doesn't seem to care. Mark shows no concern to show Jesus as carefully law observant. Quite the contrary. Jesus seems completely unconcerned about the Law. This plays into a sense that Mark was written for a non-Jewish audience. Indeed, we cannot dismiss the possibility that the author of Mark was not Jewish.
Jesus does not say, "They're not really breaking the Law." He seems to accept, at least for the sake of argument, that they are. What he argues is that he has the authority to break the Law in this instance. He is like David in the days before he became king. David ate from he sacred bread in the sanctuary, which was unlawful for him and his men to do.
At the very least, it shows that Jesus did not treat the Law as absolute, exceptionless. There are circumstances where exceptions to the Law are appropriate. On the whole, Mark pictures Jesus as someone who sat loosely to the Law in the face of the needs of people. People over rules, just like the prophets of the Old Testament. Obedience over sacrifice.
Historically, we can imagine that Jesus himself was generally Law-observant. However, I doubt he was as scrupulous at his Law-keeping as some want to think he was. Indeed, I wonder in general if those in the Galilee were. I wonder if the Jewish populace in general was. The Pharisees and Essenes were always the exceptions, and no doubt Judaism reformulated itself to some extent after the destruction of Jerusalem. [3]
[1] Archbishop Stephen Langdon first added chapter divisions to the Latin Bible in the year 1205. Then the verse divisions weren't added for another 500 years after that.
[2] I might note that E. P. Sanders thought it unlikely that someone in Galilee would have had many encounters with Pharisees, who were primarily located in Jerusalem. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. However, we can imagine a scenario where some came north to investigate Jesus.
[3] There is a puzzle about the mention of Abiathar being priest (2:26) since 1 Samuel 21 says the priest was Ahimelek. Ahimelek was the father of Abiathar, and Abiathar joins David's fighting men soon after this story. It is difficult to know why Mark says it was Abiathar rather than Ahimelek. Was it a different textual tradition? Was it because Abiathar became priest for David?
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