The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Messianic Checkpoint: The Gospel of Mark (with Jeff Cavins) (2024)
Episode Date: June 2, 2024Welcome to the second Messianic Checkpoint! Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to introduce the Gospel of Mark and discuss how this short Gospel helps us understand both the identity and mission of Jesus. Fo...r the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Transcript
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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast,
where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture.
The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension.
Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation,
discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today.
It is time for our second Messianic Checkpoint, and it is with the Gospel
of Mark. Last Messianic Checkpoint, or the first one, we went to the Gospel of St. John,
which was the longest gospel. Now we are going down to Mark. I don't know, down to Mark is the
best way to say it. We're going to Mark, which is the shortest of all four gospels. And again,
joining us, so grateful, as always, is Jeff Cavins, who's going to give us an intro to this
second Messianic Checkpoint, to this Gospel of St. Mark.
So, Jeff, thank you so much for being here and welcome.
Well, it's a privilege to join you on this journey.
And it's beautiful how people can go through the Bible and then every once in a while jump forward a little bit to see the fruit of what this whole story is about.
And with four Gospels, each one of them has a little bit to see the fruit of what this whole story is about. And with four gospels, each one of them has a little bit different emphasis, and together you get a full look at Jesus. But we
don't just blend them together because each one of them is unique.
They are, and it's one of the reasons why I love the fact that how we're doing this in this Bible
in a year is we had all of John at once,
you know, maybe I think a little over a week, seven or eight days.
And then we have all of Mark now, you know, a number of a month and a half later.
And I think that there's something really powerful about that, that over the course of these next, I think it's eight days, we're going to go through the gospel of Mark and
be able to hear his voice in a unique way, which is different than, you know, John's
voice and different than Matthew and Luke's. And so, yeah, the gospel of Mark is remarkably unique. In fact, we have a
missionary here who last year she said, oh gosh, I just, I don't, I don't like the gospel of Mark.
I mean, it's just, it's so, it's too brief. It's too like staccato. It's too, and it kind of
downplayed it. And, and then I handed her a commentary that is put out by, I think it's
some kind of publication. It's a Catholic commentary on sacred scripture. And she said,
oh my gosh, Gospel Mark is my favorite gospel from now on. Because it just, like you are about
to say, the uniqueness of Mark's gospel not only makes it different, it makes it remarkable. I
mean, there's some things that are just fascinating that Mark highlights that aren't necessarily in the other Gospels in the same way.
Right. It's true. And in fact, the early church didn't pay as much attention to Mark,
I think because of the brevity of the Gospel. But I think the first actual commentaries that
were written on it were not even until the 8th century,
but in recent times, lots of scholarship is being done on the Gospel of Mark.
So, this Gospel, while short, is really packed with some uniqueness that gives us a glimpse of Jesus
and the work that he is doing.
I guess I would start off by saying that a lot of scholars believe that Mark was a real source for Matthew and Luke.
You see about 90% of the stories that are shared there.
In fact, it's an important point to make again, and that is that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic gospels.
Luke are called synoptic gospels. And by that, synoptic means to see with one eye, with one vision, and that some even believe that there was another source that they were using called Q,
and that gets into the weeds as far as theology goes. But it is shorter. St. Augustine said that
the gospel of Mark was an abbreviated version of Matthew.
That's what he thought it was.
It was kind of like an expanded Cliff Notes, if you will.
Right, yeah.
Just like, hey, if you want to get the bullet points, here's Mark's Gospel.
Right.
And the author, most people believe, is John Mark.
And he is not so well known in the New Testament.
And some people believe that he was a relative
of Barnabas.
And there's another interesting thing about Mark that scholars bring out, and then we'll
get into some of the unique things of the gospel, is that it was really written in a
layman's Greek, and some would say even poor, and it was extremely plain Greek, whereas you get into other
parts of the New Testament, which are pretty complicated Greek. It's really more of an
upper-scale Greek, if you will. So, here's what's really interesting. The overall structure of the
Gospel of Mark can really be divided into two. In the first half, you have really Mark focusing on the
identity of Jesus as Messiah, as the mighty Messiah, the Son of God. And then in the second
half of Mark, it really concerns the mission of the Messiah. He begins to teach them that the Son
of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, and then be killed and then rise from the dead.
And so that's kind of the basic structure of the gospel.
But there are a number of really unique things to Mark that you don't see in the other gospels.
There's an awful lot in common, but there are some things that are unique.
For example, a well-known phrase, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
That's unique to Mark in chapter 2. Another thing is that it's only in the Gospel of Mark that we
read the parable about the growing seed in Mark chapter 4, where the kingdom of God is as a man who scattered seed
on the ground and should sleep by night, rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow.
He himself does not know how, for the earth yields crops by itself, and first the blade,
then the head, after the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle because
the harvest has come. So, that's his unique take on that. Also, another thing that is interesting
is that Mark is the only one who talks about the pigs into which the demons went into
in chapter five. That's really, really very interesting. And he also is the one who uses
Aramaic at times when he talks about, in Mark chapter 7, talitha koum, talitha koumi, which
is translated, little girl, I say to you, arise. So that's something that is unique about him as
well.
But I think one thing that people would be interested in knowing that in Mark chapter 6, Mark's gospel is the only one of the four gospels, which Jesus calls, is called the son of Mary.
The son of Mary.
And so, it's talking about, again, those first eight chapters, the identity of Jesus as the powerful Messiah, the son of Mary.
And it also says in chapter six that he's called a carpenter.
Right.
And that's where we get that from.
Well, the Gospel of Matthew states that he was the son of a carpenter.
Son of the carpenter, yeah.
Right, right.
So that's an interesting part there.
And there are a number of other things that make this gospel unique that people are going to run into.
And that's kind of one of the challenges that I would encourage people to do is that as
they read through it with you, to make note of the first half, the identity of Jesus. Just mark or underline,
highlight, if you will, the identity of Jesus. And then after that, to the end of the gospel,
the mission of Jesus. So those are two things that people can really focus on. By the way,
he's also the only one who identifies himself as the author.
the only one who identifies himself as the author.
Right.
And, you know, it's interesting.
You mentioned when it comes to the identity of Jesus, how often in other Gospels as well,
Jesus, the messianic secret.
So here is Jesus who gets revealed, you know, it's whether a demon is saying, we know who you are, or whether that's Jesus does a miracle and then
tells someone, all right, so the demon says, we know who you are.
And then he says, be quiet.
Or when he heals someone and then Jesus says, don't tell anyone about this.
I know a lot of times, especially when we were reading through the Gospel of John, people
were writing it and saying, why doesn't Jesus want people to know who he is?
Why do people, why does he want to hide from this identity?
What's one of the answers that you oftentimes will give people
when they run into that messianic secret?
Yeah, that's so funny you mention that,
because when I read that years ago,
I always thought it was reverse psychology.
You know, you say, don't tell anybody about this,
knowing they're going to open their mouth, you know.
Not every day a boy gets a whitewash offense, you know, that kind of thing. A little Tom Sawyer.
Right. But I think that one of the reasons is that there is a timing to everything in Jesus'
life and that he is revealing himself first to his disciples and to those around them and laying
the foundation down as to who he was. And there is a time, there's a time for everything in his
life. And the real proclamation of his kingdom and who he was, was through the disciples,
but that would come after the resurrection. That would be premature to suddenly the Romans and
everybody else to say, hey, this guy is really a great king, like the Maccabean
revolt or David, you know, and to establish him as a king, renewing the kingdom that had
kind of gone silent for years. And his kingdom was not like that. And his kingdom was different
to the kingdom of heaven. And so it was all in the timing, I believe believe of that yeah that makes so much sense i mean i
cardinal newman at one point he asked the question how come jesus didn't just appear to everyone
after he rose from the dead and why did he only appear to his disciples and his answer is kind of
similar to that where he said the idea wasn't just so that people could see him the idea was that the
people who knew him could see him. The people who had a relationship
with him could see him because then they could go and bear witness to him as opposed to the
fickle crowds, as opposed to those who had no investment whatsoever in him who would say,
yeah, sure. I saw this man raised from the dead, but that doesn't change my life at all.
He said, I'm paraphrasing obviously, but that sense of it's, here's this relationship and out of this relationship
comes a witness bearing witness to his identity, not just himself and not just his miracles
and obviously not the demons, but these, these apostles who are sent out who are no longer
servants, but our friends who then get sent out into the world to not just bear witness
to his miracles, not just bear witness to his resurrection, but bear witness to the one they know,
the one they're in relationship with.
And yeah, that makes sense.
You have to, as you said,
we just finished the book of Ecclesiastes
and there's a season for everything.
And this was not the season to be revealed.
Yet there's a yet time for growth.
And it speaks to, I think,
the fact that he's in control of the narrative.
He is not allowing the public narrative to define his kingdom or when he should rise or what he should do.
He is in control of that.
And you and I are both Mac fans.
I mean, we use Macintosh.
We have for years.
A lot of people have iPhones.
And if you think back for a moment, when Steve Jobs was developing all of that, you know, the Mac computer and the iPads, all of that,
he was very, very careful to tell those around him, do not let this out yet. Do not let it out
on pain of firing, right? And so Apple had this, they had this unique environment where nobody
leaked things out ahead of time because there was a time
to do it. Now, I'm not equating the kingdom of heaven with Steve Jobs and Apple, but it's the
same type of thing. And that is that we, I am speaking to you as a small group here in the
development of everything that I am giving you, and there will be a time. And I know that your natural
inclination is to start to record me and sell the tapes and everything else. I know that.
But I don't want you doing that right now. And so, I think it's an incredible, well,
it's an incredible thing because Solomon was known as the builder in the Old Testament.
Jesus is greater than Solomon.
He is the master builder.
And I think part of the master builder aspect is prudence on when and how the kingdom grows.
And I think that, just to make a note here, I do think the kingdom of heaven is better than apples.
Just as a sidebar, asterisk.
Just a sidebar.
Quick, one thing about the
authorship of Mark's gospel. Here's Mark, who I think I've come across many people who have said
that it is highly likely that as Mark and Peter were close, Mark had traveled with Paul and
Barnabas and that whole story, how that story went down. But then Mark and Peter were close that this would be Peter's gospel via Mark.
Is that important?
Is that unique to highlight?
Or is that kind of like just a fact or a piece of trivia?
Well, I've read that quite a few times where people talk about that idea.
And it certainly could be.
I mean, a lot of the themes that he brings about are relating to those which Peter is interested in, for sure.
But I think that the real emphasis is on the identity of Jesus and the mission of Jesus.
But no doubt, no doubt, Mark learned from Peter, and it could be through his eyes as well.
A lot of the formation of Mark is different than the other Gospels where there is an immediacy to what he is telling you.
In fact, what's interesting about it, about this Gospel, is that he uses 41 times, 41 times the word immediately.
And so he's always talking about immediately,
and it's an average of two times per chapter.
Yeah, it's only 16 chapters.
Yeah, yeah, he's using it a lot for such a short book.
And it really gives us, I think,
a sense of a kind of a rapid-fire narrative.
And so, people who say, well, I don't like Mark because it's not as expansive as Luke and Matthew.
Well, this could be that rapid-fire look at the gospel.
Another thing that's very interesting is the organization of the material in Mark. And what I mean by that is that Mark has a way,
has a tendency, I should say, to organize the gospel by a type of material. So, we have miracles
and you have parables, you have controversies, and it's not so much thematic like faith and
that type of thing like you would expect. And it's important for the reader to
realize that the material is organized. It's not just a random telling, but he really is organizing
it. But the one thing, Father, that I like about Mark, and when I teach this, I'm always using Mark
to do this, and you can use the other Gospels as well, and that is that Mark utilizes in a masterful way Jesus' ability to use questions when he teaches.
And Jesus uses over 10 different ways to implement questions, that a question could be rhetorical. A question could be a lesson in itself,
like, you know, rhetorical. He can use questions to reveal a person's heart. He can use questions
to cut off those who are coming against him and trap them in a way. And so, I think that Mark really, really showcases the wisdom and the cleverness of Jesus
in how he taught. And he does this, and he also explains it. So, some people think that the
audience of Mark was Christians who were not as familiar with the Jewish backgrounds, and so Mark has a tendency to explain these things
to them so that they would understand in the same way that John will see does the same thing. He's
going to bring up Jewish concepts, and then he kind of pauses and says, well, this is what it
means. You guys don't know. Rabbi, which means teacher, yeah.
Yeah, right, right. Yeah, rabbi, which means teacher. And then there's one more thing, this last thing that I would mention, and that is that Mark's gospel is not just interested in concepts.
His gospel that he's giving us is focused on deeds.
Yeah. And that is really important because we as Catholics know, we as Christians know, that God revealed himself in words and deeds.
And Mark focuses on those deeds, but our response to this revelation is like that.
We respond with words and deeds as well.
words and deeds as well. Yeah, that's so good, especially how action-packed Mark's gospel is,
that Jesus is going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, and there's revealing, here's the actions of the Savior, here's the actions of the Messiah. As you noted,
the first half, the identity of the Messiah, then here's the mission of the Messiah. And it seems
like, gosh, I don't even know what the percentage is of Mark's gospel that is the mission of the Messiah. And it seems like, gosh, I don't even know what the percentage is
of Mark's gospel. That is the percentage of time Mark spends on the crucifixion or like the, at
least the last 24 hours, essentially of Jesus's life vastly outweighs proportionally the other
three gospels, as well as even just the, almost like the resurrection is a footnote, but it's,
gospels, as well as even just the, almost like the resurrection is a footnote, but it's not.
Obviously, it's a very important last piece that concludes his gospel. But you have that recognition of here is Jesus, whose heart is not only revealed, as you said, in what he's teaching,
but his heart is revealed, his mission is revealed, his identity is revealed in what he does,
which is just, yeah, it's super powerful. Yeah, and it's very, very compact.
And you have in chapter 14, starting with the Judas betraying Jesus, the Passover with
the disciples, the Last Supper, Peter denies the Lord, Jesus in Gethsemane, his arrest,
he's before the council, Peter denies Jesus.
That might be why some scholars think that this is really the
the the gospel through the eyes of peter because he really does get into that and then jesus before
pilot um jesus being mocked the crucifixion uh the death the burial and the resurrection and then
when you when you look at your bible they're all like they're all compact paragraphs you know
several several sentences that goes boom boom boom boom, boom, and lays it all out and then ends with him appearing to Mary Magdalene, to the two disciples, and then the the call to go into all the world now and preach the gospel to the whole
of creation. And that gospel is what we call the kerygma, which the basics are that God loves you
and has an amazing plan for your life. Sin has interrupted this plan. Jesus has died for you,
and now he's asking you to repent, to radically reorient your life to him,
and to be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, and to join his magnificent family, and then
go out into the world yourself and make disciples. And that's how it ends.
And the final statement is that the Lord, I love this, it's the very last verse, verse 20 of Mark 16,
and they went forth and preached everywhere, and I love this part, while the Lord worked with them
and confirmed the message by signs that attended it. And it ends with amen. And I like that so much, that last verse, because after revealing who he is in the first eight chapters and then the following chapters talking about his mission, then he invites his followers to go on that mission. proclaim the gospel. I'm going to be with you. And I have the heavy lifting job here,
and that is I'm going to confirm the message in the hearts of the people that you speak to.
You don't have to do heart surgery. You don't have to get in there and figure them out.
You just have to tell them the good news. And I have just spent 16 chapters telling you the good news and who he is. Now go out and get him. So good. And it's what a gift to be able to be again on this journey and have this
messianic checkpoint where we get to be reminded of with all the mess, with all the United Kingdom,
but ups and downs with all the divided kingdom coming on its way and exile that we have this
story that the fulfillment or in many ways of the old covenant in Jesus Christ and bringing us into this part of this
story, making us a part of this story.
And as you said, here is, as they went out and preached, the Lord confirmed.
The Lord did.
He didn't leave them orphaned.
He didn't leave them abandoned.
He didn't leave them alone.
He didn't leave them powerless.
But he's the one who's, he is the one who continues to bring fruit to the works of Christians
around the world now.
Jeff, one last thought, if you have, as we launch into these next eight days of listening
to and praying through Mark's gospel, any last pieces?
Well, I think one is, two, one is that as you read through the gospel of Mark,
I would encourage people to pay attention to who he said he was
and then to pay attention to his mission and really pay attention to that.
Highlight it, mark it, because his mission is your mission.
market, because his mission is your mission. And when he sends you out, he's not sending you out to just build church buildings. He is sending you out with a message, and that message is not
dependent, and the proclamation of that message is not dependent upon your skill level. You know,
a lot of people will say, well, I don't share Christ with other people because that's not my
gift. And using that logic, I have often said, well, I don't share Christ with other people because that's not my gift.
And using that logic, I have often said, well, when it comes to the offering in Mass, that's
not my gift.
So I will give the basket to somebody else who has that gift.
And the truth is that evangelization is a gift that has been given to all of us.
It's the responsibility of all of us.
And God is just simply looking for faithful disciples who will
continue to spread this story. So while we come to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, it's really
not the end because it's still going on today and even past the book of Acts into the entire world.
But I do have one last thing, and I know you like this kind of stuff, Father. You know, in software,
like your iPhone or your Android device, they have what they call Easter eggs. And an Easter egg is like a hidden little gem in there that some of you will find it, some of you won't. And I'll give
you a hint about this little Easter egg here, and that is in chapter 14 of Mark's gospel at the betrayal and the arrest of Jesus. It says
in verse 51, and a young man followed him. Well, it starts earlier. Day after day, I was with you
in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the scripture be fulfilled. And they all
deserted him and fled. And a young man followed him
with nothing but a linen cloth about his body
and they seized him,
but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
Odd text, different kind of text.
And I'll leave you with this for our listeners.
Who do you think that young man was that's a good question
okay who do you think that young man was to leave us with the question not with the answer i think
we probably should know i mean it'd be maybe helpful most think it was mark mark himself
mark the young man yeah so just this opportunity for him to share, I was part of this story.
That was me.
Yeah, which is typical of the disciples.
Like John says in his gospel, he talks about the disciple that Jesus loved.
Yeah.
He doesn't mention himself, but he says the one he loved.
Not that he doesn't love the other ones, but that's how he identified with him, the one that he loved.
Yeah, that's so good.
What a gift.
I'm so grateful.
Jeff, thank you so much for this intro to Mark, our second Messianic Checkpoint.
I hope that it's been a blessing to everyone who's been listening to us.
I know that every time I get a chance to talk with Jeff about the upcoming time period,
it is just, it's a massive blessing for me.
I hope it's a blessing for you.
I just want to let you know that we continue to pray for you.
Please keep praying for us. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.
God bless.