Quiet! Shut up!
Below (scroll down) is the gospel reading appointed for the upcoming Sunday, June 23. Except for five Sundays in July and August when our gospel readings will be from John chapter 6, the Bread of Life, we'll be reading through Mark the rest of the summer and fall 2024; and we will see the development of Mark's agenda that his disciples, including The Twelve, the people nearest Jesus cannot see who he is. Sometimes they look really dumb, but that's only because Mark has already told us the readers who Jesus is.
In Sunday's reading, called a "nature miracle," Jesus calms a storm at sea and those in the boat with him puzzle, "Who is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"
We may think, "well, duh!" But it isn't that the disciples are stupid, it's that the Bible student has to get in Mark's mind and see what Mark is doing, Mark's agenda. The story is not about obtuse disciples, Mark is using the disciples' perfectly normal human blindness to stir the reader's impatience that Jesus isn't being seen for what he is, the Son of God.
In fact, Mark makes an unfolding "serial" of revealing who knows who Jesus is. Mark opens, "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" ("the Son of God" is not in all earliest known manuscripts, and may have been added later by an editor or by the early church, but it's canonical now, and it enhances Mark's story).
So, who knows who Jesus is at that point? God of course, Mark the author, and us the reader because Mark just told us "Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
Then Jesus gets baptized and the voice from heaven tells him, "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Remember, Mark's not writing a history book to go on the library shelf so he can get his PhD, he's writing an exciting adventure story for us. And now we are supposed to realize that, for sure, Jesus also knows who he himself is. So, by now we are sure that God knows, Mark knows, we the readers know, and Jesus knows.
Then there's an encounter with a possessing demon, who shouts, "I know who you are, the Son of God." So, now, and pretty much through the rest of Mark's story, the tension of impatience builds and builds and builds because even though it's perfectly obvious to us, nobody else but the demons that Jesus casts out recognize Jesus. Nobody around him "gets it," and Mark means us to be driven crazy with impatience as we stand outside the story unable to point out to everyone inside the story what they're missing.
All this is somehow integral with but also somewhat apart from what scholars call the "Markan secret" or the "messianic secret" that Jesus himself presses throughout Mark's story. Why is Jesus telling everyone to be quiet and not tell? Because Mark the author has Jesus do that. Why does Mark do that? Bible scholars have argued about that for centuries; but it's bound up in Mark's agenda. It was Mark's idea, not Jesus' lone action.
Mark is brilliant, an imaginative writer. Finally as the story nears its end, the Roman centurion, a total outsider Gentile, realizes, "Truly, this man was God's Son." Mark likes this, because Mark's a Gentile, and Mark is proclaiming Christ to Gentiles.
But then Mark concludes his gospel with the women coming to Jesus' tomb on Sunday morning, encountering the young man, presumably an angel (or he may be the young man in the garden who slipped away from the guards and ran away naked; or he may be the young man in "Secret Mark" who resembles Lazarus in John's gospel story, whom Jesus raises from the dead, another bit of intrigue). But at Mark 16:8, Mark finally comes to his purpose and his climax: the women flee the empty tomb because they are terrified, and they don't say anything to anybody. Mark means for the reader to by now be so impatient and frustrated with everyone's blindness, that the reader himself jumps up and runs out proclaiming Jesus Christ.
Because of the peculiarities in Mark's writing, and they are many and repetitive, many scholars put Mark down as not so bright; but Mark is in fact the most clever and imaginative of the gospel writers; he should have written murder mystery stories.
Anyway, the story should unfold over the summer and fall. Meantime, here's our gospel reading for next Sunday:
Mark 4:35-41
When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Σιώπα, πεφίμωσο" - - “Silence! Be still!”
Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
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Mark is my favorite gospel, and, along with Genesis and Revelation, one of my three favorite Bible stories.
RSF&PTL
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