A couple years ago, when last the lectionary was in Mark I stumbled upon some Youtube videos of people doing dramatic performances of Mark’s gospel in its entirety. At the time, I thought, “This is something I could do” and put it on the back burner of my brain until January 1st of this year when I decided to go ahead and memorize Mark and perform it dramatically for Tenebrae Friday.
I went about the arduous task of memorizing Mark passage by passage. As I did I came clever audience interaction bits and props. As I memorized it out loud I rehearsed various ways of saying every single sentence. Some I tried sad and then happy and then sarcastic to see which I felt worked best and also conveyed the tone that I thought Mark used.
The performance was last Friday night and, though I am relieved to be done with Mark’s gospel, I am also grateful for the amount of wisdom and knowledge I gained over the last several months. So it is my pleasure here to share with you some of those insights I have learned during this journey:
- I am more convinced than ever that Mark’s gospel was meant to be spoken and performed, not read. The high amount of intense action verbs make this obvious. The heavens do not open. They are TORN open. People do not kneel. They fall down at his feet. Nobody “asks” anything, (well, except the boring bad guys). Instead, they plead or beg. These verbs lend themselves to broad hand and arm gestures and overly dramatic facial expressions, making this a very fun gospel to read out loud. You can almost imagine an elderly Peter performing this for a younger Mark and then a young Mark in turn performing it for his younger disciples.
- Sarcasm and irony permeate this text. I am going to write a follow up post in the next day or two about my favorite bits of humor in Mark but moments of irony carry the gospel along. The scene with the legion of demons and the large herd of pigs is hilarious, making its sad ending very poignant. Jesus’ use of the prophet Isaiah and the commands of Moses to insult the Pharisees and teachers of the law is brilliant and funny. And who can forget Jesus getting mad at a fig tree when it didn’t have figs in the middle of Spring! I will talk more about the humor later but it sure made Mark fun to memorize and perform.
- Mark’s over-use of the word “immediately” is not what a lot of people try to make of it. The word “immediately” appears over 15 times in Mark, more than one a chapter. Other “hurry” words like “just then,” “as soon as,” “at once” and the like appear just as often. Therefore, some argue that Jesus in Mark is in a hurry and doesn’t slow down. I don’t think that is true. The word “immediately” very rarely describes Jesus. Instead it comes up most often during miracles. When Jesus speaks immediately the leprosy leaves, the bleeding stops and the demon flees. The word doesn’t convey a Jesus in a hurry. It conveys the darkness and evil of our world in a hurry to get of Jesus’ way.
- Right around chapter 7 the entire tone of the gospel changes. Somewhere in chapter 7, the hurry words disappear. The strong action verbs get a little bit weaker. The humor fades. Chapters 8-10 were the hardest to memorize because they weren’t as dramatic or fun. But these are the chapters which focus heavily on the demand for followers of Jesus to live humble and sacrificial lives. It is as if Mark used the humor, intensity and hurry to get your attention but once he had it, he slowed things way down so that you could really hear the core message of the book which is. . .
- HUMILITY. This guy Jesus has all the power in the world but doesn’t want people to talk about it. The person Mark labels in the very first verse as the “Son of God” comes from middle of nowhere Nazareth and hangs out in forgotten Galilee for 2/3rds of the Gospel. He then hurries back out to Galilee right after the Resurrection. This popular teacher spends his time running away from crowds and hiding in houses. He demands both demons and those healed to keep their mouths shut about him and in chapter 9 he is transfigured and then immediately tells the eyewitnesses not to go blabbing. In chapter 8, right around the time the tone changes, he begins to teach that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected. Then he starts talking about how he didn’t come to be served but to serve. He begins teaching his disciples to do the same thing. The first will be last. The one who wants to be great will be the slave of all. Those who wish to enter the kingdom of heaven must do so with one eye, one hand, one foot and with the posture of a little child. Then the rich man goes away sad because he has great wealth. But blind Bartimaus is filled with joy because he just wanted to see. And in the parable of the sower some receive the word but because of the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things, the word is choked and they are unfruitful. Mark has much to teach us about the path of salvation and he illustrates it to us as the path of sacrificial humility. This climaxes at the Resurrection scene. Many commentators have pointed out that it is a young man dressed in white who gets to proclaim the resurrection news in the empty tomb. There was another young man in white you fled naked and in shame at the arrest. It is quite probable that Mark did this on purpose to illustrate that those of us who humble ourselves completely, leaving everything, even our clothes, in order to follow Jesus will receive so much more from God!
Oh that we would learn that lesson and learn it well and join Bartimaus and the young man in white on the road to the cross and then to the empty tomb!
Go-Before Grace 