Gospel According to Mark

Phew! Have you caught your breath? Mark has kept us moving quickly from place to place and event to event.

We heard the news right at the beginning being proclaimed as good news with Jesus the Son of God. We’ve been introduced to Jesus as one who is obedient, the forgiver of sins, the source of healing for both bodies and relationships. A friend to those alienated from God and the rebuker of those in leadership who have failed to love and care for those in their charge.

‘Who do you say I am?’ We were taken to Caesarea Philippi and heard Jesus ask this of Peter. And we were witness to Peter’s declaration that He was the Christ. Later we witnessed Peter’s denial of Jesus, abandoning Jesus in His greatest time of need.

We went to the upper room and the beginning of the tradition of communion, to the Garden of Gethsemane and perhaps even a glimpse of Mark himself, a young boy who fled naked from the fracas, his robes ripped off him. Then to the cross and the statement of faith by a pagan warrior as Jesus dies that, ‘surely this man was the Son of God’.

Lastly, we went to the tomb with the women to dress Jesus’ broken and battered body with spices. There we found it empty except for a messenger from God who told us that Jesus the Messiah was risen. The crucified king was now the risen king! We witnessed the women running from the tomb and then…

Well, we’ve lost the ending of Mark, but maybe we are it. We are the result of what the women ran to tell the others, the end of the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Son of God. Because of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, each one of us is written firmly into God’s story as we now declare that “you are King Jesus, the living Son of God”.

Colleen