Mark Chapter 1

I'm glad you're jumping into Mark's gospel! Allowing Mark to take us on a walk with Christ through his 3 years of ministry, his death and resurrection, can be a life-changing experience. I hope you're starting with a sense of anticipation. Whether this is your first time to read the Bible or you've been reading Scripture all your life, we will all know Jesus better and understand Him differently after this experience.

Brad and I (Cameron) will be posting comments about one chapter each weekday from now through Easter. Most chapters, including chapter 1, contain multiple events in Jesus' life, and I'll often comment on only one of them. But if you have questions or comments about any part of the chapter, I encourage you to post them. Now let's get started...

v.22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

I was a sophomore in college in 1987. Two years later, students my age would be celebrating atop the Berlin wall as it was being torn down, and protesting for freedom in Tien An Men square. But in 1987, there were only rumblings of those events. One of the "rumblers" was a Russian poet named Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Freedom of speech did not exist in the Soviet Union, but wherever the lines were drawn, he danced on them with his poetry. He was a rock star in Russia, packing out sports arenas like Bob Dylan had done in the US in the '60s.

Baylor invited him to come to campus for a live reading and Q&A session. I had never heard of him before he arrived, but I was riveted when he recited his poem, "I Would Like." He had translated it into English, and recited it with a thick Russian accent, sometimes reverting back to Russian for dramatic effect. He began with the words, "I would like to be born in every country." It was not enough for him, he said, to be just one person, he wanted to be everyone! He had a zest for life, and captured in his poems the longing of his countrymen to experience the world on the other side of walls and razor wire. No one else could have read that poem with the same effect; no one else had lived the life that produced it.

Jesus stepped into a world that had been reading his poetry, and reading it poorly. When other teachers spoke, they had to "name drop." They had to quote authoritative sources to give their own teaching credibility. Not Jesus. "You have heard it said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'" he would say. "But I tell you, love your enemy." (Matthew 5:43-44) No one said "I tell you." What difference would it make? Go to court and try that. "You have heard it said the speed limit is 55, but I tell you it's 80." That's what Jesus did. And when he quoted the Scriptures, as he often did, he laid claim to them as if they were his own. They were. There is no authority greater than the author. Who knows better what the author really meant? Who can bring the passion of personal experience? Who lived the life that produced the art? Who feels it in the core of his being?

For the first time in human history, people were hearing the Story of God from the author himself, and the power of that was unmistakable. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory..." -John 1:14