Breaking the silence...

I have to say that I'm somewhat struck by the way Mark begins. The author just starts with "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" and begins to recount some words from Isaiah. Having read John's gospel, it seems incomplete to start here and I immediately wanted to make some theological jabs at Mark for failing to show the eternity of Christ as a piece of the trinity. However, I was then forced into the shoes of the early audience of this piece of writing and found that perhaps Mark was getting at God's breaking of the 400 year silence between Malachi and Matthew.

Mark jumps right in to the gospel story by talking about John the Baptist. The outstanding images in this section portrayed someone that I wouldn't take seriously...but again...no words from God for 400 years...maybe I'd hear what this guy had to say. John the Baptist seems to have a really strong sense of what he is to be doing and what his position is under Christ. I really like/admire/envy that (though I don't know that I want to envy that since I know what happens later). I often find myself asking questions of where I'm supposed to be and who I'm supposed to be under Christ, and then I find that I'm asking those questions because I don't really know/believe/flesh out my position under Christ. I try to serve ends of my own. John really wasn't doing that...and he had a following...but that following wasn't his own. He really was, dare I say, living for Jesus.

The other piece of Mark 1 that jumped out at me today was the section of verses 21-28. Jesus drives out a demon, the demon says who Jesus is ("the Holy One of God"), but everyone standing there seems to miss that part. They notice that they like His preaching style better than the local teacher of the law. They noticed that He spoke with authority and that demons listened to Him. They noticed what He did and how He spoke and the effects of His presence, but they missed His name. They didn't catch who this was. The demon knew it, but the people were too wide eyed at the spectacle to catch it. I identified with that.