Day 50 : Mark 16:9-20
Go into all the World
Mark is clear as he begins his Gospel that the story of Jesus is Good News. I think today many would advise Mark, if his purpose is to convince people that Jesus really was the Messiah, the Son of God, whose life death and resurrection was the cataclysmic moment in human history, he should really do some editing.
In chapter 4 Jesus’s followers fail to grasp his teaching about the sower and when he stilled the storm their response is fear, not understanding. Perhaps this should be edited out Mark. There’s Peter’s betrayal, the collective running away at his arrest and Jesus’s death as a common criminal. Never mind the ending, which isn’t an ending.
All through this gospel Mark tells us the unvarnished, warts and all story of Jesus. It isn’t lit with a soft glow lighting rig it is raw and real. As you found, some stories are uncomfortable, like the Syrophoenician woman in day 20 and we struggle to understand this today. Instead of having questions over authenticity, Mark’s gospel has the ring of an honest retelling of Jesus’s story, because of these uncomfortable bits! Jesus’s followers were real and sometimes confused, but their lives were changed by an encounter with Jesus and this is still true of his followers today.
2000 years later, across the globe, people in every continent speak of the same Jesus that Mark spoke of, being the one who has transformed their lives. It is true for all the writers in this booklet, who come from different backgrounds, and they are different ages. Some are leaders in Christian communities, others are ordinary people who work in prisons, schools or in hospital. Some work in Universities in our region, others look after elderly parents or young children but all have found in this great story that they have met the Living God.