Reflecting on Mark's Gospel - Mark 1:1

I have elsewhere reflected that a good way of thinking about following Jesus would be to read a gospel - http://gettingthechurchsorted.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-jesus-we-follow.html - so I thought I should perhaps, for once, do what I have suggested and read (slowly) through Mark's Gospel.

Alongside that (and before I get going) just to mention that one of my 'weaknesses' is buying commentaries and I have quite a number on Mark, so I am going to limit myself to looking at one each time, for each little bit of Mark.

Denis McBride (The Gospel of Mark: A Reflective Commentary) says of the first verse of this Gospel - "Mark announces at the beginning of the story what becomes evident only at the end of it: only after the deatb of Jesus does a human being come to acknowledge that Jesus is Son of God. Mark's writing, however, is a post-Easter proclamation of the community's belief in Jesus as Christ and Son of God."

So, right from the beginning, Mark announces that the story is a good news story. That is hugely important and much needed. We should not pretend that Jesus can magically resolve all our problems, but encountering Jesus is always good news, and Mark gives the clear hint as to that being what we will discover in the stories that follow. I was watching a streamed service yesterday in which the preacher, several times, talked about being excited. In saying that, she rightly reminded us that the good news we have is exciting.

So, we can look forward to what we will discover in these words penned by Mark; and we can also look forward to the impact that encountering Jesus will have on our lives. What we are dealing with is good news and whatever happens we cannot help but approach it in the light of Easter. But perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves, in part to give ourselves a jolt when we don't have enough of the excitement that, as McBride puts it - "the blindness of the first disciples will look like stubborn obtuseness in the new light of faith in Jesus as Lord."

We all end up plunging a few depths, but the good news remains, and we are still and always Easter people.