LMF Mark the Gospel #4: Power of Three
Vložit
- čas přidán 9. 02. 2016
- Have you noticed the parallels between Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration?
If you haven’t read Mark, take the next hour and read it all in one sitting, just like you’d watch a movie. Finding these parallels and patterns is just part of the fun of a good story’s game.
Let’s start with the transfiguration in chapter 9. Jesus goes up on a mountain with some of his disciples and there, his clothing begins to glow. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appear! And the disciples are utterly terrified. Then a cloud envelops them and we hear God say, “this is my son…”
Sound familiar? Well, that’s almost identical to what we heard in Mark 1. When Jesus comes up out of the water, the heavens are torn open and God says, “You are my son…”
Do you see the others?
In both scenes, there’s a major shift in the heavens. The enveloping cloud in chapter nine and the ripped sky in chapter one.
And then there’s Elijah. He appears at the Transfiguration and yes, also in the Baptism. You might have missed this one! But Mark implicitly describes John as Elijah when he tells us that he wore a garment of hair with a leather belt around his waist. If you know the Old Testament, like Mark’s original audience, you’ll know that it’s this same description which leads a king in 2 Kings 1:8 to identify the person so dressed as Elijah.
So in the baptism and transfiguration, we have these three parallels. Elijah, Movement in the Heavens, And the identification of Jesus as God’s Son.
Pretty cool! Right?
Now think of Mark’s description of the crucifixion. Darkness covers the land! And Jesus cries out in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi…” which means “My God, my God…” But the bystanders think he’s calling for Elijah. Then Jesus breathes his last and the temple curtain is torn in two, from top to bottom. And the centurion remarks, “truly this man was the Son of God.”
There it is, again! The pattern is in fact repeated three times.
What’s Mark doing?
Well if you think about the whole book of Mark, you’ll remember that stories told in threes happen quite regularly. There’s Jesus’ three passion predictions, the three times he wakes his sleeping disciples, and the three times Peter denies him.
Three is huge! And not just for Mark. This is, in fact, the way we tell stories. Think of Goldilocks and the three bears (bowls, chairs, beds) or Charles Dickens Christmas Carol (Ghosts of Past, Present, Future). It’s a common literary device.
Three shows completeness. Emphasis. It’s the smallest number that forms a pattern. The first instance is chance. The second a coincidence. But three times reveals a design.
And this is what Mark is doing in some of these triads. In telling us three times, he stresses to his listening audience the disciples inability to change. And at the same time, drives home the point to his hearers. Don’t be like them! Don’t miss the point!
Mark is for sure creating emphasis in the parallels between the baptism, transfiguration, and crucifixion but he’s also at the same time doing something more.
This too is common in storytelling: because twice suggests a pattern, we naturally anticipate its continuation at the partial appearance of a third. Which allows the storyteller to hit us with the twist.
Think of the way jokes are told. Three guys walk into a bar. The first guy says something. The second guy says something similar. But the third guy takes it in a whole new direction. But the twist isn’t only found in punchlines. We find it in the third part of three little Pigs and the boy who cried wolf. We even see it in longer films like the Shawshank Redemption. Remember Red’s third parole hearing?
Mark, having built a pattern in the baptism and transfiguration, hits his audience in the crucifixion with a twist. This time, it’s not God’s voice declaring Jesus His Son. It’s a person. The first person, in fact, in of all of Mark’s story to express this idea.
Now think of the progression in these three scenes. In the baptism, it’s Jesus alone who hears God say “You are my Son.” It’s a private experience. No one else seems to know what’s going on. But in the second instance, that experience is repeated for others, God tells a few of the disciples “This is my Son.” But in the crucifixion, we find this idea finally taking hold and being repeated at last by a person. And what’s really remarkable, it’s not one of the disciples. It’s not even a Jew. he’s a Roman soldier. The enemy! The person, we least suspect. Declaring it, at the point we least suspect it. - Zábava
Really clear breakdown. The transition from private experience, to public announcement is really striking. Thank you, kind sir.
Thanks so much. I had not realized how these themes were repeated 3 times. So often, we hear each story individually but we don't look at the whole. I guess I am reading the book of Mark in its entirety this Sunday.
Great choice. Enjoy!
THANK YOU!
wonderful, i love these videos - please don't stop!!
Pure gold again. Heartfelt thanks. Looking forward to hear the gospel of Mark in an audio version to get more understanding of it.
Absolutely amazing!
I am downloading all your videos. Amazing! I would love to see the last video of this serie
Good stuff!!!
So good. Thanks!
Father son and holy spirit.. the trifecta
Loving these videos, thank you for your work.
"For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"
-Romans 5:10
"And on the day of the YHVH’s sacrifice- “I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire." -Zeph 1:8
Awesome. I had known these things already, but this is a really good presentation. You emphasized all the key points. This series is awesome.
Thank you brother
Is this indicative of Christs' transformative power in the minds of 'the fallen,' or something else? Just watched Karate Kid and it ends the same way, with Daniel's 'enemy' and final opponent presenting Daniel with the trophy and showing humility, himself transformed by the process of fighting against him. I tend to watch movies with the notion that all characters are different aspects of our one self. Thanks for opening my eyes to this punctuation mark in the pattern.
Brilliant! Subscribed.
Amazing.
Great literature in the Bible;, albeit fiction, but great nonetheless.
It's story-telling?
Yup. Are you troubled by that? Don’t be. Think of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. Your asking if Mark is story-telling is like asking if the Last Supper is a painting. Of course it is. That’s the medium through which Leonardo is communicating his message. We know that’s not exactly how the last supper went down but the point of the painting was so much to recreate the historical details as it was to create an image the monks in the dining hall could identify with and meditate on. That’s what Mark is doing. He’s using historical information for sure but in that he is communicating a coherent message within the limits of 16 chapters.
That's right. We don't know who the writers were - or when they wrote - or what information they had, - nor specifically from which people who might have been close enough to the original people. ‘Mark' was probably written more than 3 decades after Jesus' execution.
Many people loved Jesus for his approach. So, people memorialized him in oral memories, in caricatures and then later in the bio-pics The group-following then later wrote the gospels in quick stages in testament letters. There were many more than four 'gospels', but those were chosen for various reasons (mainly as a backlash against the traditional Jews who battled against the heresy they perceived in them - and anywhere they found it in their territories of control).
iok-1 Maybe. Mark appears to be more personal than that as it adds the intimate details that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus who are presumably members of the community for whom Mark wrote
Thanks for the kind reply.
I'm old and now I see nothing wrong with following Christology as a philosophy. It's better than most philosophies. If you want a religion then yes, think of Jesus as a god concept. We can't even define what a god is, but it's healthy for the human brain to have a focus of reverence like this, in an understandable human form.
But you're young. I hope you will first read unbiased scholarship, from every camp, and only then worship what the founders of Christianity want you to worship.
Well, your pattern of "three" works, but it is not complete. You see, the pattern that you outline is from "above": two divine voices and the confession of the centurion. However, the centurion is not the first "person" to declare that Jesus is the "Son of God". Both in Mark 3:11 and Mark 5:7 there is the declaration that Jesus is the "Son of God" and these are made by "people". Granted, these two persons were "possessed" by evil spirits, and so, it could be argued that it was the "demonic" that recognized Jesus as the Son of God, but they were still "persons". So then, there is this additional pattern from "below": two demon possessed persons confess and then a "rational", "objective", "clear-headed" person [the centurion] confesses that Jesus is the "Son of God".