This past Sunday, Prairie Sky Church’s “Gathered Community” event focused on the Gospel of Mark 1:1-11. Sunday was our first meeting in our new space–a new beginning in God’s ongoing creation of God’s Kingdom, of which Prairie Sky Church is but a small part. Our conversation was rich. The Holy Spirit moved among us to inspire and encourage us. Here are some highlights of the conversation.
- The Gospel of Mark is recognized by scholars as the “first gospel”–the first attempt by a follower of Jesus to write an account of what Jesus said and did.
- I shared the story of my daughter, Fiona’s, birth–a new beginning for our family.
- Mark writes, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ . . . .” These words point back to Genesis 1:1, the beginning of the Bible, where the story of the beginning of the universe begins with the words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth . . . .” Scripture tells us that God created the universe by giving form to that which was “formless and void.”
- Mary Lynn, an intermediate school teacher talked about her experience teaching about space science and the origins of the universe. Her experience is that we as humans need answers. We need to find patterns and form so we can make sense of things. Somtimes, however, she’s had to respond to students’ questions with “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
- Deirdre shared that Jesus is God in human form–a form she can relate to. Whereas sometimes it can be difficult to talk about God, she finds it easier to tell people about Jesus. For Deirdre “every day, every hour, every moment is a new beginning.”
- Mike shared that “the beginning of the Gospel” could be understood as a title for the entire Gospel of Mark, in which case, Mark is saying, “This entire book is just the beginning of the Gospel.” I agreed. Scholars, in fact, have argued for this understanding. Mark could be understood as saying, “This is just the beginning of the Gospel. The next chapters of the Gospel story are for each generation of Christians to write with their lives.” How will we write the next chapter of the Gospel with our lives?
- I shared that the idea of a “new beginning” as we find it here in the Gospel of Mark does not mean an amputation of the past; it means redemption of the past. Evidence: Mark not only points back to Genesis 1 and the story of Creation but also, in verses 2-3 to the book of Isaiah, chapter 40, and God’s promise to God’s people to make a way for them from captivity and exile in Babylon to freedom and return to the Promised Land of Israel. Here we find another aspect of new beginning. The people of Israel were exiled from their homeland because of their sinfulness, but God made a way for them to return home. We are separated from our spiritual home because of our sinfulness, through the work and person of Jesus, God makes a way for us to return to God, our spiritual home. The theological word for this is “atonement.”
- John the baptizer proclaims “a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” because the practices of repentance and forgiveness are how we reconnect to God and to each other.
- We briefly talked about the story of Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:9-11. The story culminates with God declaring of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Though the Christian sacrament of baptism has been much debated over the centuries, Mark teaches us that on a basic level Baptism is a sacrament through which God claims a person’s life (“You are my Son [or child]“) and blesses that life (“in you I am well pleased.”) In baptism we experience a new beginning, we are made a “new creation,” and we are reconnected to our spiritual home.
Whew! So that’s a “brief” synposis of our conversation. We covered a lot of ground in a relatively small amount of time. It just shows how densely packed those opening verses of the Gospel of Mark are. We find tha the Gospel is rich and full of lots of good spiritual food when we take the time to read it well.
