The Gospel of Mark in 14 Minutes

This past weekend at our fall Board of Elders retreat, the pastors and elders of the church got together  and we read the Gospel of Mark together, out-loud in one continuous sitting. It was a powerful exercise in hearing the story of Jesus proclaimed from beginning to end, in context as the author intended it to be read. The whole exercise took about 80 minutes to complete and many new observations and epiphanies occurred as the various parts of the gospel came together to form a story that is rife with correlations, connections and internal structures that are missed when we take it in bite sized portions. It takes almost an hour and a half of investment to read all sixteen chapters of the gospel out loud, but my my estimation you can probably finish it in around half that time just reading silently to yourself (depending of course on your reading speed - it took me about 45 minutes) and I would heartily recommend to everyone that you take the time to do so - because reading the gospel (any of the gospels - and most of the books of the Bible, really) in context means reading them comprehensively from start to finish.

It's only when you can familiarize yourself with the story from beginning to end that you can start to see the big picture that the writer (in this case John Mark) was trying to paint, not only events and signs and miracles, but intent and motive and trajectory along with nuance. One person who has done such comprehensive study and reflection on the gospel is one of my favourite scholars, Ben Witherington III. Dr. Witherington has taken his years of study on the earliest gospel and condensed it into a 14 minute video presentation where he highlights the story of the Gospel of Mark from the beginning to the end and frames it as the story that John Mark wanted to tell.

As we're just entering into the third act of Marks Gospel this month with our preaching series at EAC I'd encourage you to invest the time it takes to get a comprehensive perspective on the story by reading it from beginning to end in the coming weeks. If you can invest the time to do it in one sitting, all the better. And if you have 14 minutes to spare today while you are checking your Facebook and surfing the web - I'd encourage you to watch this video and learn something new about this earliest story of Jesus.

Chris