Have you ever wondered what Christmas would be like if Mark’s Gospel were the only one that had survived?
Let me explain: The Nativity stories that we know and love come entirely from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
It’s Luke who gives us the Christmas account of the trip to Bethlehem and the angels announcing the royal birth to shepherds abiding in the fields (Luke 2:6-8).
It’s Matthew who gives us the Epiphany account of travelers from the East with expensive gifts for the newborn king (Matthew 2:1-2).
What if we knew absolutely nothing of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Mark tells us with the first words of his Gospel that what he is relaying to us is “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”. (Mark 1:1) So naturally, you and I might be left expecting those miraculous stories filled with angels, shepherds, a babe in a manger and visiting magi, but Mark skips these entirely.
Instead, Mark begins his account of the good news of Jesus Christ by not even talking about Jesus.
His Gospel bursts on the scene with the story of John the Baptist, the wild man of the wilderness, wearing a hair shirt and carrying a big stick, gobbling locusts and wild honey (Mark 1:4).
Mark explains that this wild man, John, was a prophet offering a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that the whole countryside and everyone in Judea was coming out to John at the River Jordan to be baptised.
So, what if Mark’s Gospel was the only one we had, and we knew absolutely nothing of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ?
A different starting point
We all love those miraculous, awe-inspiring stories, but what Mark is saying at the beginning of his Gospel matters at Christmas just as much. New Testament scholars often talk about Mark’s sparing use of words to convey momentous ideas.
Mark is like the Ernest Hemingway of the Gospel writers, and in typical Markan fashion he has conveyed something momentous, both by what he has said and by what he has not said.
Mark’s approach aptly conveys the idea that the beginning of the good news of Jesus is not the birth of the Saviour. The beginning, rather, is our need for a saviour.
This is an article from the Christian website, Salt&Light. The full article can be found by clicking on the link below:
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