Life and Faith 2.3

Part One

Welcome to the first of several video lectures that covers the blocks of the New Testament. In this compressed and accelerated course, we do not have time to explore each book in detail. Instead, we will provide an overview of a block of material and select one example from it to study more closely. These videos will follow a similar pattern. The first part will cover the essential background about the representative book for that block: genre, author, time and situation of writing, possible audiences, and key historical-cultural aspects to keep in mind as you read it. This first part, when necessary, will also cover some additional background information—as this video will about the “Synoptic Gospels.” The second part of these videos will outline the structure of the book and highlight some of its key themes and contents. The third part of these videos will pick a key theme or topic and explore it in more depth as a way to grasp what that book and block has to say about Life and Faith and what special elements it contributes to our understanding of God and salvation in the New Testament.

For this lecture we are considering the Synoptic Gospels (remembering that “synoptic” means “to see together”). While there are four Gospels in the New Testament, we identify the first three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as the Gospels because they have a lot of material and structure in common. Each one does have its own organization and emphases as well. The commonality among these three Gospels has been recognized since the early church, and different explanations have arisen for how and why we have these three Gospels in the New Testament. As to why, repetition is one of the keys to learning, and so it seems that God intended to really drive home the points that the Synoptic Gospels present about Jesus. Also, remember that stories are foundational to both testaments. They invite us into a new way of seeing the world and living in it. As to how we got these three similar but distinctive books, well, many theories have circulated. The most common theory is that Mark was written first. Then the authors of Matthew and Luke used the basic storyline and contents of Mark as the basis for their Gospels. In fact, almost 80% of Mark is found in either Matthew or Luke. Matthew and Luke appear to have shared a second source (often called “Q”) that is lost to us, but they have several passages in common (down to long strings of identical words) that are not in Mark. Finally, both Matthew and Luke have special material not found anywhere else. We know that these Gospels are the result of a complex process of oral storytelling, various prior collections of stories and sayings, and finally some careful editing into their final form. This video will deal with both Mark and Matthew, highlighting things that they share but also pointing out their distinctives. The discussion of Matthew will also prepare you for your interpretive work on a passage from the Sermon on the Mount.

Part Two

This portion of the introduction will introduce you to some essential information about the Gospels of Mark and Matthew that will help you understand their messages and read them better. However, we do have to take some of this with a grain of salt when it comes to the Gospels. Their origins and original settings are not as clear to us as some other parts of the New Testament. We need to deduce things from hints in the Gospels themselves. Sometimes the evidence points in multiple directions or sometimes it is open to various interpretations. What you are getting here is a consensus view, but by no means the only view.

We should start off by saying that the four Gospels of the New Testament are technically anonymous. The traditional titles “According to Mark” and so on go back to early traditions of the church but do not appear to be part of the original text of the Gospels. Even if the Mark that is mentioned in a few other places in the New Testament (like 1 Peter 5:13) is the right name to attach to this Gospel, Mark would not be an author in the common way that we think of authorship today. Stories about and sayings of Jesus appear to have circulated for orally among followers of Jesus for perhaps 10-20 years. Organically, these stories began to be strung together in collections and written down within Christian communities. Mark may have written the words of the Gospel, but he (if we can say a singular person was responsible here) was as much editor as author—collating and organizing these stories and the structure that had begun to form into a story around Jesus. The final writing of the Gospel of Mark is typically put just before or after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD (see Mark 13). Church tradition portrays Mark as the Apostle Peter’s associate, suggesting that the Gospel was written in Rome drawing on the preaching and recollections of Peter. However, others say that Mark fits better in the area of Syria-Palestine. A key piece of evidence in this debate in this is the times when Mark quotes Jesus speaking Aramaic and then translates it into Greek (such as 5:41 and 15:34). Mark includes Aramaic, the language that Jesus and most people in Palestine of the day spoke. This presumes that some people in his audience know Aramaic and so probably lived in the area of Palestine, but he also translates it, which presumes that some people in his audience don’t know Aramaic. At the very least we know that Mark was aware of Roman ways and navigated in the multi-cultural and multi-lingual world of the Roman Empire. Mark and Matthew both are biographical narrative, perhaps of a kind in the ancient world that featured a famous philosopher or religious teacher. Mark’s language reveals merely a basic education and the stories appear to be simply stitched together in many places. Mark has a habit of simply tying stories together by saying “and immediately this happened, and immediately that happened” and so on. Finally, the end of Mark’s Gospel has some question marks around it. You will see a “shorter” and “longer” ending added to the Gospel in most Bibles. These were probably added either because the original ending was lost or because the ending at 16:8 seemed to abrupt and negative.

The Gospel of Matthew is traditionally ascribed to Matthew the tax collector (see 10:3), one of the apostles selected by Jesus, but again this is not made clear (and not emphasized in the Gospel itself). Matthew may be the source of traditions that eventually contributed to the material edited into the Gospel. Most scholars date Matthew after Mark, usually 80-90 AD and definitely after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Matthew, however, displays a very different cultural and religious profile from Mark. Matthew anchors Jesus’s genealogy in the history of Israel in ch. 1 (Abraham, David, and Exile). Matthew more frequently quotes the Jewish Scriptures. As an example, Matthew places 7 quotations of the TaNaK across chapters 1-2 as he tells of the birth and infancy of Jesus. Matthew mostly abides by the Jewish custom of avoiding the name of God. Instead of the “Kingdom of God” (Mark 1:15), Jesus proclaims the “Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt 4:17). Thus, the Gospel of Matthew appears to be written by and for a Jewish community that followed Jesus and is still connected to and in conflict with other Jews who deny that Jesus is the Messiah. Thus, a location in ancient Syria or Palestine makes much more sense, though it is still written in decent Greek but with a Jewish/Semitic flavor. The Gospel of Matthew was the favorite of the early church. Many references to the stories about and saying of Jesus in the Synoptics reflect the wording in Matthew’s Gospel, so it was very influential.

Part 3

The structure of Mark’s Gospel is organized around geography. The first part of Mark (1:1-8:26) portrays Jesus in Galilee, which was just north of the Roman province of Judea. After this comes a shorter but crucial section (8:27-ch. 10) where Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem and predicts his own rejection, death, and resurrection on three occasions. Repeatedly, in this section, Jesus’s own disciples fail to grasp the nature of his mission and impending death. Chs. 11-16 are in Jerusalem and focus on the last week of Jesus’s life, leading up to his crucifixion. Here we find Jesus’s teaching in the temple, his arrest by Jewish authorities, his Jewish and Roman trials, and his execution.

Son of God was a title that was sometimes used for the kings of Israel to designate their special role as God’s chosen representative, and so it carried connotations of divinely authorized human power and authority. Mark introduces Jesus as the “Son of God” in 1:1. Then shortly after this, at Jesus’s baptism, the voice of God speaks and identifies Jesus as God’s own beloved son (1:11). God speaks into the story one other time at Jesus’s transformation (or transfiguration) into a being glowing with light. God tells Peter and John, two of Jesus’s followers, again “This is my beloved son; listen to him!” Strangely, the only other characters who recognize Jesus’s identity in most of the Gospel are demons, beings of supernatural evil that Jesus rebukes and casts out. These supernatural beings have insight into Jesus’s identity that human beings do not, and they call him the “Son of God” (3:11 and 5:7), though Jesus orders them to be silent (1:25, 3:12). No human being correctly recognizes Jesus as the Son of God (not even his closest disciples) until the Roman Centurion a military officer supervising Jesus’s execution sees how he dies and then proclaims, “Surely, this man was the Son of God.” So, the most unlikely character (a pagan, Roman soldier) at the most unlikely moment (the shameful crucifixion of Jesus) recognizes Jesus as the being that God (and demons) have been saying he is all along. This reveals that at the heart of Mark’s message is the idea that human beings cannot truly know who Jesus is apart from Jesus’s ignominious death for the sake of others. Yes, Jesus has spiritual power, and yes, Jesus teaches with supernatural wisdom, but it is Jesus’s death for others that is at the core of his person and ministry. As you read portions of Mark’s Gospel, remember that the Jesus you hear of there is the Jesus who will die and be raised again as part of the coming of God’s Kingdom.

Now, we turn briefly to an important aspect of Matthew’s Gospel that will prepare you for your interpretation assignment from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew keeps the basic structure of Mark’s Gospel: Jesus’s early ministry in Galilee, transition and predictions of Jesus’s death, and the focus on Jesus’s “passion”—his final week in Jerusalem, his trials, and execution. However, Matthew has stamped his own emphasis on Jesus as a teacher who came to proclaim the Kingdom of God and enact a new covenant between God and humanity. Recall that Matthew’s Gospel has an unmistakable Jewish character. And, remember that the first five books of the TaNaK/Old Testament are attributed to Moses (The Pentateuch), the great prophet-priest of Israel’s past, who was the model for a future final prophet sent by God. Well, Matthew has organized the teaching of Jesus into five discourses to portray him as that new prophet like Moses come to God’s people. He has scattered these through the basic plot provided by Mark. Each of these five discourses has a focus:

1. Chs. 5-7: The Sermon on the Mount—Jesus’s teaching on ethics and religious practices

2. Ch. 10: The Commissioning discourse—Where Jesus prepares and sends out his apostles

3. Ch. 13: The Parable Discourse—a collection of Jesus’s distinctive teaching in parables

4. Ch. 18: The Community Discourse—Where Jesus teaches about relationships in the community of his followers

5. Chs. 24-25: The Apocalyptic Discourse—Here Jesus depicts a coming catastrophe and the divine judgment that will follow it.

The Sermon on the Mount holds a special place as the first and longest of these and for the way it captures the way of life that Jesus teaches to his followers. Thus, for your first interpretation assignment, you’ll be working with a passage from this important part of Matthew’s Gospel.

That’s your sample of a couple of the key themes of Mark and Matthew. In the next part, we will look at a topic that they share (with Luke)—Jesus’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

Part Four

In each of the Synoptic Gospels, the baptism of Jesus serves as a kind of initiation that prepares Jesus for his public ministry. Then, in Mark and Matthew, Jesus utters nearly the same thing as his first proclamation: Repent for the Kingdom of God has come near! (Mark 1:17, Matt 4:17). They, then go on to narrate Jesus’s miracles and teachings. Luke makes the same point in reverse order. In Luke ch. 4, we see Jesus teaching from the book of the prophet Isaiah about the good news for the poor, he is rejected and attacked, then he casts out demons and heals people. Luke characterizes all of this as Jesus proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:43), providing us with a handy summarization of what it means for Jesus to proclaim the Kingdom.

What we learn from this is that the “Kingdom of God” is at the core of Jesus’s message and teaching. So, we will spend a few minutes here in our overview of the New Testament to explore exactly what Jesus’s message of the Kingdom of God was about. First, we need to deal a bit with the language of “Kingdom,” while this might have been a closer reality for people in Jesus’s day, only a small percentage of people today live in a kingdom, and nothing like the Kingdoms or empires of the ancient world ruled solely by a single hereditary ruler. Thus, in English parlance, it might be better to think of this as the “rule” or “reign” of God, rather than the geographical area or political system of a kingdom. When Jesus says, “the Kingdom of God,” he is referring to God’s good, holy, just, and sovereign rule over all of creation. This is good news! This rule or reign has been somehow and somewhat distanced by human rebellion and disobedience since the fall of Adam and Eve, but with the arrival of Jesus that Kingdom is now “coming near.” It hasn’t quite arrived, but it is right around the corner. Jesus is clear that the appropriate response is to repent, to change our thinking and behavior in light of the new reality that is coming our way.

So, what then is the Kingdom of God and what does it do? Jesus never gives us a dictionary definition, but he describes it in all kinds of ways that recall the creatively of the prophets and poets of Israel. We do get a couple of good hints about what the Kingdom is. First, Jesus tells us in one breath that we should “seek the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” (Matt 6:33). Righteousness is a rich word (that you will learn more about in the workshop on Paul) that in the Jewish tradition capture both God’s way of doing what is right and just but also God’s way of extending grace and salvation to those who are needy but undeserving. So, God’s Kingdom comes along with that kind of righteousness. Second, we get an even better picture in the well-known Lord’s prayer (Matt 6:9-13) where Jesus prays, “Father, may your Kingdom come and may your will be done.” So, it seems that the Kingdom of God is simply the perfect realization of the will of God. As you have seen, the story of the Bible is in many ways the outworking of God’s will to invite human beings into a loving relationship and to share the rule and care of creation with them in ways that produces goodness and life. Thus, when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom or Rule of God, he is referring to the perfect realization of God’s good and just will for humanity and all creation.

If Jesus doesn’t do much to define what the Kingdom is, he does say a lot about how the Kingdom operates. As a first step, we know that the arrival of God’s Kingdom in the ministry of Jesus means the defeat of evil and the restoration of wholeness. A key part of this is Jesus’s exorcisms of evil power in the form of “demons” or what the New Testament calls “impure spirits” (remember the Purity & Pollution principle?). As Jesus says in Luke 11:20—”If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” The Gospels report Jesus casting out many demons and healing many illnesses and diseases (you’ll read some of these). These acts are all signs of the coming of God’s Kingdom because the power of evil, Satan, and death will be vanquished when God’s will for creation is done. The Kingdom is more than simply the defeat and removal of evil, though. It is also a new and often shocking way of life that resonates with God’s will but often swims upstream against the ways of the world. This is a Kingdom that values the poor and persecuted (Luke 6:20-23). This is a Kingdom that belongs to weak and vulnerable children (Mark 10:14-15). This is a Kingdom where loving God and loving one’s neighbor are the greatest commandments (Mark 12:32-34). The ways of God’s Kingdom are so unusual that Jesus must resort to stories and comparison, often called parables to try to make his point. This is a Kingdom, that like a mustard seed exceeds all expectations about its possible size and influence (Matt 13:31-32). This Kingdom is so valuable that it worth more than the most beautiful pearl or a hidden treasure in a field (Matt 13:44-46). The kingdom manifests the radical generosity of a God who gives everyone the same reward no matter how long they have worked (Luke ch. 16); it is a Kingdom that welcomes in people from far flung villages and roads (Matt ch. 22). So, the Kingdom of God is quite a place where the weak are values the outsiders brought inside and good is done to all. This is the vision of the Kingdom that Jesus casts through his teaching and especially his parables.

Finally, it is important to note that the teaching of Jesus portrays the Kingdom of God as somehow present but also somehow in the future. Jesus can say that the Kingdom belongs (now) to the poor in spirit (Matt 5:3) and that the Kingdom of God is here in your midst (Luke 17:21). This may be due to the fact that the Kingdom of God is breaking into creation in the person and ministry of Jesus. The Kingdom took a foothold in this world with the coming of Jesus, but it is also very much a future reality yet to be culminated. In another parable, the Kingdom is like a net where good and bad fish are both caught up but the “bad fish” are eventually sorted out and thrown away at the great judgment (Matt 13:47-52). Jesus portrays the Kingdom coming as we wait like the bridal party awaits the arrival of the groom (Matt 15:1-13) and like stewards entrusted with great wealth await the return of their master who has become king (Luke 19:11-21). This is the situation that we find ourselves in now between the arrival and the culmination of the Kingdom of God. God has made a crucial first step in the realization of God’s good and perfect will by sending Jesus (and the Holy Spirit), but the full realization of God’s will still lies in the future when Jesus returns to finally vanquish evil and God renews all of creation.