1 The beginning of the good news (Gospel) of Jesus Christ. (Mark 1:1)
The beginning.
The beginning of what?
The beginning of the Gospel, or the good news.
So what is the good news.
The good news isn’t simply something Jesus says, it is something Jesus does. Something Jesus accomplishes. It is the good news of Jesus.
Its worth posing the question: does this notion of the word beginning apply in light of the accomplishment, or does Mark describing the beginning of the story leading up to the accomplishment.
This may sound like a strange question and strange distinction to evoke. And yet, I would suggest that possible strangeness I think comes from a failure think about what precisely it is that Jesus accomplishes.
What precisley is the good news.
As my pastor suggested, Mark is notoriously light on details here and heavy on the narrative flow and design. Unlike the other Gospel writers he jumps in mid-stream. Is it possible though that beginning doesn’t relate to the beginning of Jesus’ story, at least not exclusively, but to the beginning of the new creation Jesus brings about.
Which would mean that this is both a proclomation to Mark’s original hearers that this new creation reality has not only arrived in Jesus, and also an invitation to live in to that reality. Just as Mark quotes a passage from Isaiah (40 in efforts to locate Jesus within the story of Israel, those words of Jesus to prepare the way for the Day of the Lord, an expectation and anticipation that would have brought with it an imagination regarding the renewal of all things, so are we invited in to this practice of expectation and anticipation. Something the Baptizer describes as practice of repentance.
We do so however in the reality of a single resurrection that arrives in the middle of history, effectively bringing this long expected and anticipated reality into view. This is then the beginning that Mark is proclaiming. God has begun the great act of making all things new. The kingdom of God has arrived. Beckoning us to to contemplate what precisely how that good news manifests in our own context. How it gives us an answer to the darkness we still occupy and the light that seeks to invade it.
As Brian Zahnd puts it in his Advent devotional, The Anticipated Christ, discussing Isaiah 35:1-10.
“Someday it will be said, “Here is your God” and on that day all that is wrong will be set right. But for now all we can do is wait.”
But, as Zahnd notes, as we wait we discern what God is doing. And that begins with God entering into history definitvely in Christ. In this sense “God is alwaays about to act and God is always acting.” Both things that are said in light of Isaiah’s stark and overriding proclomation “Behold, I am about to do a new thing.” (Isaiah 43) That new thing being making a way in the wilderness.
This is the beginning.
The beginning of the good news (Gospel) of Jesus Christ.
God in Jesus has made a way in the wilderness. Has carved a river in the desert. This is where the great expected and anticiapted Day of the Lord both arrives and begins. And lest we forget, there is no ending to Mark… we are all still occupying this space in the beginning of this story. We wait in Advent for Jesus. But we particpate in a world in which Jesus has made that way clear and true.
The Stories of my Life 