Mark - The First Gospel: faith

Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

022-A Botched Exorcism

The presence of Jesus does not resolve all questions, but it allows
the honest admissions of fear and doubt.

“I believe; help my unbelief!” (v.24)

In Christian circles, it is often heard that “Jesus is the answer,” or that “all doubts are erased in the presence of Jesus.” Now these may be partially true in some circumstances. But what the story of the father whose the son suffered from torment of an unclean spirit shows, coming closer to Jesus and being in his presence doesn’t always bring answers and doubts don’t magically disappear.

In fact the opposite seems almost the case in this story. At the beginning, the father likely had confidence that Jesus and his disciples could solve his problem. But the disciples failed and Jesus wasn’t anywhere near. By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, the whole situation had turned into a fiasco with the disciples and the scribes arguing. The father is no longer certain that even Jesus could do anything about his son.

The son is brought to Jesus. Where is the father…? The text doesn’t say. I imagine that the father is close to his son. Violent convulsions hit the son. The father is desperate. He is in the presence of Jesus. He admits to his fears and expresses his honest doubt about, yes, Jesus. Jesus offers words of assurance. A glimmer of faith is restored – just enough for the father to grab and hold, and offer a prayer mixed with hope and fear.

One of the messages of this story is that as we draw closer to Jesus, it’s okay if our questions and uncertainties don’t magically disappear. Maybe it is in the very presence of Jesus where it is safest to express our fears and doubts, about Jesus himself, even.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

019-Beginning to See

A correct declaration of faith is
not the same as having faith.

There is nothing random or haphazard about the placement of the stories and teachings in Mark. The two pericopes discussed here are no exception.

Leading up to these verses we’ve seen Jesus defying the cultural and religious traditions regarding the Messiah, of Jesus breaking down boundaries and traditions, and of the people wondering who Jesus is. We have seen how the individuals and groups in power and exercising authority – represented by Herod and the Pharisees – trying to force Jesus to fit into their schemes.

We have heard Jesus warn his disciples about the “leaven of Herod and of the Pharisees,” and we have heard Jesus call the disciples blind and deaf. It is in this context that the next verses are to be read and interpreted.
(From Discussion Outline, First Thoughts)

Mark 8:27-33 are seen by most scholars and commentators as the very center of the Markan gospel account. These verses provide a climax to the first half of the account and function as a hinge to tie the second half to the first. The text for this session includes a part of this critical, central passage. We leave the remainder for next time.

A bumbled healing

The first pericope is a narrative in which Jesus appears to have some difficulties in fully healing a blind man. It is the only such case in the entire corpus of all the gospel accounts. This story is itself appears to be an illustration of the entire Markan account. At the halfway point, the disciples have a vague understanding of who Jesus is, but they do not see clearly. More healing must take place. However, at least in Mark’s account, the disciples never see clearly.

Jesus is the Messiah that to these disciples looks like a tree walking around. Even more disturbing is the fact that they never achieve clear sight or understanding—not in Mark’s narrative. Commentators like to say that the resurrection was the moment that full sight came for the disciples—but not in Mark… This inability of the disciples in Mark to achieve sight is a source of tension. It is the same tension that Mark’s nonending creates. The rhetorical function of Mark’s ending forces the reader to exclaim in horror, “No! It cannot end that way! The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cannot, must not end in fleeing, fear, and silence!^[1]

There are other considerations for this story:

Relation to two other key healing episodes in 7:31-37 and 10:46-52, both in rhetoric and in theme.
Relation to Isaiah 35, particularly vv. 5-6 and the overall context of the chapter.
That perhaps Mark intentionally depicts Jesus as “weak” in contrast to the disciples’, Herod’s, the Pharisees’, and the crowd’s expectations.^[2]

A correct declaration

This next section (vv.27-30) is the first half of the critical centerpiece of the gospel account. This takes place “on the way” to Caesarea Philippi.

The geographic context for this story is significant. Jesus had just been in Bethsaida, the northeast fishing town on the Sea of Galilee that belonged to Philip’s tetrarchy. Caesarea Philippi was further north in this territory and was to be distinguished from the much larger coastal city of Caesarea Maritima. Herod the Great had named this inland Caesarea in honor of Augustus. He also had a temple of white marble built and dedicated to Augustus in the city (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 15.10.3). The imperial overtones underlying the geographic location of the story are clear. Mark has Jesus identified as the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, indeed a royal figure, precisely here in a city dedicated to another king, and from Mark’s perspective a lesser, earthly king. The eventual irony of the charges against Jesus, that he was the “King of the Jews” (15:26), is already anticipated in 8:27-30.^[3]

The phrase “on the way” will eventually be revealed as “code” for “the way to Jerusalem and the cross.”

For the first time since 1:1, Mark uses the title, Christ. It is in the most politically charged setting that its second use appears. To declare Jesus as Christ is to disavow all other claims of power as less than Jesus. He makes the disciples declare this openly, yet commands them (as he did with the demons) to keep silent about it. It is all strange and bizarre.

A part of the interpretation of this text surely has to do with its original Roman audience. They too, were facing the question of who Jesus is, and what does it mean to declare him as Lord (against Caesar). This story is provided to give the audience comfort and encouragement that the first disciples had to decide who Jesus was and where Jesus fit in the hierarchy of powers, and that they confessed the dangerous declaration.

On the other hand is the command to keep silent. This will have to wait until next time. This is the reason why Mark’s second half exists. In the second half the disciples (and the audience) learn what “Christ” really means, as opposed to what they expected.

Peter’s “correct confession” is deceptive. It points out an important reality: we can have what appears to be everything in order—words, actions, and so on—and still have it very wrong.

Correct confession can be deceptive. It can mask false discipleship, idolatry, and even a perspective that Jesus attributes to Satan. A perfectly correct mission statement does not reveal the true discipleship of either the pastoral staff or the congregation that appears to follow it to a tee.^[4]

[1] Feasting: Mark, locations 8291, 8295.

[2] Feasting: Mark, location 8269. “In this episode of the healing of the blind man, Mark makes Jesus appear weak, in order to say something important about who Jesus is, who the disciples are, and what Jesus is doing to form them into the kind of followers and leaders they need to be… Jesus’ apparent weakness is a vehicle for Mark to convey something that is at the heart of true discipleship.”

[3] Feasting: Mark, location 8425.

[4] Feasting: Mark, location 8489.

Monday, March 9, 2015

018B–Bread and Boat, Again and Again

Miracles are ambiguous.

We continue our discussion in Mark chapter 8. This session we get through another quarter or so of the originally planned material. Specifically we discuss vv. 11-13. The remainder will be picked up next time.

This is a short passage that seems to be almost randomly placed, interrupting the main flow of the narrative in chapter 8; which consists of the feeding of the four-thousand followed by multiple boat trips across Lake Gennesaret (Sea of Galilee), and miracles on either side of the boat journeys. But we’ve been seeing that Mark’s crafting and placement of text is quite intentional. The two sections on either side of vv.11-13 deal with the nature of bread and feeding. Thus 8:1-21 might be yet another example of Mark’s “sandwich rhetoric” where vv.11-13 is the filling. If so, there is something here that is quite vital to the understanding of the entirety of the “sandwich.”

The key to interpretation and understanding is found in verse 11:

The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. (ESV)

The New International Commentary: Mark explains the phrase “sign from heaven”:

The concept of a sign is intelligible from the OT and later Jewish literature. It signifies a token which guarantees the truthfulness of an utterance or the legitimacy of an action…
The recognition that a sign is primarily an evidence of trustworthiness, not of power, sheds light on this verse. It indicates that the demand for a sign is not a request for a miracle. Jesus' miracles are never designated as signs in Mark's Gospel, nor were they considered to be signs by the Pharisees. They regard Jesus' miracles as ambiguous actions whose meaning must be confirmed by a sign. They had witnessed his mighty works but had concluded they were of demonic agency (Ch. 3:22–30). That is why the Pharisees demand a sign in spite of Jesus' deeds. The request for a sign is a demand that he demonstrate the legitimacy of his actions.^[1]

One of the key allusions of a “sign from heaven” is likely to Elijah on Mt. Carmel calling down fire from heaven to vindicate YHWH over the powers of Baal and his prophets. Jesus could perform all the miracles he wanted, but in Jewish tradition even infinite miracles were insufficient to “prove” the agency of the power and motivation behind the miracles. Miraculous works and workers were a dime a dozen in those days (or at least the reports of miracles…). Healing the sick and multiplying food didn’t prove anything significant, or so they believed.

The opponents of Jesus wanted him to prove that his power came from God by something only God could do, at least according to their traditions. And this Jesus would not do. He refused. Why did he refuse? The answer is not as obvious as we may have been commonly led to believe. It hinges on the word “test” which is the same word used in the account of the wilderness temptation. It means “to tempt.”

The problem with the wilderness temptation was not entirely that if Jesus had succumbed, he would have sinned. A key element of the temptation account (the details which are in Matthew and Luke) is that by succumbing to the temptations, Jesus would have allowed himself to fit into the people’s expectations of the Messiah; he would have allowed himself to be defined by religious and cultural traditions and expectations. This he could not do, because God and his purposes cannot be defined by humans.

When the Pharisees come to “test” Jesus, the same dynamic is at work. They are there to approve or disapprove of Jesus’ claims and works. If he gives a sign, he falls into the very temptation that Satan had tempted Jesus with initially.

In Reading Mark its author writes,

If Jesus were to accede to their demand, he would be implicitly acknowledging their right as the religious establishment to define and categorize him according to their standards of legitimation (Waetjen 1989, 140). This, of course, he will not do.^[2]

The New International Commentary states a similar interpretation,

Jesus' refusal of a sign has important historical and theological significance. Historically, the demand for a sign expressed the desire to judge Jesus according to norms defined by scribal interpretation… He had already pronounced the scribal norms decayed and sterile (Ch. 7:1–23) and he now rejects their pretentiousness categorically. Theologically, the demand for unmistakable proof that God is at work in Jesus' ministry is an expression of unbelief. It represents the attempt to understand the person of Jesus within categories which were wholly inadequate to contain his reality.^[3]

The question for us is, how are we Christians like Pharisees today? In what ways are we demanding that Jesus and God fit into boxes of our making? Boxes of our doctrine and traditions? In what ways have God’s failure to meet our expectations and desires of him led us to doubt and unbelief? And perhaps more pointedly in the context of Mark chapter 8, how is God’s seeming over-inclusiveness been a source of stumbling to us? In what ways have we tried to demand that other people seeking Jesus first fit into particular boxes?

[1] NICNT: Mark, 8:11.

[2] Reading Mark, 8:10-26.

[3] NICNT: Mark, 8:12.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

015-Loaves to Stones

Being with Jesus is insufficient; he must be allowed to lead.

“One might wonder which is more troubling,
the presence of Jesus or his absence.”^[1]

Another Sea Crossing and Storm

The crowd has had their physical needs fully satisfied by the provision of bread and fish. In Mark’s gospel, only the disciples know what has happened. Mark does not state the reason(s) why Jesus commands the disciples to cross over to “the other side” and abruptly dismisses the crowds before going away by himself to pray. According to John’s account of the miracle provides a possible reason, which has some historical basis, and should be included as a possibility.

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. (John 6:15 ESV)

Whatever the reason the disciples are away from Jesus when the winds and sea turn against them and they struggle to reach their commanded destination: Bethsaida. Mark has Jesus “seeing” their struggles but only going out toward them in the “fourth watch”, in the final hours before dawn. Why did Jesus wait so long?

Mark writes that Jesus’ intent was to “pass by them” (v.48). It seems an odd phrase but can be read as an allusion to God passing by Moses on Sinai, and of Jesus’ intent to lead the disciples to safety, as a good shepherd leads his flock (echo back to the previous story of the feeding).

Jesus’ presence does not have the desired effect upon the disciples. Rather than recognize Jesus, they think it is a water spirit come to destroy them, and they react in horror and fear.^[2]

Jesus speaks to them, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid,” to calm them down.^[3] He gets in the boat and the wind and sea return to calm. They are astonished but do not recognize the significance or the revelation of Jesus’ identity. The reason given by Mark for this failure to recognize Jesus is that “they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” (v.52)

In spite of the disciples having been with Jesus, having been sent out to do as Jesus had done, having witnessed Jesus as Shepherd just hours before, they have failed to recognize Jesus. Even after Jesus uses phrases that allude to Old Testament identifiers of divinity, they do not understand. Instead of experiencing peace, they are amazed – which in Mark, is usually a description of unbelief. (In the first storm calming, they are filled with great fear, 4:41).

Their failure of theological imagination is complete. Rather than understanding the epiphany of God-in-Christ represented by Jesus as he passed by, they feared a demonic attack of some sort. Having followed him more and less faithfully in the preceding days, they had grown accustomed to the ‘normal’ form of his presence among them, teaching and healing the people. But in their own situation of distress, they were unable to ‘see’ his encouraging manifestation of the divine presence on their behalf.^[4]

As far as faith goes, the disciples are no better off than Jesus’ opponents and the rocky soil of the parable. The Complete Jewish Bible translates 6:52 as follows: “for they did not understand about the loaves; on the contrary, their hearts had been made stone-like.” It is as if the loaves of the bread of life that the disciples have been given have been turned to stone – the exact opposite of what Jesus was tempted to do at the beginning of his ministry (recorded in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark).

Missing the Mark

They reach shore, but not the intended destination. They end up in Gennesaret, the western shore, rather than Bethsaida, on the eastern side. They end up on the same side as they started, the more-Jewish territory, rather than “the other side,” the predominantly Gentile side. Jesus original intention was to take his ministry to the Gentiles^[5], but it had been thwarted^[6]. But as the next couple chapters in Mark will show, Jesus will eventually make it there.

As the company went ashore and traveled about the crowds recognized Jesus, quite in contrast to the disciples out on the sea, and came to him with their requests for healing. Their thinking about Jesus and his power was rather magical, however. Yet unlike the disciples, they recognize he who can help. The peoples’ “faith,” if it can even be called that, is primitive and even superstitious^[7], yet Mark implies to his audience that this is greater than what the disciples possessed during the sea crossing^[8].

Jesus chooses to meet the peoples’ needs, not because they have any great faith, but because he is compassionate. Jesus certainly desires that they understand who he is and why he does what he does, but he realizes that is beyond their comprehension. Therefore he does no teaching. It does not matter to him that they may never come to understand. He is not motivated by “opening the door to evangelism” but simply by compassion.

They are not interested in following. They are interested in getting: getting what they want, getting relief from their suffering, getting deliverance from their affliction. We do not know if those who sought Jesus out in Gennesaret for healing also intended to join his movement. We only know that they wanted something. That is what happens when the people all around sense there is a divine presence in their midst, even if those whom the Son of God has called to be his community do not understand who he is… That he is an effective teacher and compassionate human being is beside the point. Their plea is, ‘What can you do for me? Now!’ By the end of the Gospel, the crowd will have forgotten his good deeds and will turn against him.^[9]

On Boundaries

Through the next couple of chapters, the question about Jesus’ identity continues in the background until he explicitly asks it of his disciples in 8:27. With this question comes a related question, “Who is included in the gospel?” The next chapters reveal God’s inclusiveness and a re-drawing of boundaries.

Remember, the Pharisees’ hearts are also hardened. Mark describes what that hardening is about (3:1–6). The Pharisees with hardened hearts are sure they know where the boundaries of the community of God’s kingdom lie—in their case, with those keeping the law, particularly the law of the Sabbath. Can it be that the disciples’ hearts are also hardened because they are so sure they know where the boundaries of the kingdom lie?^[10]

A church that has been very comfortable in its cultural context is finding the culture around it radically shifting… The age of the culturally established Christian church is gone. The church is, again, sent by its Lord to cross over to the other side. There are adverse winds blowing against the church on this crossing, and the crossing is over ‘the sea’—‘the deep,’ in biblical language—the symbol of threatening chaos.^[11]

Left on their own, and then with Jesus but in fear, the disciples failed to break boundaries that limited God’s work and power. Only with Jesus in the lead do fears subside and faith rise. Only then can disciples/apostles transcend cultural, social, and religious boundaries to meet the needs of all (literally, all) people included in the gospel audience.

[1] Feasting: Mark, location 6865.

[2] NICNT: Mark, 6:48-50. “The disciples reacted to Jesus' appearance with terror, convinced that they had encountered a water spirit. The popular belief that spirits of the night brought disaster is illustrated by a tradition preserved in the Talmud: ‘Rabbah said, Seafarers told me that the wave that sinks a ship appears with a white fringe of fire at its crest, and when stricken with clubs on which is engraven, ‘I am that I am, Yah, the Lord of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah,’ it subsides.’”

[3] Reading Mark, 6:31-56. “Continuing the imagery of the new exodus, the narrator has Jesus identify himself with the self-designation of Yahweh, ‘I am’ (Exod 3:14, Is 41:4, 43:10-11). Thus the author of Mark provides the audience with a definitive answer to the question raised by the disciples in the previous sea- rescue story: ‘Who then is this?’ (4:41). The promise of deliverance is reinforced by an echo of Deutero-Isaiah's ‘Don't be afraid’ (Is 43:10, 43; 45:18; 51:2). Sadly, none of this provides clarification for the disciples, who remain ‘utterly astounded.’”

[4] Feasting: Mark, location 6698.

[5] Feasting: Mark, location 6741. “Going to the other side in Mark’s language means going to Gentile territory. It means going to the unknown, going to the foreign, going to the other side of humanity. No wonder the disciples were made, or as the Greek word more strongly suggests, forced to go.”

[6] Reading Mark, 6:31-56. “It soon becomes apparent, however, that without Jesus 'leadership the disciples are not going to make it to gentile territory; again they are meeting with opposition, as in 4:35-41.”

[7] UBC: Mark, 6:53-56. “This is another summary account of Jesus' ministry (like earlier examples in 1:39; 3:7-12), only this summary makes no reference to Jesus teaching or exorcising demons but concentrates on his healings… The attitude of the people is an almost superstitious reverence for Jesus as a wonder-worker, including the idea that even his clothing contained healing power (6:56; cf. 5:28)… Mark's attitude toward the popular notoriety of Jesus as a wonderworker is that Jesus did indeed do such works but that the crowd's perception of Jesus was all too shallow and incomplete by the standards of the Christian gospel.”

[8] Feasting: Mark, location 6911. “Already, allusion has been made to the contrast between the disciples’ slowness to trust the calming presence of God in their experience on the sea (vv. 45–52) and the villagers’ readiness to place the sick near Jesus. In this way, Mark reminds us that faithfulness is not always of the authorized sort.”

[9] Feasting: Mark, locations 6965, 6996.

[10] Feasting: Mark, location 6770.

[11] Feasting: Mark, 6747.

Friday, October 17, 2014

011-Power to Restore Relationships

Salvation is primarily a restoration back into community.

This passage is a perfect example of Mark’s use of his “sandwich rhetoric” in which the first story is interrupted by a second, and then the first resumes after the second.

“… What Mark has joined together the preacher should not put asunder.”[1]

The two stories are meant to be read together and interpreted together. The messages Mark wants his audience to understand are found in the similarities and contrasts between the stories.

In the two stories we find first, a daughter of a synagogue ruler who is sick to the point of death; secondly, an adult woman who has been suffering from menstrual hemorrhaging for twelve years.

Both stories deal with the issue of impurity: death and menstrual bleeding. Impurity meant a person was cut off from regular social contact and from access to the Temple and God’s presence. For Jesus, it is not merely physical healing that matters, it is whole-life wholeness. That is what he brings to both women.

Having crossed geographical boundaries to release a gentile from bondage to the Destroyer, Jesus returns to Jewish territory where his healing power crosses traditional impurity boundaries to restore life to two suffering women.^[2]

In both stories the one who suffers is female.

Both stories are also, of course, stories of women, and belong to Mark’s focus on Jesus’ regard for and attention to women.^[3]

In the first, the father is an advocate; but in the second, the woman has no advocate. Jesus stops first to work with the one who is the lowest of the low, the one who has no one to speak for her.

“Twelve years” is common to both. The girl is born around the same time the woman begins to have her health problem. Twelve years is also the age at which Jewish culture recognized a girl becoming a woman.

Jesus instructs both the woman and the father on the topic of faith. For the woman, it was her faith, not her touch, that gave her healing. For the father, Jesus encouraged him to continue to have faith in spite of the reality of death.

His response, "fear not, only believe," was a call for intense faith. Jairus had exercised faith when he came to Jesus in the confidence that he could save his daughter. He had witnessed the healing of the woman which demonstrated the relationship between faith and divine help. But he was now asked to believe that his child would live even as he stood in the presence of death. Such faith is radical trust in the ability of Jesus to confront a crisis situation with the power of God.^[4]

Both women are called “daughter” by Jesus. It is an affirmation that both have been fully integrated into family. But whose family? Their biological ones, or Jesus’? Or better perhaps, the answer is both.

Jesus as a healer who integrates people more fully into community… The woman is one of several figures in Mark whose healing by Jesus enables them to be (re)integrated into various dimensions of society… The primary effect of Jesus’ healing is thus not personal but social… The salvation or wholeness that the bleeding woman experiences (“Your faith has saved [sōzō] you”) is social and communal (v. 34; cf. v. 28). Jesus’ healings are one of three strategies he employs to (re)integrate social outcasts into community.^[5]

In both stories, Mark’s narrative emphasizes that it is faith, not rituals, that is the basis of God’s power. For the bleeding woman, she had a semi-magical view of Jesus which he corrects by bringing attention to her faith For the daughter, his act of restoring life to her involves on lengthy ceremony, ritual, or incantation, but a simple command.

Both stories are about faith. On one level it is about human faith, but at a deeper level it is about God’s faithfulness and compassion. It is a story that when even human faith falters, God’s faithfulness is able to carry us through.

“Fear not, only believe…” The present tense of the Greek imperative means to keep believing, to hold onto faith rather than give into despair. With respect to his daughter’s circumstances, Jairus’ future is closed; but with respect to Jesus it is still open. Faith is not something Jairus has but something that has Jairus, carrying him from despair to hope.^[6]

[1] Feasting: Mark, location 5621.

[2] Reading Mark, 4:1-5:43.

[3] Feasting: Mark, location 5473.

[4] NICNT: Mark, 5:35-37.

[5] Feasting: Mark, locations 5775, 5790, 5805, 5807.

[6] Exploring Mark, page 125.

Monday, September 29, 2014

010-Power to Redeem and Recreate

The New Creation begins with Jesus.

The next section of Mark, 4:35-5:43 includes three or four miracles stories. (NICNT counts the first two as a single exorcism story, making the total count three.) These four stories are all related in that they deal with the realm of the unclean and the dead. Together they picture Jesus’ power over impurity, disease, and demons.

Calming of the Storm and Sea

The first story of this session’s passage is about the calming of a storm on the sea. The context is that the sea and storm represent the forces of chaos attempting to overtake and destroy Jesus and his family, his disciples. The demons are responsible and present in the winds of the storm. In response Jesus rebukes the wind. The language Mark uses represents that of an exorcism. The result is that a “great calm” settles on the sea.

In ancient mythology, only deities had the kind of command over nature that was displayed in this story. The disciples see and experience this, and their response is fear. They are starting to realize that Jesus is the Creator of the Genesis 1 account. Through his command over nature, Jesus demonstrates that all creation is under his command. All the damage sin has caused to the world, Jesus demonstrates that he has power to recreate. Jesus foreshadows the full realization and recreation of his future kingdom.

This story also bears some similarities and also striking differences with the Jonah account. What is important for Mark’s audience are the differences. In Jonah, God is outside the human trial, and not only that, he is portrayed as the one sending the storm to punish Jonah for his disobedience. In Mark’s storm account, God (in Jesus) is present with his people in the storm and it is not God, but demons, that are shown to be the cause of the storm. I see Mark correcting misunderstandings about God through this account.

The Demoniac and the Pigs

In the second story of this session we read the longest narrative in Mark. In a writing style known for directness and terseness, Mark expends a large amount of ink providing numerous details.

In this account we are given a picture of what evil and demons seek to do to people. With the demoniac, they have almost succeeded. From all appearances, he is no longer a human being. He cannot speak for himself and all his actions are self-harm.

Where all other people fear this man, Jesus has no fear of him. Jesus sees the kernel of humanity that is still present, and the potential that is still there. He removes the demons from oppressingthe man.

The demons are allowed to complete their work of destruction through the herd of pigs. I believe Jesus allowed this to occur because his disciples and the former demoniac needed to see that the demons returned to their source, their abode – the sea – and perished, no longer able to wield their power over them.

The townsfolk were understandably upset and afraid. They too, like the disciples, probably recognized divinity in Jesus. In their legends and myths, the presence of a deity on earth is never a good thing, and it is understandable that they wanted Jesus to leave.

Jesus does not insist on staying but commissions the former demoniac as his first apostle to the Gentiles. He has no doctrine or creed to teach, but simply a testimony of God’s mercy. This is the heart of evangelism. This is the seed of the gospel that, when planted, will bear fruit.

This is Mark’s retelling of the second creation account of Genesis 2. The demoniac is recreated and given back his dignity of a human being. He is commissioned and given a task by God to sow seeds (to garden?) of the gospel in the lands given to him to steward. Jesus demonstrates his power to recreate humans beings in God’s image. Nothing unclean or evil can stand before him.

Again I see some parallels with the Jonah account. They are not exact parallels, but both Jonah and Jesus go to minister to Gentiles in non-Hebrew lands. Both are stories of God’s mercy. I see Mark using the second part of Jonah’s story to emphasize that Jesus’ actions follow historical precedent.

Illustrations of Jesus’ Teachings

Through these stories of Jesus’ power, Mark illustrates the “seed parables” of chapter 4. The gospel’s power is found not in the words of teaching, but in the testimonies of God’s mercy shown to his people.

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