Mark 2
A paralysed man is lowered through the roof, and the scribes learn that Jesus claims authority to forgive sins — the first of five controversy stories that cluster in chapters 2 and 3.
Summary
Mark 2 clusters the first four of five controversy stories that run through chapters 2-3 and establish the conflict that will eventually bring Jesus to the cross. The healing of the paralytic (2:1-12) is carefully built: Jesus is in a house in Capernaum, the crowd is so dense that four men carrying their paralysed friend cannot reach the door, so they dig through the roof and lower the mat. When Jesus sees their faith, he says to the paralytic your sins are forgiven you. The scribes sitting there reason that this is blasphemy, since only God can forgive sins. Jesus answers the reasoning they have not voiced aloud — he perceives it in his spirit — by asking which is easier to say, and then heals the man to demonstrate that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. The phrase Son of Man appears here for the first time in Mark and will recur throughout, especially in the passion predictions.
The call of Levi (2:13-17) happens at the toll booth; Jesus says follow me and Levi rises and follows immediately. Jesus eats at his house with many tax collectors and sinners, and the scribes of the Pharisees object to the eating. The bridegroom and fasting section (2:18-22) introduces the image of Jesus as bridegroom whose presence makes fasting inappropriate, and the images of the new patch on old cloth and new wine in old wineskins argue that the new thing cannot be accommodated within old containers. The Sabbath grain controversy (2:23-28) ends with Jesus citing David eating the bread of the Presence and the pronouncement that the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath — a claim that will return in the Pharisees' plotting in the chapter that follows.
- Mark 1Chapter 1 is the gospel's argument in miniature.
- Mark 2Chapter 2 introduces the pattern that will run through chapters 2 and 3: five controversy stories in which Jesus acts or allows an action and the scribes or Pharisees object, and Jesus answers with a counter-question or a pronouncement.
- Mark 3Chapter 3 marks the transition from controversy to conspiracy: after the healing of the withered hand on the Sabbath, the Pharisees immediately hold counsel with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy him.
- Mark 4Chapter 4 is the only extended teaching section in Mark's gospel before the apocalyptic discourse of chapter 13, and its placement — between the Beelzebul controversy and the series of healings that follows — is deliberate.
- Mark 5Chapter 5 gives three healings in sequence that together define the outer reach of Jesus' authority: the demoniac, the woman, the corpse.
- Mark 6Chapter 6 alternates between contrasting scales of reception.
- Mark 7Chapter 7 is the gospel's sustained engagement with the question of purity, and it opens the ministry decisively to Gentiles.
- Mark 8Chapter 8 is the pivot of the gospel.
- Mark 9Chapter 9 runs from the summit of the transfiguration to the valley of the disciples' argument about who is greatest — from the voice from the cloud naming Jesus as beloved Son to the disciples bringing a possessed child they could not heal.
- Mark 10Chapter 10 is the last chapter before the entry into Jerusalem and covers the final stretch of the road from Galilee south through Judea and Jericho.
- Mark 11Chapter 11 marks the gospel's second movement: after eight chapters of Galilean ministry and two of the journey south, the entry into Jerusalem initiates the events that will end at the cross.
- Mark 12Chapter 12 is the Jerusalem controversy section, the temple equivalent of the Capernaum controversies in chapters 2 and 3.
- Mark 13Chapter 13 is the only extended discourse in Mark's gospel outside the parable chapter, and it is placed at the hinge between the temple controversies and the Passion narrative.
- Mark 14Chapter 14 is the longest chapter of the gospel and the point where the narrative finally slows to match the weight of what is happening.
- Mark 15Chapter 15 is the Passion's centre of gravity.
- Mark 16Chapter 16 is the gospel's ending — or rather, its refusal of a conventional ending.