Colour Supplement

Articles by Christians around the world

Sunday 11 May 2008

 

What's wrong with Mark?

by Revd Jim Cox, Vicar of St. Andrew's Church Taunton

 

 

As some of you will have spotted, the gospel for this year is Matthew. There will be bits of John and the others thrown in from time to time, but it is mostly Matthew.

 

Now, as we know, Mark is the first gospel and Matthew bases his account on what Mark wrote. The question becomes: if we had a perfectly good story of the life of Jesus, why did Matthew think it was necessary to “improve on” Mark?

 

If we are feeling generous we might say that Matthew simply has more information and slots it into Mark’s story. This might be true for the ending of the gospel where Mark seems to have been interrupted mid flow. You can imagine him writing “… the women said nothing to anyone because they were afraid of…” and Mark suddenly has to up and go for fear of soldiers or whatever and never gets the chance to finish. There is no proper resurrection story in Mark, and Matthew may have felt that it was important to include one. Similarly for the beginning: Mark states that Jesus was “from Nazareth”. Matthew explains how this occurred. Fair enough.

 

Unfortunately that does not explain all the differences. Why, for example, does Mark say (9:40) “those who are not against me” are for me and Matthew reverse that and say “those who are not for me are against me” (12:30)? Mark implies that those who are neutral are “in” whereas Matthew makes the neutrals beyond salvation. Matthew seems not to like Mark’s inclusiveness.

 

Mark has Jesus flouting the Law of Moses without embarrassment, (2:27) Matthew has to include these accounts but gives us the line that “not one jot or title of the Law will be removed” (5:18).

 

Matthew cannot simply write his own gospel, he has to stick with the received text, but he makes modifications where he disagrees with Mark. It is like a new vicar arriving in a parish and wanting to change the hymn book. Rather than axe all the old hymns s/he might pick a hymn book that has all the old hymns alongside some new material, but gradually picks fewer and fewer of the old.

 

A verse may be rewritten to reflect modern thinking. For example:

 

The rich man in his castle,

the poor man at his gate

God made them high or lowly

and ordered their estate

 

Might appear as

 

The rich man in his castle,

the poor man at his gate

God made them to be equal

and shared out the Estate.

 

Some of these “corrections” seem to appear in Matthew. In Mark 6:5 we are told that Jesus could do no miracles. In Matthew (13:58) this becomes “Jesus did no miracles”. The Lord could surely do what he liked! Mark 10:17 “why do you call me good” becomes in Matthew (19:16) “why do you ask me about what is good”.

 

But Matthew seems to disagree fundamentally with Mark over inclusiveness and the place of the Law. Mark is much more like Paul and his understanding of Grace: God’s love is freely given. Matthew isn’t so sure.

 

Matthew plays down Jesus’ difficulties with his family. In Mark (3:21) the family declare Jesus is going mad. In Matthew (12:46ff) this is omitted. Mark gives little of Jesus’ teaching, placing more importance on who Jesus is and how we respond to him (again like Paul), whereas Matthew gives us a very structured account of the teaching (chapters 5-7 being the first of 5 “discourses”).

 

Mark is brief but he does not lack structure. In general groups get it wrong and individuals are commended. So family and disciples as well as the usual culprits, the priests, rabbis and Romans all fail to grasp the truth. People Jesus meets tend to respond well on an individual basis.  It may not be significant, but Mark tends to do things in twos: two centurions are mentioned (favourably), there are two blind miracles, two miracles of raising to life and two feeding of crowds, among others.

 

But it seems that at a fundamental level Matthew just doesn’t catch the vision of Mark. The teaching on divorce is a case in point. In Mark Jesus’ comments are clearly meant to be the ideal. They are not a hard-and-fast rule. Matthew reads this as a rule, considers it too harsh and modifies it to make it attainable for his congregation. We are left with the sense that Matthew is a gospel full of directions on how to implement the Christian faith in daily life whereas Mark gives us a vision and invites us to respond.

 

What may seem extraordinary to us is that Matthew felt he had the right to alter the approved text of the gospel. Luke and John do the same. Certainly the gospels had not yet received the authority of being considered as Scripture. This is for a later date. But it must surely provide a note of caution about how we read the gospels and in particular how we quote scripture to support an argument, particularly when a thesis might begin with “But Jesus said…”

 

It has been suggested that we consider the gospels as works of art: an impression of Jesus. We will fail to harmonise the four gospels in a satisfactory way to make a single account. Far better to “hear” a gospel throughout the year and respond to how the story is delivered to us. And then, if things jar, we can be comforted by the fact that we are standing within a strong biblical tradition if we disregard some bits and focus more fully on others.

 

Matthew has been a favourite of preachers down the ages – not always for the best reasons. His gospel is a force to be reckoned with and is indeed to us, the word of God. But there are other “voices”, other ways of understanding Jesus. So let us hear what Matthew has to tell us and be enriched by his account but always be mindful that his is not the only story and it is all right to be uncomfortable with how he tells the story. There are at least three other valid views on Jesus and potentially many, many more.

Jim      

With acknowledgment to Prof. Leslie Houlden

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