Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, December 31, 2023
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Our God works as much in between the lines of our faith stories as God works in the headlines.
This opening chapter in Mark moves fast. In just 20 verses, multiple huge stories are thrown at us as readers: the ministry of John the Baptist, John’s foretelling of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the arrival and baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the testing of Jesus in the wilderness and the call of the first of Jesus’s disciples. Any one of these stories could fill chapters on its own. So why might the author of the Gospel of Mark have sped through them like this?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that Mark is the most notoriously choppy of all the Gospel accounts. His Greek is the most unpolished and rudimentary, his level of context is the lowest and his focus is very much on Jesus as an adult, traveling and practicing his public ministry. The author of Mark doesn’t linger too much on any one idea, and he doesn’t spend any time on filler, either. Immediacy is the theme that rises to the top throughout all his writing. He likes to get straight to the point (remember that Mark is also the chronologically earliest Gospel account in our canon. It lays out the very basic points upon which the other accounts were able to expand given more time and more information).
So, a better question for us to ask might be why the team of ministerial leaders who assembled the Narrative Lectionary choose this specific portion of Mark for us to read after Christmas as we head into a new calendar year and liturgical season knowing that Jesus has broken into the world.
It could be because Verses 1-20 are all we really need to understand the full-circle story of a call to a life with Jesus. A life knowing Jesus. A life in Jesus. We see five primary plot points in this passage:
1) Jesus is foretold
2) Jesus arrives
3) Jesus is named and claimed by God
4) Jesus’s name and claim is tested
5) Jesus prevails with the help of God
And then, we see Jesus set the exact same cycle into motion for his (eventual) followers:
1) Jesus foretells the kingdom of God
2) Jesus comes to his beloved as an embodiment of the kingdom of God
3) Jesus names and claims his beloved
We know that these beloved will eventually be tested. We know that these beloved will eventually prevail with the help of God. We know that this is how the good news of Jesus spreads. That this is how grace is shared. That this is how people are transformed forever and ever, in and through and by Jesus.
Now weare a part of this cycle. Now that Jesus is here, his journey to the cross begins—and his call to us to join him rings loud and clear. As long as we have been named and claimed by God, no trials, tribulations or tests on that journey can separate us from God’s help and provision. Our snippet from Psalm 91outlines this promise: “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” What the Spirit is telling us today is that these headlines that make up the beginning of the Gospel of Mark actually speak to the fact that God dwells with us in between the lines. As much as God shows up in our big, obvious big plot points, God shows up in what’s insinuated—what the author doesn’t mention—too.
