The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.
Mk 1: 12-15
vv. 12-13. At once the Spirit drove him out
into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by
Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.
We now learn that not only was Jesus
endowed with messianic Spirit. He had been led by it into a trial of strength
with the prince of evil. The background lies in the current belief that the
Messiah was the divine agent for the overthrow of Satan and all his powers, and
that therefore a tremendous battle, or trial of strength, between him and Satan
would form an integral element in the last days.
The Greek word “peirazein” is much wider
than the English word "tempt” and can include 'testing' or 'trying' of any
sort. Probably here it includes moral
temptation (!?), but only as part of the wider 'trial of strength' the Messiah
was expected to have with the Devil.
In this passage the great eschatological
battle is joined. The details are meant to suggest that Jesus was victorious
but this stage of the battle, though decisive, was not the final one. The
struggle would continue in the various activities of Jesus during his ministry,
and indeed in the lives and sufferings of the early Christians as well. At
least part of the point of telling the story here was to help the reader to see
the true character of Jesus' subsequent ministry - and of the life of the early
Church - as the carrying on, and completing, of a decisive battle with the
powers of evil successfully begun before even the ministry opened.
The wilderness:
Itwas traditionally the haunt of evil
spirits, and Satan is the chief of the evil powers opposed to the will of God
and the establishment of his kingdom. It should be noted that the 'trial' is
represented as lasting for the whole forty days and that there is no reference
to fasting or hunger. On the contrary; the 'ministry' of the angels, which is
represented as continuous,' probably consisted in keeping Jesus supplied with
food, just as angels fed Elijah in 1 Kgs 19.
The wild beasts:
They may be mentioned to emphasize the
loneliness and awfulness of the desert (cf. Is 34:11 for how the presence of 'doleful
creatures' was felt to heighten the desolation of the wilderness).
More probably they are thought of as
subject and friendly to Our Lord, and the passage should be understood against
the background of the common Jewish idea that the beasts are subject to the
righteous man and do him no harm (cf. the story of Adam, and also Job 5:22),
and also that when Messiah comes, all animals will once again be tame and live
in harmony (cf. Is 11:6ff., Hos 2:18).
In Ps 91:11-13 dominion over the wild
beasts is coupled with the promise of service 'by angels, and St Mark probably
means that by his victory over Satan Jesus has reversed Adam's defeat and begun
the process of restoring paradise.
For the exegesis of vv. 14 and 15 please go
to 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The messianic herald has appeared. The
Messiah himself has been designated and has entered secretly on the first stage
of his final battle with the powers of evil. It remains only for him to declare
himself publicly and to rally men round him as sharers in the kingdom and in
the remaining stages of his battle with evil. All that is the subject of the
Gospel proper, which accordingly begins with Jesus publicly declaring himself
(vv. 14-15). But he could not do that till the work of the forerunner had been
completed, and so it is significant that v. 14 begins with a notice of the
conclusion of John's work. John was 'handed over', i.e. to imprisonment or
death. Mark reserves the details till
Chapter 6. The point for the moment is that the forerunner's work was finished
and the hour had come for the Messiah’s work to begin.
In vv. 14-15 Jesus publicly proclaims himself,
and these verses are extremely important because they seem to be intended by St
Mark as a sort of manifesto which sums up the substance and essential meaning
of the whole public ministry. “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good
news from God” - in the light of Is 40:9; 52:7; 61:1 etc., everyone knew what
that meant, the good news that the time of waiting was over and God's sovereign
rule had arrived. The reader knows the grounds on which this proclamation is
based, though Jesus does not include them in his public pronouncement - indeed
it will be noticed that he says nothing about any personal messianic agent,
still less does he identify himself as that person. In view of the programmatic
character of these verses, this is significant, and we are here introduced to a
fact of the utmost importance about Mark's Gospel.
According to St Mark, although the public ministry
of Jesus was quite unmistakably the in breaking of the kingdom of God, Jesus
did not seek public recognition as the messianic bringer of the kingdom. On the
contrary he silenced such recognition when it was forthcoming and took careful
steps to hide his identity (messianic secret).
Meanwhile notice that, while Jesus' hearers
are not told or challenged at all about his identity, they are openly
challenged to decision in respect of the kingdom. The precise nature of the
decision demanded will be made clear as the Gospel proceeds. Here it is stated
summarily in words taken, like the other words in these two verses, from the
Christian terminology of St Mark's own day.
It may seem strange that the Evangelist should
have Jesus solemnly proclaim his ministry in the technical terminology of later
Christianity. But that, despite the opinion of some scholars, appears to be
what St Mark has done. In explanation it may be pointed out that what St Mark
is here doing is to summarize in his own words the substance of the many
discourses with which Jesus must have opened his ministry. By using the
terminology of the later Christian mission he no doubt seeks to show that the
'Gospel of God' preached in that mission, and the response of repentance and
faith demanded to it, were in essence identical with the proclamation and
demand of Jesus himself.
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