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Mark doesn't have as many demonstrable theological distinctives as the other three canonical Gospels for the simple fact that he wrote first and that the others shared several of his emphases. Even John, which is about 80% different from the Synoptics, announces in his purpose statement that what he has included about Jesus is intended to help people believe that he is the Messiah and the Son of God (John 20:31), the very two titles which Mark begins his Gospel with (Mark 1:1). But definitely stressed more in Mark than elsewhere is his famous "Messianic secret" motif: Jesus' silencing people and telling them not to disclose his identity in contexts where you'd think he'd be wanting word to spread. Thus, in 1:25, Jesus silences the impure spirit in a demon-possessed individual who has just acknowledged knowing him to be “the Holy One of God” and then casts him out of the man altogether. In 1:34 Mark generalizes and observes that Jesus consistently did not let demons speak “because they knew who he was” (cf. also 3:12). After healing the leper in 1:43, Jesus “strongly warns” the man to tell no one. On the other hand, after exorcising the man in the region of the Gerasenes, Jesus commands him to return to his own (presumably Gentile) people “and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (5:19). Some would include in this list of warnings to silence Jesus’ teaching in 4:10-12 on why he teaches in parables, including his cryptic remarks about preventing those outside his circle from truly understanding. But this is different enough from not talking about Jesus’ messiahship that it really should be treated more or less separately. The list of examples could be significantly multiplied but these are enough illustrations to establish Mark's pattern. The standard evangelical answer remains persuasive: had Jesus received too much publicity, especially in Jewish circles, especially reaching the ears of the religious authorities of the land, his execution could have come prematurely, before his ministry, as God envisioned it, was complete. Only after his resurrection, moreover, would it be sufficiently clear that his mission was not to reestablish God's earthly, militaristic kingdom (at least not in the 1st century) and rid the land of the Romans (Mark 9:9). Recent studies of the ancient Mediterranean world's culture of honor and shame add some interesting supplementary perspectives to this basic response. Jesus’ message and model of highlighting servanthood above authority required a certain modesty on his part with respect to others publicizing his greatness. A certain amount of publicity was necessary to establish his credibility, but too much could have undermined his own ministry. We live in an age of self-promotion. Neither Jesus nor Paul would have fared well among modern advertising companies or in many churches. When Paul was forced into boasting, he chose to glory in his weakness and sufferings (2 Cor. 12). Jesus knew that signs-based faith were often inadequate and didn't trust that people's allegiance to him based solely or primarily on miracles would hold up if difficult times came. Will we do better? I write this 4th of July blogpost from England, where some of our best friends live and where our daughter is a permanent citizen. The longer I live the more I become ambivalent about patriotic holidays in any country. Last year we were in Singapore for their independence day and it made sense for such a small country to celebrate all the progress they have made since they left the British empire in 1966. But Christians are a "third race" (neither Jew nor Gentile) and their citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). We should have more loyalty to our unknown, suffering North Korean Christian brothers and sisters in the underground church there than to our non-Christian neighbors and family members even if we stand or sit next to them at the same fireworks celebration. Do we?

Well, maybe if we just move on beyond Paul things will work better! Mark is by most all accounts the earliest of the Gospels. If (and it's a big if), Acts can be dated to 62 because it takes the chronology of Paul up that far and then stops, without any mention of whether or not he got out of house arrest in Rome, then Luke has to be before Acts (61 or 62) and Mark before Luke. But because church tradition says Mark was relying heavily on Peter's oral memoirs (and the two of them were together in Rome), while Luke was a free man also in Rome (while Paul was in prison), Luke could have learned about and relied on Mark's Gospel almost immediately after it was written so that Mark, too, could come from the very early 60s. Mark could therefore easily have come from just about the time Paul was completing most of his letters. Joel Marcus in the Anchor Bible commentary on Mark gives a good catalgoue of the various theological parallels between Mark and Paul. Among the most important are: calling Jesus’ message “good news” (Gk. euangelion) very centrally (Mark 1:1, Gal. 1:6-9, Rom. 1:16-17), stressing Jesus’ crucifixion “as the apocalyptic turning point of the ages,” highlighting “Jesus’ victory over the demonic powers" (via exorcisms in Mark; cf. Rom. 8:38-39, 1 Cor. 15:24), seeing “his advent as the dawn of the age of divine blessing prophesied in the Scriptures” (Mark 1:1-15, Rom. 3:21-22), depicting faith in Jesus as a God-given, new form of spiritual sight given to the elect with outsiders remaining spiritually blind (Mark 4:10-12; Rom. 11:7-10, 1 Cor. 2:6-16), and portraying Peter in a largely negative light (Mark 8:31-33; Gal. 2:1-14). Both Mark and Paul also emphasize that Jesus came not for the godly but for the ungodly (Mark 2:17; Rom. 4:15, 5:18-19), “on whose behalf he died an atoning death” (Mark 10:45; Rom. 3:25, 5:8), that Christ came first to the Jews but then also to the Gentiles (Mark 7:27-29; Rom. 1:16), and that incorporation of both Jews and Gentiles on equal terms in the church of Jesus Christ was made possible by the setting aside of the dietary laws, through the “cleansing” of “all foods” (Mark 7:19, Rom. 14:20). Of course, there are differing emphases, too, as between any two NT authors. But in today's scholarly world, the theological diversity of the authors tends to be emphasized much more than their unity, so rehearsing a catalogue like this is useful. Doubtless the most important of the parallels is the focus by both Mark and Paul on the cross as the heart of the gospel. It seems that much of the church today has lost sight of this crucicentrism. We hear the prosperity gospel preached in every time zone across the planet. And even when we don't explicitly hear that we are entitled to health and wealth, we have a crisis of faith all too often when we suffer. Why did God allow me to go through this? I suspect both Paul and Mark might have replied--whatever made you think that a Christian wouldn't have to suffer? If Christ endured the worst humanity could thrown at him, musn't his followers have to be prepared to follow him to the cross as well (Mark 8:31-38)?