the gospel of mark

I have a confession to make: I have never manuscripted the Gospel of Mark with InterVarsity (*gulp.*).  For those of you who aren't familiar with IV, Mark is a very special book to the fellowship.  There are entire retreats dedicated to studying the book.  Anyone who's been around long enough knows what "Mark Study" is.  I've heard countless stories of lives transformed through the studying of this particular book.  It's almost a rite of passage to being completely IV-fied.

Not surprisingly, I've had more than a few friends almost gasp in surprise and incredulity when I tell them that I have not manuscripted Mark.  One friend, in consolation, responded with, "Well, you planned an Urbana conference, so that almost makes up for that."

So earlier this month, I decided to semi-read/semi-manuscript the Gospel of Mark by myself.  While I'm at it, I'll make another confession: I prefer to read the Old Testament over the New, and then any other books in the New over the Gospels.  I think it's because I've grown up hearing countless sermons on the four books and not as much on the others.  Every time I read the Gospels I pray that my eyes will be open to re-encountering the Word in new ways, because the truth is, I don't know or understand these stories as deeply as I think I do.  So, here are a few, brief and broad observations I've had so far from studying chapters 1-9:

• Jesus loved food.  And he loved to feed people with it.  He fed 5000+, 4000+ people at once, placed eating as high priority before and after healing kids, and compared the Pharisees and Herod to yeast.  He also wasn't at all picky with the people he chose to break bread with.  
• Jesus healed. A lot.  So far, aside from doing some cool, miracley things like walking on water and divinely leading massive catering events, the most frequent act of Jesus has been healing people.  Sometimes it's as passive as having his power go out through the touch of a "unclean" woman, other times he really gets hands on (hehe...get it?) with the act.  Often the book talks about crowds gathering, throngs of people around Jesus wanting to be healed or to have a loved one be healthy.  The picture I get is a motley of dirty, broken people who may have been shunned away from society and consequently didn't have the acceptable social skills. Yet he never shirked away from healing them and making them whole.
• The Man got around.  He didn't minister idly, that's for sure.  I stopped following his tracks on a map after a while, but he was constantly going somewhere.
• The disciples didn't get any holier.  If anything, so far their biggest sign of devotion and faith is in the beginning, when they left everything that they had to follow him.  They also start to sound more petty, arguing who's the greatest among themselves and asking Jesus about healing done by someone who wasn't "one of them."  Not surprisingly, this has been a source of great comfort for me because it tells me that God still willing to use immature, self-absorbed, and imperfect people (after a good smack on the head, of course).