Mark for You: For Reading, for Feeding, for Leading

Pastor Meyer (Don’t Lose Heart) dissects the Gospel of Mark in this enlightening study. Highlighting Mark’s major themes and motifs, Meyer smartly analyzes the book’s imagery, such as when he notes that the heavens being “torn open” after Jesus’s baptism is echoed by the tearing of the temple curtain separating humanity from God at the end of Mark, representing how Jesus’s arrival on Earth breaks the barrier between the mortal and heavenly realms. Meyer examines the book’s message on authority and points out that though scribes (law experts) tried to “act like ritual-purity police” and criticized Jesus for upending custom by dining with tax collectors, Jesus’s authority derives from God and trumps the views of the mortal scribes. The author peppers in pop culture anecdotes to lighten up the scriptural interpretations, such as when he likens the Jewish scribes who protested Jesus’s assertion that he was the son of God to NFL player Jim Marshall, who accidentally scored a touchdown for the opposing team in 1964. The prose is straightforward and the observations astute, though the lack of an overarching perspective to organize the insights makes this more suitable as a Bible companion than a standalone work of exegesis. The result is a knowledgeable resource for Bible study groups. (Aug.)