Explain What a Study of St. Mark's Gospel Can Tell Christians About the Nature of Discipleship
In this essay I will discuss what I have found about being a disciple in Mark's Gospel ? the costs and the rewards, their lifestyle and their duties ? using quotations from the Gospel to highlight my findings.
After John the Baptist had prepared the way for Jesus, Jesus began to look for people to assist him in creating the Kingdom of God. Jesus chose lowly fishermen as his first disciples ? men who were uneducated, poor and from the small town of Galilee. He did this to show that even ordinary people could become disciples, and emphasised this point further by selecting Levi the tax collector to become a disciple, in Mark 2:13-17. Tax collectors were resented by the general public and were seen as sinners by members of the church. Jesus responded to the Pharisees' disapproval by telling them "it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick", meaning he had come to help those in need ? like sinners and criminals - and not those who were righteous and actively pursued their faith.
This proves that Jesus' disciples were ordinary people and did not possess any "superhuman" qualities. In "the calming of the storm", the disciples became afraid of the storm and lost their faith in Jesus. Jesus rebuked them after he had calmed the wind and the waves, but they became even more alarmed at his abilities. Ordinary people can relate to this natural fear, and this passage emphasises that the disciples were not extraordinary.
When Jesus was on trial, Peter denied all knowledge of him because he feared for his own life. This showed cowardice, since Peter had previously sworn to stand by Jesus through anything. This is a natural human instinc ...