The Passion of God’s Son, according to St. Mark

It is that time of year again.  Last year I wrote a post on chanting the passion during Lent and made available my notations on the passion of St. Matthew as a pdf for download.  This year our lectionary focuses on the Gospel of Mark, so I am making my notations for his account available as well.

The Passion in Mark was my very first attempt 12 years ago and it is still my favorite.  The orality of Mark’s Gospel is particularly vivid and powerful.   The phrase, “King of the Jews” resounds again and again until the INRI is finally plastered above Jesus.  The staccato like back and forth between narrator and the barrage of questions, insults, and mockery keeps the hearer agitated and unsettled. But the culmination of this commotion is the centurion’s confession, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”—the final voice in the narrative.  It is a confession that we knew already from Mark 1:1, but it was suppressed throughout the narrative, for only the cross could bring out its true, terrifying meaning.  And then the burial … slow, monotonous, lifeless.

Thanks and appreciation to Pastor Dan Suelzle who engraved the notations for me.