Week 37 Mark
The four gospel stories of the life of Jesus are told by four men who either knew the Lord personally or else knew people who did.
The Four Gospellers each came at the Lord from a different angle and I was reminded of that when I read Mark’s story of John the Baptist. John is the first person Mark talks about. About his preaching & baptizing. About baptizing Jesus. About being jailed by Herod – all in the first fourteen verses.
I flipped back to Matthew – he spent chapter three talking about John but waited ’til the next chapter to mention his arrest.
When I’m reading-through I almost never jump ahead but I did this time and looked at Luke’s story of John. Luke takes a big chunk of chapter three telling John’s story including his imprisonment (I saw that even though he talks about Jesus baptism he doesn’t say definitely that John baptized him).
John talks about John in chapter one – sixteen verses – and chapter three – fifteen verses.
Anyway based on my (ten minute) search it looks like Mark has the least to say about John.
But everyone seemed to agree John was a key player at the front-end of the Lord’s public work.
And I was reminded that the Four Gospellers all a) thought highly of John, but b) fitted him into their gospels in different ways. A kind of John the Baptist in four-part harmony. One person spotlighted in different ways. Which is about what you’d expect.