Gospel of Mark: The Passion as Theme Lesson

This is a lesson plan for Gospel of Mark: The Passion as Theme.

Materials needed:

Worksheet provided and Bibles.

Lesson:

In this lesson, students get to analyze a major theme of Mark’s Gospel: The Cross.

In this gospel, Jesus says to his disciples that they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. Here, students get to see how this theme is repeated throughout Mark’s gospel in the passion predictions that Jesus makes.

For each occasion, there is a misunderstanding from the disciples and a correction from Jesus. These passion predictions are bracketed by stories of blind men being healed in different ways which symbolize the disciples’ blindness.

This worksheet guides the students through to understand how important is the cross for Mark (and for Christians) and what does it mean to deny oneself and take up one’s cross.

They also get to understand the odd story about the blind man being healed in a two-step process (why does Jesus need to that??) Answer: The disciples go through the process as well and this is evident on Peter’s confession of Jesus as Christ. (And to be honest, we as Christians often have a very blurred vision of “The Christ” as well).

The Theme of Mark’s Gospel

The cross is central to Mark’s gospel. In this worksheet, students will see the repetition of this theme and the way these repetitions are structured. Basically, Jesus predicts his passion (His death and suffering on the cross – think “Passion of the Christ”) three times. Right after each prediction, the disciples are resistant, and they fail to understand. Jesus in turn provides a corrective teaching. Students will refer to their Bible and in the following boxes, summarize what these are.

An editable 4-page Word doc