You have to start a story somewhere. TV shows give us a glimpse of action that leave the stars unconscious  After the commercial break, the subtitle says, “Four days earlier.” The previews for “The Office” finale this week indicate that we will start “Six months later.”

Mark starts his Gospel with two indications of time. First, he says “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Then he says, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet.”

For the first readers, the people that Mark was thinking about as he wrote, this was a perfect start.

These were the readers that he could see when he looked out the window of his room in Rome, the people he grew up with in Cyprus, the people he ran around with in Jerusalem. They were the people his mentor Peter had fished with in his family business in Capernaum. They were the people who said of Peter and John, “How did these untrained fishermen become theology teachers?” These were people who heard stories of Jesus and said, “Who is Jesus?” These were people who had pictures of what it meant to be religious, pictures that annoyed them or shamed them or seemed pointless.

To all of these people, people almost exactly like you and me, Mark says, “I want to tell you the story of Jesus. To understand it, we have to go back to something our most famous futurist wrote five hundred years ago.” And then Mark says, “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness.”

Some of us start skimming then, because we know all of these stories. Or think we do. But Mark’s not writing for people who think they have the answers. He’s talking to people who want to know the story of Jesus.  At least until the commercial.