PAST SERMON 2010
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday April 25, 2010,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit.
THE FEAST OF ST. MARK – 25 APRIL, 2010
People don’t set out to become Saints. Sainthood is not a vocation, or an aspiration. There are no job descriptions, no educational requirements, no pass/fail entrance exams. It just happens. So what makes a saint? A saint is most likely an ordinary person whom God chooses to use in an extraordinary way.
Today is the commemoration of the Feast of St. Mark. He is extremely important to Christianity in a number of small ways, and one very big one. First of all, Mark was a scribe, which in plain English is someone who knew how to write. Remember, the first century of Jesus was not a time of universal education. Very few people knew how to write; most information was transmitted orally. Scribes often had positions of importance in the Temple, or with local government, and recorded the events around them.
It is believed by some historians that Mark was a disciple of Jesus who was present in Cana at the first miracle, when Jesus changed the water to wine; that it was Mark who carried water into the Upper Room where Jesus had the Last Supper with his disciples, and that Mark was the “certain young man” who followed Jesus and the disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, who was caught by the soldiers but escaped, naked, leaving his linen clothing behind.
It is also believed that Mark’s mother was a prominent member of the early church in Jerusalem, that it was to her home that the disciple’s gathered on that first Easter Day when Jesus appeared before them. Within a short time after Jesus’ resurrection, persecutions against the Christians began. This house became a refuge for persecuted Christians, including Peter, following his miraculous escape, with the help of an Angel of God from Herod’s prison.
In Acts Mark is referred to its author Luke as “John Mark”, a cousin of Barnabas. In the early days of Paul’s pilgrimage, Barnabas suggests Mark join with he and Paul on their travels, but when Barnabas and Paul have a serious disagreement over Mark’s dedication to the cause, Barnabas sides with Mark and they leave Paul with Silas. Later, Mark would return to Paul and work with him in Rome; eventually Mark followed Peter, and it is Peter’s reminiscences, his memories of his time with Jesus, that Mark records in his Gospel.
No one knew where this new movement would go, but Peter felt it was necessary to put things in writing, to make a record of all that he could remember about the time he spent with Jesus. Mark’s Gospel begins abruptly: within the first fifteen verses Jesus is baptized, acknowledged by God, driven into the desert, and following John’s arrest, Jesus begins his ministry. It ends just as abruptly, with Jesus’ death: Mary Magdalene and the other women arrive to an empty tomb, angels tell them the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, and the women flee in terror. The End. It is to Luke and Matthew that we need to look for the “extended version” of the story.
If the Gospel of Mark seems disjointed, it is: it was likely written in Rome, during the time of Nero, and a time of horrific persecution by the Romans against the Christians. It feels as if it is written in a sort of code, with Mark using as few words as possible to relate events of the time or Jesus’ teachings, and it is always necessary to look deeply into what Mark is relating, to “unpack” his words in order to gain a fuller understanding of the story, the times, and the people, especially Jesus.
Mark’s Jesus is abrupt as well, and always seems to be in a hurry; his depictions of the disciples are interesting in that most of them, even including Peter at times, seem a bit dim and struggle to understand what is going on around them. Because of the way it is written, Mark’s gospel is often considered to be full of secrets.
But for all it’s apparent problems, Mark’s is the first Gospel, and thus is considered to be the more authentic of the four. Many historians believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark’s gospel as the basis for their own work; perhaps Luke even met Mark in his work with Paul. Mark wrote what he heard from Peter, and if the stories came out in a strange order, the order is less important than the actual remembering of them, and writing them down, even the humiliating parts, such as Peter’s denial of Jesus, and Jesus prediction of the event. That is another point in which this Gospel’s authenticity is apparent: Peter needn’t have remembered this part, the worst night of his life, and how deeply he let the Lord down, but it’s all there for us to read 2000 years later. If it was just an autobiography, and Mark was the ghostwriter, we would never have heard about Peter’s denial, nor possibly would the book still exist today.
There are many more theories and suppositions about who and what Mark was and what he was to have done. Mark is said to have left Rome, possibly following the deaths of Peter and Paul, and returned to the Pentapolis, his birthplace in North Africa, and from there to Alexandria, in Egypt, where he is considered to be the founder of the first Coptic Church there. It is also possible that Mark was the first Bishop in Alexandria. Following a dispute with those who refused to give up their household gods in order to worship Jesus, the Son of the Living God, it is believed that Mark was martyred in Alexandria in 68AD. Through a long series of circumstances, Mark’s remains have been interred in St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice. St. Mark is commemorated on this, the day on which he was martyred.
Whether we know much about Mark or not, or whether it can be verified or not, is less important than the legacy he has left us with: the Gospel of Mark. Because of when these reminiscences of Peter’s were written they give us perhaps the clearest portrait of the times, the events and the people surrounding Jesus during the three years in which his ministry existed on earth. These stories are as close as we can get to the man, Jesus, and without them our Christian heritage would be bereft.
We are the benefactors of the legacy of Mark’s Gospel, and can thank God for his life, his skill, and his own faith journey that brought us this Gospel.
[This morning we will baptize a new Christian, a baby girl. While I am sure her parents believe her, and her sisters, to be extraordinary – as all parents believe – she is in this moment, a beautiful little baby with an entire life ahead of her. Let us hope and pray that God will choose to use Kiara in some extraordinary way, and bring her into the realm of the Saints.]