Today we celebrate our patronal feast. We celebrate the feast of the man we call Mark. We celebrate the feast of a gospel-writer, a good-news teller, a messenger who continues to bring us the good news of Christ. We don’t know much about this man whom the Church has designated a saint and whose name our own church carries.
Tradition suggests a few things about him. It’s quite possible that the man we call Mark was the follower and interpreter of Peter. It’s possible that he is the person identified in the Acts of the Apostles as John Mark, whose mother had a house in Jerusalem. It’s possible that he is the Mark who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the “First Missionary Journey” and somehow managed to tick Paul off so that he didn’t get invited along for subsequent journeys. There are hints that he may have helped Peter and Paul in Rome in the 60s.
The story he gives us also gives a few clues about the man whose ministry we celebrate. The language and make-up of the gospel show us that he was a Greek-speaker who appears to have collected oral stories and bits of writings rather than being an eye-witness to the stories. The author doesn’t seem to have a clear sense of the Palestinian geography, which suggests that he may not have lived in that area at all. Finally, the gospel itself is characterized by an emphasis on Jesus’ suffering, which suggests that it was probably written for an audience which had endured suffering themselves, most probably the church in Rome. The gospel itself is sometimes seen as a sort of rough draft precursor to the other gospels, with sketchier stories and less elegant language than the other three gospels, and the portion of the gospel we’ve just heard, one of the two options for Mark’s feast day, was probably not even part of gospel as it was originally written in the 60s, but tacked on later.
Today’s reading comes from the very last chapter of the Gospel according to Mark, but the very first words may hold more of the essence of this man Mark. Listen to these words:
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” That’s it.
This person we call Mark doesn’t set the stage for Jesus with genealogies like the person we call Matthew. He doesn’t tell us stories about angels like the person we call Luke. He doesn’t stretch back into cosmic origins as John does.
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” With those words, Mark immediately launches us into the story. Off he goes, galloping through the story with the kind of prose we might expect from a “Type-A” corporate executive dashing off a memo to the share-holders.
And immediately, Mark writes, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness; and immediately Jesus called the disciples; immediately the hemorrhage left her and immediately Jesus knew that power had gone out from him; immediately the boy’s father cried; immediately the cock crowed. These might as well be the notes for a Hollywood action thriller, jumping from one scene to the next, leaving us gasping for air and struggling to keep up.
Mark is the only one to include in the garden of Gethsemane story the scene of a boy escaping from the soldiers, but not without losing his loin cloth in the process and running away into the night fearful and naked. Maybe that was Mark himself, his signature, the place where he decided to include himself in the story. It’s certainly a perfect image for his text as a whole. After all, he’s the only one who wraps it all up with the story we heard on Easter morning, the story of the women running away from the tomb in fear. And it’s hardly a wrap-up—more like a stopping in mid-sentence to dash off to a forgotten appointment. Given all of Mark’s urgency, we might not expect to find much detail in his writing.
But this gospel is full of details—details that Mark and only Mark includes—details that help us see the man sent by God to tell us the good news of God’s love. When Jesus naps in a boat, it’s in the stern, and with a pillow under his head. When Jesus feeds the multitudes, the grass is green, not dry, crackling brown. When Jesus watches the old woman deposit her last two cents in the collection plate, he’s sitting opposite the treasury. The angel at the empty tomb—who’s sitting on the right not the left—tells the women to inform the disciples about all this. Then he says, “Oh, and tell Peter too.”
This attention to detail, this description of the world around Jesus is not the kind of urgency we expect. It’s not the urgency of a full calendar. It’s not the urgency of rushing from one obligation to the next priority. For Mark, Gospel-urgency is about noticing things. Because the time is short, it’s really about seeing things in the world around us. In our sophistication about everything can we even ask such questions without sounding trite? Jesus napping in the stern; feeding the multitudes on green grass; watching a poor widow across from the treasury. The tomb is empty! Go tell everyone—and, yes, tell Peter too.
Today we are sharing the good news with a particular person. Today we baptize Haden William Andrews.
These details are the beginning of the good news—the news which has no ending.
Thanks be to God!