TRINITY SUNDAY, 2024

St Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

In the year 325 AD, there occurred an event of momentous importance for the subsequent history of the entire Christian Church. Summoned by the Emperor Constantine, 230 bishops from far and wide gathered at the town of Nicaea in Asia Minor—what is today Turkey—about 55 miles southeast of Constantinople or present-day Istanbul.

 

It was the first but not the last gathering of its kind: an ecumenical Council. In this context, the word ecumenical means “worldwide” or “universal”—a council bringing together bishops or representatives from all the local churches throughout the world. Most of the bishops who actually attended were from the Greek-speaking Eastern half of the Roman Empire. But the Pope sent two representatives from Rome, and the Bishop of Carthage in North Africa was present as well.

 

Some of the bishops who traveled with their entourages along the Roman roads to Nicaea bore the scars of tortures they’d suffered in the last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. Such a gathering would have been unthinkable during the years when Christianity remained an illegal religion.

 

Before that time, local councils or synods met to consider questions facing the Church in specific regions. But now, following the conversation of Constantine, it was possible for a worldwide ecumenical council to meet with unprecedented authority to make decisions for the entire Catholic Church throughout all lands.

 

The Council met for two months and issued rulings on a variety of topics great and small, ranging from the date of Easter to ratification of the Church’s four principal metropolitan sees as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

 

But the most pressing item on the Council’s agenda was a raging theological dispute that been dividing Christians for the previous twenty years or so. In the Egyptian city of Alexandria, the presbyter Arius had been teaching a doctrine that struck many of his contemporaries as heretical and blasphemous.

 

Both Arius and his opponents agreed that the Son of God had come down from heaven and taken flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. So Jesus was the incarnate Son of God. But Arius insisted that this Son who’d become incarnate in Jesus Christ was not fully divine but rather a created spirit—the highest of God’s creatures to be sure, but nonetheless inferior and subordinate to God the Father, whose divine nature he did not and could not share.

 

Those who opposed Arius, including his own bishop Alexander of Alexandria, and Alexander’s successor Athanasius, rightly discerned that unless Christ was truly divine as well as truly human, he could not reconcile fallen humanity to God or communicate God’s divine life to humanity. The Council of Nicaea decisively sided with Alexander and Athanasius against Arius.

 

And to make the Church’s faith absolutely clear, the Council solemnly promulgated the earliest version of what we know today as the Nicene Creed, beginning “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

 

Then, to refute the Arian heresy, the Nicene Creed went on to affirm that the Son is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father …” That clause represented the first step in the Church’s formal definition of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as one God in three Persons: co‑equal, co-eternal, and sharing one divine nature.

 

On Trinity Sunday, we give thanks for the Ecumenical Councils and the Catholic Creeds handed down to us as key components of what’s known as the “deposit of faith.” (The Catholic Creeds, by the way, are normally reckoned as at least the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, with the Athanasian Creed sometimes thrown in for good measure.) A week ago today, we celebrated the Holy Spirit’s descent on the Day of Pentecost. The Councils and Creeds demonstrate the Holy Spirit’s continuing presence and work in the subsequent centuries, teaching the Church and leading her into all truth.

 

A useful way of thinking about the Creeds is as thumbnail summaries of the teachings of Scripture. As Episcopalians we affirm that the Bible contains the definitive record of God’s revelation. At the end of each reading, the reader says, “The Word of the Lord.” At my ordination to the priesthood, I was required to swear that I believed the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.

 

But the Bible is a vast compilation of writings, spanning many different periods and composed by many human authors in many different literary genres. Left to themselves, different groups of Christians generally come up with widely varying and often mutually contradictory readings of biblical teaching. In other words, Scripture is not self-interpreting. We need an authoritative guide to Scripture’s true meaning. And the Ecumenical Councils and Catholic Creeds supply the guidance we need.

 

Our celebration of Trinity Sunday invites us to reflect on the Creeds’ place in our life and worship. A key point is that when we say the Creed together, it’s not meant to be a collective expression of our personal faith as individuals. No, what’s really happening is that the universal Church in heaven and on earth is proclaiming its faith, the Catholic faith, and we’re being invited to join in. That way, by repeated participation in this solemn liturgical proclamation, the Holy Spirit gradually leads us into all truth, forming a mature faith capable of transforming our hearts, minds, and wills.

 

A favorite story of mine recounts how a distinguished Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian once visited a certain Divinity School in the South to give a lecture on the Nicene Creed. During the question time that followed, one of the seminarians raised his hand and said, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t say the part about Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary. Try as I may, I simply cannot bring myself to believe in the Virgin Birth.”

 

The bishop smiled compassionately and answered in a gentle voice: “Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re still very young. You really can’t expect to get it all at once. The crucial thing is not to give up, but to keep on saying it, and then someday God will give you this faith when he knows that you’re ready. In the meantime, just remember that what the Divine Liturgy proclaims is not your own personal faith, but the corporate faith of the entire Catholic Church.”

 

The great gift, the great blessing, of belonging to a Church such as ours where we recite the Creeds regularly in worship, is that we don’t have to keep on reinventing the theological wheel. As we join in professing the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist every Sunday (and ideally the Apostles Creed every day), we’re drawn into a living relationship with the three divine Persons to whom the Creeds point. So, let’s never tire of faithfully reciting the Creeds! For they direct us towards our fulfillment in the glory of loving union with the one God who is a community of three divine Persons bound together in love.

THE DAY OF PENTECOST

Whitsunday

May 19, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

In my first year of seminary, my classmates and I were all required to take a course in homiletics – that is, preparing and preaching sermons. The course followed a strict format. One of us would give a sermon, and the rest would listen. While the preacher was speaking, we weren’t allowed to take notes. When the sermon was over, we’d sit in silence for five minutes and write down everything we remembered. Then we’d each read back to the preacher what we’d heard. During this time, the preacher wasn’t allowed to say anything – even though there were plenty of moments when one wanted nothing more than to shout, “No! That’s not what I said! You got it wrong! That’s not what I meant!”

 

It was excellent training. We discovered how great the discrepancy could be between what was said and what was heard, between what was meant and what was understood. As the semester progressed, however, this gap narrowed considerably. It was good practice in learning how to get our message across clearly. And it was even better practice in learning how to listen carefully.

In our world today, it’s often difficult to hear what others are saying. Sometimes, we may sense that no matter how insistently we speak out, we’re not being heard or understood. Our different backgrounds engender different mindsets and worldviews. Sometimes we use the same words and phrases to mean completely different things. The New Testament scholar G.B. Caird once remarked on the difficulties of translating ancient biblical languages: so much depends on context and frameworks of meaning. To illustrate his point, he observed that when someone says, “I’m mad about my flat,” it helps to know whether the speaker is British or American. If British, the speaker is most likely expressing enthusiasm about an apartment; if American, most likely frustration with a punctured tire.

 

A feature of postmodernity that many commentators have discussed at length is that even when we’re formally speaking the same language, we often fail to understand one another because we’re nonetheless effectively speaking different languages. I’ve noticed this phenomenon a lot in the Church: when liberals and conservatives, progressives and traditionalists, try to debate the hot-button issues of the day, the result is often miscommunication and misunderstanding because each subculture has its own code-words, its own narratives, its own interpretive frameworks. The same is even more true in the wider culture. Add in difficulties in communication resulting from differences in upbringing, geography, ethnicity, education, race, and class, and we may well despair of ever truly hearing and understanding one another.

Against this background, the story of Pentecost describes a miracle of understanding. When the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles in the upper room, two things happen. First, the apostles are empowered to speak out and proclaim the Gospel in the city streets, whereas before they’ve remained silent, and kept a low profile. Second, pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem from every nation in the known world miraculously hear the apostles speaking to them in their own native languages. What seems to be happening is a miracle of understanding.

 

Some biblical commentators describe Pentecost as a symbolic reversal of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. In the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, we may remember, all human beings speak the same language. When they attempt to build a tower that will reach heaven, God confuses their speech so that they no longer understand one another; and they subsequently scatter over the face of the earth to form different nations and peoples speaking different languages. On the Day of Pentecost, however, the Holy Spirit descends in a rush of wind and tongues of fire to overcome this profound mutual alienation. Suddenly, they all hear. Suddenly, they all understand.

Such a miracle is necessary if the Church is to fulfill its mission of preaching the Gospel to the ends of the earth. From the day of Pentecost until today, and indeed until the end of time, the spread of Christianity requires a continual work of translation. God’s truth is unchanging and universal, yet it needs rendition into new idioms that its hearers can understand in the places where they live. This process is sometimes called “enculturation,” and it applies not only to translating the Scriptures into new languages, but also to finding new ways to express the truth of the Christian faith in the diverse musical, liturgical, artistic, architectural, and literary forms of the cultures where the Gospel is preached and received.

 

Pentecost remains an ever-present possibility for us today. The Holy Spirit enables us to overcome our deafness to one another. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of working hard to express yourself, to get another person to understand what you’re trying to explain, and your frustration is building and you’re on the verge of giving up – and then suddenly the other person exclaims, “Oh, I get it. What you’re saying is …” And then they summarize back to you the point you’ve been trying to make so well that you can only respond, “Yes, that’s it! I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

 

As Christians we believe that such moments are much more than human achievements reflecting effective communication skills (necessary and important as effective communications skills undoubtedly are). Rather, they signal the presence and work of the same Holy Spirit who enabled peoples of every nation to hear the apostles proclaiming the Gospel in their own native languages. One mark of the Spirit’s presence among us is the ability to engage in grace-filled conversation: to hear and be heard, to listen and understand, to recognize and respond to God’s truth.

 

It gives me great joy to be able to celebrate the Day of Pentecost here at St. Mark’s. During the past few months, this community has been engaged in a great project of discernment. And that task will continue as the Search Committee and Vestry meet with priest candidates for the position of Rector. This work entails careful listening not only to the candidates themselves, but also to one another, and most importantly of all, to what the Spirit is saying to the Church—and to this church in particular.

 

Today, then, we take the opportunity to call upon the Holy Spirit to manifest his presence among us, so that we may be empowered not only to speak the truth, but also to hear and understand, in the confidence that we’re being heard and understood as well. May the Holy Spirit continue to form this parish into a community of people with ears to hear, minds to understand, hearts to love, and wills to enact the truth that comes from God.

EASTER 7, YEAR B

(In Ascensiontide)

May 12, 2024

St. Mark’s, Warwick, R. I.

 

Acts 1:15-17; 21-26

Psalm 1

I John 5:9-13

John 17:6-9

 

Over the past thirty years or so, it’s become something of a cultural cliché to say: “I’m not interested in organized religion but I’m very spiritual.” However, this dichotomy between religion and spirituality is false. Whether we admit it or not, we human beings are inescapably both religious and spiritual.

Some sociologists define religion as the total system of beliefs, stories, symbols, values, and practices by which we construe our identity and place in the world. By this definition, even an atheist has a religion; God’s non-existence is a key component of that religion. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, secular ideologies such as nationalism, fascism, and socialism functioned for millions of people as religions in the sense that they gave meaning, purpose, and direction to their lives. In today’s world, one’s religion might be individualism, hedonism, or consumerism. We don’t have a choice about being religious; we do have a choice about which religion we believe to be worthy of our adherence.

 

Moreover, the term “organized religion” misses the point that we human beings are born organizers. The drive to order and arrange things belongs to our nature. Religious organization is neither limiting nor restrictive but liberating. For example, I didn’t choose today’s readings. The Church chose them for me by means of something called the lectionary. I trust the Church to do a better job of choosing the readings than I could. Having that choice made for me gives me the freedom to concentrate on more edifying and worthwhile questions. The organized part of religion means that we don’t need to keep on reinventing the wheel.

 

Just as we don’t have a choice about whether to be religious, so we don’t have a choice about whether to be spiritual. We all have a spiritual life of one sort or another. Our experience of reality is not limited to the material world of things that can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled. We have imaginations and the capacity to dream dreams. Although some individuals are more sensitive to this dimension than others, we all have some awareness of an unseen world: a realm of presences and influences distinct from yet capable of impinging upon the material world in which we live. Some such spiritual forces are benign, others are malign. Different spiritualities put us in touch with different aspects of the unseen world. So, we don’t really have a choice about being spiritual, but we do have a choice about which spiritual practices to embrace as beneficial to our souls’ health, and which to avoid as dangerous and destructive.

So, contrary to those who claim to be “not religious but very spiritual,” we human beings are inescapably both. The real questions are: Which religion we shall embrace as the organizing principle of our lives? And: Which spiritual disciplines shall we practice as our entry point into the invisible dimensions of reality? It might be profitable to reflect on those two questions during the coming week as we approach the Feast of Pentecost.

 

From my point of view, the best answers to those questions are clear. I find that traditional creedal Christianity offers a more satisfactory framework for understanding life’s meaning and purpose than any of the available alternatives. It’s not just a system of beliefs but a relationship with a living God, and membership in an organic community, the Church, the Body of Christ. Moreover, authentic Christian spirituality involves openness not just to some vaguely spiritual dimension of life, but to a divine Person, the Holy Spirit, who brings us into a living relationship with God the Father through the redeeming work of God the Son.

 

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the risen Lord has ascended and departed into heaven, but the promised Holy Spirit has not yet descended and arrived. It’s a time of waiting. And so what do the apostles do? Why, they attend to matters of organized religion of course!

 

The defection of Judas Iscariot has broken the circle of the Twelve. A replacement must be appointed—someone who can share in the apostolic mission of bearing witness to the Lord’s Resurrection. The candidate must be someone who followed Jesus from his baptism until his Ascension. At Peter’s instigation, the apostles choose two suitable candidates, pray, and cast lots to reveal God’s choice of Matthias as the new Twelfth Apostle. So, the period between the Ascension and Pentecost is a time not only of waiting and praying for the Holy Spirit, but also of regrouping and reorganizing in preparation for the Spirit’s arrival.

 

We need both religious organization and spiritual power. The Church has aptly been likened to an old-fashioned sailing ship before the days of steam. Such a vessel requires a specific type of construction to stay afloat—a watertight hull and properly configured masts, rigging, and sails to catch the wind. Without the right design and structure, not to mention a capable crew, the ship will sink, founder, or capsize. But neither will the ship move forward if there’s no wind. For the Church, the wind that propels the vessel is none other than the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, the ship of the Church is dead in the water and not going anywhere.

 

We don’t make any progress in the Christian life without both the ordering structure of organized religion and the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit. We need set religious practices, such as the weekly Mass and daily times of prayer, Bible study, and spiritual reading. But all that structure becomes dry and arid formalism unless the Spirit breathes life into our religion. It’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. We need both sound religion and authentic spirituality.

 

In some respects, the interim period between rectors in a parish is loosely analogous to the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost. The previous rector has departed; the next one is yet to come. In the meantime, both organizational and spiritual work needs to be done. The disciples attended to the organizational matter of replacing Judas and so reconstituting the Twelve. In like manner, your vestry is addressing necessary administrative tasks like refurbishing the rectory and working with the diocese to expedite the search process. The disciples also gathered every day to watch and pray. At this time, then, we can do no better than join in praying like Our Lady and the Apostles in the Upper Room: Come, Holy Spirit: fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

(Rogation Sunday)

May 5, 2024

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98;

I John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

 

The episode in this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles is sometimes known as “the Gentile Pentecost.” In response to a vision from God, a Roman centurion named Cornelius has sent for the Apostle Peter, who in turn has received his own vision from God directing him to accept Cornelius’s invitation.

 

So Peter has come to Cornelius’s house in Caesarea Maritima, the principal Roman port on Palestine's Mediterranean coast. Cornelius is one of those Gentiles known at the time as “God-fearers”—that is, people who admire the Jewish religion and believe in the God of Jewish monotheism, but who are for whatever reason unwilling or unable to make the commitment involved in converting to Judaism and keeping all the precepts of the Jewish Law or Torah.

 

The reading opens as Peter has begun preaching to Cornelius and his household the good news of Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. The Holy Spirit descends upon all present. They begin speaking in tongues and extolling God, just as the original disciples did on the Day of Pentecost in the Upper Room at Jerusalem. So Peter commands that they should all be baptized: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

 

This moment is absolutely pivotal in the development of early Christianity, making clear once and for all that the apostolic witness to the Lord’s resurrection is to be taken to all nations, not just to Israel alone. Henceforth the Church, the community gathered in response to the Easter proclamation, is to comprise all the world’s peoples, fulfilling the words of Psalm 98: “all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.”

 

In other words: We’re all in this together. Saint John writes in today’s Epistle that everyone who believes is a child of God. And Jesus says in today’s Gospel that he calls us no longer servants but friends. The Church is thus a fellowship of all peoples, transcending divisions of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and language.

(Incidentally, the symbolic point of the speaking in tongues is that differences in language no longer constitute the barrier to mutual intelligibility and understanding that they once did, for we’re all one in Christ Jesus. We shall have occasion to reflect further on this point in two weeks’ time, on the Day of Pentecost.)

 

So today’s readings challenge us, as our Lord puts it in the Gospel, to “love one another as I have loved you.” In too many times and places, however, the Church has failed to live up to its identity as a community where all are loved without distinction. All too often, parishes and congregations become exclusive clubs for “people like us”—those who speak and dress in a certain way, who live in certain neighborhoods, who belong to this or that political party, or who hold certain opinions on the controversial issues of the day.

 

I don’t want to belabor the point, but in our fallen and sinful human condition, we can be tempted to find our greatest comfort zones among those who are most like-minded with us, and those with whom we most readily identify. So we need a periodic reminder that the Church is a universal fellowship, where we’re called to engage in the sometimes difficult and often challenging work of welcoming and including all comers, especially those with whom we may be instinctively least at ease.

 

This challenge was the same for Peter and his companions that day in Caesarea almost two thousand year ago. As the reading from Acts puts it: “The believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.” Peter himself had to overcome enormous reluctance, even revulsion, before entering the house of the Gentile Cornelius, whom he regarded as an unclean foreigner. But we may be glad that he did, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here in this church today! Christianity could well have remained a movement existing purely within the confines of Judaism, and we Gentiles would never have had the opportunity to hear, receive, and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ.

 

We do well, then, to pray the same Holy Spirit who moved Peter and his companions to move our hearts also, that we may find the courage and strength to do whatever we need to do in our own time to welcome those whom we might be tempted to regard as foreigners and strangers. Only then can we truly begin to realize and live into our identity and mission as the Church Catholic.

 

All that I’m trying to say here is best summed up in one of my favorite hymns, number 304 in the Hymnal 1982, written by Brian Wren in 1970, and set to the early American folk tune Land of Rest:

 

         As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share,

           Each proud division ends;

         The love that made us makes us one,

           And strangers now are friends.

SAINT MARK THE EVANGELIST

Sunday 28 April 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 16:15-20

 

It gives me great pleasure to be able to celebrate with you this parish’s patronal festival. Saint Mark’s Day was actually this past Thursday, April 25th. But Bishop Knisely has given us permission to transfer it to today so that we can all join in the celebration more easily.

 

So, who was Saint Mark? Well, he’s traditionally identified with one John Mark, whom we meet in the Acts of the Apostles. There, in chapter 12, Saint Luke tells us of the disciples gathering in Jerusalem at the house of Mary the mother of John whose other name was Mark.

 

This Mark appears also to have been a cousin of Paul’s missionary companion Barnabas. (It’s interesting that here in Warwick we have two Episcopal Churches dedicated to these cousins.) In any case, Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas on Paul’s first missionary journey but apparently left them early on to return to Jerusalem.

 

A disagreement arose when Barnabas wanted to bring Mark along on a second missionary journey, but Paul felt that Mark had abandoned them and didn’t want to take him. So, Barnabas didn’t go with Paul either. Instead, Barnabas and Mark went to Cyprus, while Paul took Silas with him on his second missionary journey, through Asia Minor and into Greece.

 

Paul and Mark seem later to have reconciled, as Paul makes favorable passing references to him in his letters to the Colossians, Timothy, and Philemon. The First Letter of Peter also mentions “my son Mark”—presumably in a spiritual rather than a biological sense. And that is about all the New Testament itself tells us about Mark.

 

Outside the New Testament, early Church tradition identifies Mark as the author of the second Gospel—the shortest of the four Gospels, which many (but not all) New Testament scholars believe to have been the earliest of the four Gospels to have been written.

 

(Personally, I think that we simply don’t know in what order the Gospels were written, or what their relationships of literary dependence were. All we have are the inspired canonical texts in their (more or less) final form, and they are what is authoritative for the Church.)

 

In any case, Mark is called the Evangelist: a title given to the authors of the four of Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So, Mark is not one of the twelve Apostles but he is one of the four Evangelists.

 

Mark’s emblem is a lion. This is because the Church’s tradition identified the four living creatures mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and then in the Revelation to John—a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle—with the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For this reason Mark is often depicted in Christian art with a lion, as on the cover of today’s bulletin.

 

Several early Church Fathers tell us that Mark accompanied Saint Peter to Rome, and served as Peter’s interpreter and scribe. According to this tradition, the Gospel according to Saint Mark preserves Peter’s verbal reminiscences of the life of Christ.

 

The Gospel reading that we’ve used today is taken from what’s called the “Longer Ending” of Mark, which many scholars believe is a later addition, describing the impact of Christ’s Resurrection on the early Church’s life and the miraculous signs that accompanied and verified the apostles’ preaching.

 

(Incidentally, the snake-handling sects in Appalachia and the Ozarks take today’s Gospel as the biblical warrant for their practices. However, let me reassure you, if any reassurance is needed, that I have zero interest in any of that.)

 

From Rome, early Christian tradition maintains that Mark went to Egypt, where he became the first bishop of Alexandria. There, according to the legend, he suffered martyrdom in the year 68 AD, when the city’s pagans, alarmed at the Christian Church’s rapid growth, placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until dead. Mark’s body was then interred in the church he had built in that city.

 

So, the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt claims Mark as its founder; and if you travel to Alexandria today you can see the modern cathedral built on the site of the church founded by Saint Mark in the first century.  Here the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Tawadros II, has his episcopal chair. (So, just as Pope Francis is the present-day successor of Saint Peter in Rome, so Pope Tawadros is the present-day successor of Saint Mark in Alexandria.)

 

However, the world’s most famous church dedicated to Saint Mark is probably the Basilica San Marco in Venice, Italy. After Mark’s death, so the story goes, his body rested in Alexandria until the seventh-century Muslim conquest of Egypt. Then, in the ninth century, the local Christian community became concerned that the Muslim rulers were planning to destroy St Mark’s tomb, so they conspired to allow some Venetian merchants to smuggle the relics of St Mark on board their ships and take them to Venice. There, in the eleventh century, the Basilica San Marco was built to house them. In 1968, however, Pope Paul VI returned some of the relics to the Coptic Orthodox Church in an ecumenical gesture of good will.

 

So, what is our relationship with Saint Mark here in this parish named after him? How can he inspire and encourage us today? Well, let’s look at his three principal titles or roles: Evangelist, Bishop, and Martyr.

 

As Mark the Evangelist, he was called to commit to writing the good news of Jesus Christ. So, also, we’re all called to be evangelists, each in our own way, sharing with others the story of Jesus and the difference that he makes in our lives today.

 

As Bishop of Alexandria, Mark was called to oversee and care for the Church in Egypt as its chief pastor and shepherd. So, also, we’re all called, each in our own way, to exercise ministries of pastoral care for the wider communities around us.

 

As a Martyr, finally, Mark was called to bear witness to the faith even unto death. For that is what the word martyr means: witness. (And that, incidentally, is why we're wearing red today, rather than Eastertide white, because red is the liturgical color of martyrdom.) And even if most of us are probably not called to literal martyrdom as Mark was, nonetheless we are called, each in our own way, to die to self in ministries of self-giving, self-sacrificial service in the Church and in the world.

 

A prayer in the Book of Common Prayer’s funeral service thanks God for his saints, and then asks that “encouraged by their examples, aided by their prayers, and strengthened by their fellowship, we also may be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” That prayer expresses the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. In Christ, we’re one with those who’ve gone before us in the faith.

 

So, my hope and prayer for this parish in the weeks, months, and years ahead, is that we’ll continue to grow in the joyful awareness of a living relationship with our heavenly patron Saint Mark the Evangelist—encouraged by his example, aided by his prayers, and strengthened by his fellowship.