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.