SERMON: ST MARK’S DAY/ANZAC Day 2005 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. 

Today we celebrate St Mark’s Day. The Gospel according to St Mark is widely believed to be the earliest of the four Gospels. The internal literary evidence certainly suggests this, even though some scholars have argued otherwise. But who was Mark? And did he have anything to do with the Gospel that bears his name? 

The Gospel itself does not claim to be written by Mark, and no person named Mark is mentioned anywhere in the book. Indeed, unlike Luke’s Gospel or Paul’s letters, the gospel contains no internal reference to any author at all nor any claims to authenticity. The Gospel according to John maintains that it is based on the testimony of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ (Jn 21:24) and Luke’s Gospel starts with the assertion that it is a careful compilation from the available first hand evidence. There is nothing of the sort in the Gospel according to Mark.  

However, tradition unanimously attributes this gospel to Mark and links this Mark with the John Mark who is mentioned in several places in the New Testament. In Acts chapter 12, for instance, we are told that after completing their mission, Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem and brought with them a colleague called John, whose other name was Mark. (Acts 12:25).  

So, who was he? According to the letter to the Colossians (4:10), he was Barnabas’ cousin. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that Barnabas was a Hellenist, a wealthy Greek-speaking Jew, who came from Cyprus and was of a Levitical family – the family that supplied the priests for Judaism. Mark may well have shared this background. His mother, Mary (yet another Mary!), appears in Acts, based in Jerusalem and hosting prayer services (Acts 12:12). But this is not inconsistent with the idea that Mark may have had a Cypriot background. Just as Canberra retirees tend to head for the South Coast, it was not uncommon for wealthy and pious Hellenist widows to move to Jerusalem in their later years. 

But, despite the occasional mention of him, he is a relatively obscure figure, a ‘hanger-on’ rather than a major player and it seems a little odd that a text of such importance should be ascribed to him. Unless, of course, he actually was instrumental in its authorship. This may well be one of those cases where the text really was written by the person it is attributed to. The accounts in Acts make it clear that Mark, or John Mark, as he is often called, was closely linked with at least three major apostolic figures: Paul, Barnabas and Peter; and also associated with several early centres of Christian tradition: Jerusalem, Antioch and Rome. ‘Hanger-on’ he mau have been, but he was also a man who was deeply immersed in the early church, caught up in a number of the early disputes, well-travelled, and well – equipped to know what had happened. 

The Gospel that bears his name is the shortest of the four Gospels in the New Testament. It reads with an immediacy and pace that are unique among the gospels. There is an almost breathless rush through the narrative with words like ‘immediately’, ‘suddenly’, ‘straight away’ and ‘and then’ pushing the story forward. 

All of the gospels are, in some measure, a passion story with an extended introduction. The story of Jesus’ conviction and crucifixion is the climax of each one. In Mark’s gospel, however, it is overwhelmingly so, with the passion narrative occupying one third of the book, and the lead-up to the passion story being clearly pointed out in the earlier chapters.  

As well as this central and developing theme of the inevitable suffering and death of Jesus, a story which reaches its culmination in the crucifixion, the gospel is characterised by a number of other themes. One of the most obvious of these is the secrecy theme which runs through the first half of the Gospel. In New Testament scholarship this is known as the Messianic secret. In the first 8 chapters, Jesus never refers to himself as the Messiah, never allows others to suggest it of him and urges people not to tell others about anything he had done which could be interpreted as being remotely miraculous. Then suddenly, in chapter 8, this all changes. Peter realises who Jesus is, says so and the secret is out. From there on, Jesus devotes much of his time to explaining to his disciples the nature of his messiahship.  

And it is clear that it does not conform to any of the generally held Jewish views about messiahship – it is not about glory; it is not about military or political power. It is about suffering, rejection and death. It is about servant leadership. This is not an easy message to hear – particularly for cultures which have been imbued with quite different notions about God.  

And if messiahship is cut from this unexpected cloth, what does it mean for disciples? Mark is also clear on this point. The path of discipleship must also be that of suffering. The disciples of Christ must expect to be misunderstood, mistreated. This grim picture is, however, counterbalanced with a promise: discipleship leads to wholeness, to the experience of real life. This promise is fulfilled wherever there is genuine joyous abandonment of self motivated by the gift of God. The gospel presents us with one of those paradoxes of the Christian life – suffering and joy; sacrifice and blessing. 

The Gospel according to Mark contains much more than this, of course, and is worth reading in depth. While lacking some of the detail of the other gospels, and indeed some of the colour, it is a rattling good read that sweeps you up in the action and lands you up at the foot of the cross, and then at the empty tomb, with a strong sense of the inevitability of Jesus’ fate and of the courage with which he faced his destiny.  

This weekend, as a nation, we are being reminded that we humans continue to visit suffering and death upon each other. Anzac Day remembrance throws into stark relief the futility and horror of war. Anzac Cove itself: so many men, sent to the wrong place, to fight a hopeless battle. All the other battles: so many people, so many times, in so many places, facing the ultimate violence of human being fighting human being.  

My grandfather fought in the First World War. His experiences there led him to become a pacifist and he became a Presbyterian minister. When the Second World War broke out he enlisted as a chaplain, was sent to Singapore and was imprisoned in Changi. He refused to march in Anzac Day marches, as did his son, my father. For them, Anzac Day was a grim reminder of loss, of the debasement of the human spirit in war and of our corporate human failure to live by the Gospel. They had no wish to be associated with something that might be seen to glorify war - that tragic failure of the human spirit.  

But for many Anzac Day has a different complexion. Acknowledging the horrors of war, and resolving to do all we can to avoid it, Anzac Day is also a reminder that even in the most extreme of circumstances, we can see the flowering of courage, strength and compassion. Paradoxically, people can often show great virtue and great humanity in the midst of the carnage that flows from humans being the worst that they can be. Far from being a reminder of the failure of the human spirit, it can be seen as a challenge to respond to even the worst of situations with the best of the human spirit. 

I suspect that here in this congregation we have many different responses to Anzac Day and I am not going to try to foist mine on you. Of much greater import is our response to God and to the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. The role of the books of the New Testament, including the Gospel of Mark, in preserving these accounts for each new generation is absolutely critical. May we read them, learn from them and be challenged by them.  

Let us pray: 

Christ our teacher,
you reach into our lives
not through instruction, but story.

Open our hearts to be attentive:
that seeing, we may perceive,
and hearing, we may understand,

and understanding, may act upon your word,
in your name,  Amen.

Sarah Macneil