(First in a series of studies on Mark)

An art student visited a gallery in New York to study
just one picture. He spent hours in front of it, acquiring what
he thought was a fairly accurate idea of its meaning. As he turned
to leave, a man touched him on the shoulder and asked if he’d
like to know what the artist had in mind when he first painted
that picture. The student responded politely and the stranger
began to unfold the background, history and purpose of the painting
with such depth of feeling that the student was deeply stirred.
He was gaining now an appreciation which his hours of study hadn’t
produced. Who was the stranger? Why, the artist, of course. How
much the student would have missed if he’d been too busy to listen…!

And how much we’ll miss if we approach the Supreme
Book of all the ages without help. The Master Artist is here,
this morning, to help unveil for us the mysteries of eternity,
and of our existence. The Holy Spirit, who alone knows God’s truths
(1 Cor 2:10, 11) is waiting to teach us from God’s Book. Let us
sit at the feet of the Master, and determine to understand and
to obey God’s truth as He speaks.

Let us pray: Make Mark’s ‘Good News’ live for us
today, Lord. Show us Yourself within Your Word … Show us ourselves
in the mirror of Your Word. May the intersection of our existences
and Your Truth always produce godly changes in us. Thank You,
Lord. Amen.

‘The simple audacity of the enterprise is breath-taking,’
says a theatre critic in Time magazine. English actor Alex McCowen,
casually dressed in a sports coat and open-necked shirt, strolls
onto a stage furnished only with a table and three chairs and
recites, from memory, the entire Gospel according to St. Mark,
then strolls off again. The performance lasts two hours ten minutes,
with one intermission … ‘He tells Mark’s story, he does not
intone it. He clears away the ponderousness of centuries of Bible
reading to rediscover the urgent, living voice of a man who is
recounting nearly contemporary events, many of them derived from
eye-witness accounts.

Through that living voice, living people begin to
inhabit the stage: the scribes and pharisees, hardened by suspicion
and orthodoxy; the disciples, stalwart but muddled; Jesus himself,
patient and determined but often exasperated…’

‘There is nothing new under the sun.’ Young people
have always enjoyed pranks at the expense of their elders …
A decade or two ago it was telephone-booth-(or mini-)packing,
or goldfish swallowing. Now it’s streaking…

But streaking isn’t new. A certain young man, says
Mark 14:51-2, was dressed in a loose sort of night-gown. He’d
heard, apparently, that Jesus was going to be betrayed and arrested,
so he sneaked out of his bedroom and out into the night. Perhaps
he was trying to get to Jesus before the soldiers did, to warn
Him. But he was too late, and all he could do was follow, in the
night. Some soldiers saw him and seized him, but with a quick,
lithe movement he slips out of his night-gown, leaves it only
in their hands, and goes running – naked – into the night. (I
wonder where he went – home? To a friend’s? How does one begin
to explain….?)

That little story, say the experts, is actually John
Mark’s signature. That young man was Mark himself.

What do we know about him? His Hebrew name was John;
his full name John Mark – the Latin surname Marcus pointing to
a possible connection with imperial Rome, then ruling Palestine.
His family lived in Jerusalem, and was apparently well off. Papias,
bishop of Hierapolis said (about 140 AD) that Mark had ‘neither
heard the Lord, nor accompanied Him’. However it’s hard to imagine
an alert youth in Jerusalem, with John Mark’s connections, not
having any contact with Jesus. We know that his home later became
a meeting-place for the embattled Christians in Jerusalem: Peter
went there when he had been liberated from prison.

Indeed, there’s a pretty reliable tradition that
has the ‘Upper Room’ where Jesus spent His last hours with the
disciples before His death, located in Mary’s (Mark’s mother’s)
home. The ‘goodman’ referred to by the Lord would therefore have
been Mark’s father. Perhaps – who knows? – he was an observer
of what went on in that upper room that fateful night. Without
question, he’d grown up in an atmosphere vibrant with all the
hopes and fears and all the excitement of a new-born faith.

No wonder this bright, personable young man was given
an active role in the Christian community. The church at Antioch
– up north in what is now Turkey – had sent two emissaries with
relief moneys to help the poor in Jerusalem. One of these was
Paul, the other Mark’s cousin Barnabas. While in Jerusalem, they
probably lodged at the house of Barnabas’s aunt Mary. They must
have been so impressed with young Mark, that they took him back
with them later to Antioch (Ac 12:25).

Later still, when Paul and Barnabas set off on their
first missionary journey, they took Mark along as their assistant.
What an adventure – sailing to distant places, sharing the hardships
of travel and persecution, making arrangements about accommodation
etc., for the apostles. But when they got to Perga, on the coast
of Asia Minor, Paul and Barnabas decided to go inland. Young Mark
had perhaps been talking to some of the townsfolk, and they’d
told him about the bandits who infested those tracks through the
giant range of Mount Taurus. Even the long arm of the Roman law
had failed to dislodge them. He heard about those strange, pagan
people up there in Galatia. And suddenly, the city-boy became
homesick. Missionary work had lost its glamour. Just when his
help was most needed, young Mark deserted his two friends. He’d
served only a couple of months of his exalted apprenticeship.
It was just too tough – and perhaps his call to such demanding
service wasn’t as clear as that of Barnabas and Paul.

And so he went back to the comforts of home. And
we can feel the heaviness in the pit of his stomach. His mission
unfulfilled, his high hopes of victorious service for his Lord
unfulfilled. He came home – to his mother’s tears. And no doubt
as he walked reflectively through Gethsemane from time to time,
he shed his own tears of remorse as well.

But there was someone then in Jerusalem who’d been
through that kind of deep experience before. He too had denied
his Lord. He too had gone away and wept bitterly. But that other
one had known that having fallen so far he could be picked up
again. The same Jesus he’d failed, helped him to stand. Mark and
Peter became close friends; the Big Fisherman helped to mediate
the forgiving grace of Christ to the failing young man. In the
Valley of Humiliation, he learned the deep lessons of Bunyan’s
shepherd boy: He that is down need fear no fall; He that is low,
no pride; He that is humble, ever shall Have God to be His guide.

For Peter, Mark became a ‘son’ (1 Pet 5:13)…

Seven years – perhaps not lean years – followed.
They were years of obscurity, but years when some lessons were
learned well. But then the hardest lesson of all was to come.
Paul suggested to Barnabas that they should visit those churches
up there in Asia Minor. Barnabas agreed provided Mark should come
with them. But Paul remembered Mark’s desertion, and so these
two great men had a ‘ding dong’ argument about it. Barnabas –
the ‘encourager’ as always – took the softer line (‘Let’s give
him a go!’). For Paul the work of Christ demanded only the best,
and slackers would hinder it. Both reasonable points of view.
But the contention between them grew so fierce, that they separated.
Perhaps cousin Barnabas was more easily persuaded of a change
of heart in Mark; in any case, he was prepared to take him along
(Ac 15:37-39). To Paul’s credit, we can say he eventually forgave
and accepted Mark, and even drew him back into his inner circle.

Meanwhile, Mark’s friendship with Peter meant that
the two of them ‘made a deal’. The year is probably 65 AD, and
Mark was probably approaching 50. The great fire of Rome – Nero’s
famous ‘fiddling’ episode – was blamed on the Christians. Peter
and Paul – and Mark – were almost certainly there in Rome, at
that time. Peter could meet his executioner any day now, and so
he recalls, while Mark writes feverishly, the events in Jesus’
life most important in retrospect. ‘Mark wrote down carefully,
but not in order, all that Peter remembered of the Lord’s sayings
and doings.’ So wrote Papias a generation later. For Jesus of
Nazareth had left no writings. The epic story of His life and
death had been passed on by word of mouth. As eyewitnesses of
those events were being martyred and as new and eager converts
kept asking for more details, the need for an authentic record
(particularly from the ‘number one’ disciple, Peter) became pressing.

Mark’s ‘Good news’ was almost certainly the first
to be written. It’s racy, fast-moving; we are hurried along, almost
breathlessly, in the company of Peter. It wasn’t meant to be a
‘biography’, as such; rather it’s the ‘headlines’ of the Good
News. It’s the ‘Gospel of action’. Words like ‘straight away’,
‘immediately’, ‘forthwith’ are peppered through the account.

Mark’s Gospel, copied by devoted hands, was circulated
within a few years throughout the Mediterranean world. It was
accepted as authoritative by all Christians. Among its most avid
readers were two other writers – Matthew and Luke. And they ‘pinched’
quite a bit of Mark to put into their stories. Of Mark’s 661 authentic
verses, 630 reappear, with or without variations, in their accounts.

We don’t know what happened to Mark in the end. According
to some early Christian writers, he went to Alexandria in Egypt,
where he served as a bishop, and is believed to have died a martyr.

John Mark was not a great man. He wasn’t a hero,
or a genius, or a forceful personality … But his Saviour – and
ours – also redeems average people, like you and me!