Day: April 29, 2014

Sermons

Meditation for the Feast of St. Mark

“For they were afraid”

It is known as the short ending to The Gospel according to St. Mark. Why? Because some of the earliest texts of St. Mark’s Gospel end at verse eight of the sixteenth chapter rather than with the accounts of the Resurrection that take us to verse twenty. To be sure, the canonical Gospel, the gospel that is authoritative for orthodox Christians, includes those additional twelve verses. The shorter ending does not mean that Mark does not believe in the Doctrine of the Resurrection or that the additional verses are somehow unrelated and disconnected to the rest of his Gospel and unfaithful to it. Quite the contrary.

And yet, what are we to make of that shorter ending? From a literary point of view, I think it is a powerful and poignant ending, and serves to make the doctrinal point about the Resurrection even more strongly. After all, it is only in the light of the Resurrection that the story of Jesus makes any sense. The Resurrection has captured the imaginations of the Gospel writers, such as St. Mark, and compelled them to see things in a new light without which the Gospels could never have been written.

The additional verses serve as an epilogue and as a further point of confirmation, whether as added by Mark or by someone else later on is entirely uncertain and unknowable, and, I must add, quite irrelevant to our understanding of the Christian Faith.

But some speculation is called for. (more…)

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Mark the Evangelist

The collect for today, The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark: Give us grace, that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:11-16
The Gospel: St. Mark 13:1-10

Donatello, St. Mark. OrsanmicheleThe author of the second gospel, Saint Mark is generally identified with John Mark, the son of Mary, whose house in Jerusalem was a meeting place for the disciples (Acts 12:12,25). John Mark accompanied his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journey to Cyprus, but Mark’s early departure to Jerusalem caused a rift between Paul and Barnabas, following which Barnabas took Mark on the next mission to Cyprus while Paul and Silas traveled through Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:37-41).

Paul later changed his mind about Mark, who helped him during his imprisonment in Rome (Col. 4:10). Just before his martyrdom, Paul urged Timothy: “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).

Also, Peter affectionately calls Mark “my son” and says that Mark is with him at “Babylon”—almost certainly Rome—as he writes his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13). This accords with church tradition that Mark’s Gospel represents the teaching of Peter.

(more…)

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