Sermon for the Feast of St. Mark
“Be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be”
What things? Deceptions, “of wars and rumours of wars,” of “nation against nation,” of “earthquakes in divers places,” of “famines and troubles,” ultimately, what Mark sums up as “the beginnings of sorrows.” Sounds like the evening news or the endless dystopia of your social media ‘news’ feed. What has changed? It is a pretty sobering picture of the suffering and hardships of our disordered world.
And yet Mark is really the first Eastertide Saint who we commemorate invariably in the Easter Season, though this year the Annunciation was transferred from Monday in Holy Week to week of the Octave of Easter. In a way, that helped to emphasize the intimate and inescapable connection and interplay between Passion and Resurrection in terms of the meaning of the Incarnation which cannot be thought about apart from them. And so, too, with the Feast of St. Mark as the readings make rather clear. The Gospel might seem to be rather dark and threatening about the things that must needs be that are disturbing. Yet the Resurrection provides a way to face such things and to “be not troubled.”
The Resurrection changes everything. Mark’s Gospel in its so-called shorter ending concludes with the words “they were afraid.” This acknowledges the reality of the human condition but his gospel addresses it with a way to face such stark realities. They do not need to define us. We are more than though not less than the circumstances and situations of our world and day and even of our own experiences. In every way, the Resurrection points us to the joy of our life in Christ and focuses our thoughts on his Passion and Resurrection which becomes our life as the reading from Ephesians so clearly indicates. We are given a way to face things and be not troubled but to speak the truth in love, and grow up into him in all things. In other words, the Resurrection is about our life in Christ whose life in us signals the building up of the body in love. That body is the body of Christ, the Church. Our task is to heed the Collect taken from the Epistle that we not be “like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine,” “tossed to and fro,” but rather “established in the truth” of the Gospel.
“And the gospel must first be published among all nations,” Mark concludes in the reading for his feast day. That requires it being published in the midst of the troubles of our world and day. That is our vocation and our joy.
“Be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Mark, April 25th, 2024
