MARK
‘Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.’
Our text is one of the few personal references we find in the New Testament to the writer of the second Gospel. He was the son in the faith of St. Peter, and he was clearly a man of great spirituality of life, for St. Paul desired Timothy to bring him to Rome at that solemn time when the Great Apostle to the Gentiles felt that he had finished his course. But it is to the Gospel which bears his name rather than to the man himself that I would like to direct your attention.
I. For whom his Gospel was written.—If you read St. Matthew’s Gospel you will see that it is intended for Jewish readers—men who knew the Old Testament, and to whom the evidence of prophecy appealed. St. Mark’s Gospel never appeals to the Old Testament, never quotes prophecy except once—in the second verse of the Gospel—where we have one short reference.
II. The author of the Gospel.—Then comes the next question. What indication does the book give as to the writer? Remember, St. Mark was, in all probability, not a personal disciple of our Lord, not an eye-witness. Yet no one can read the Gospel carefully without seeing that, as to the greater part of it, it must be the narrative of an eye-witness. It is tolerably certain, from internal evidence, that St. Mark received his knowledge of the ministry of our Lord from St. Peter, St. James, or St. John, those nearest to our Lord. There is reason to suppose that it was not St. James and not St. John. All the best authorities favour St. Peter as the authority from whom St. Mark drew his facts.
III. Characteristics of the Gospel.
(a) It is much more a narrative of events and acts than of discourses. There are no long discourses. Notably the Sermon on the Mount is omitted. But when we come to our Lord’s acts and miracles the case is very different. St. Mark contains in his short narrative nearly all the miracles that are narrated by the other two. If you take out of St. Matthew and St. Luke what St. Mark records, you will have very few of the miracles left. Leaving aside the Gospel of St. John, St. Mark is our main authority for the miraculous events in our Lord’s life.
(b) St. Mark’s Gospel is wonderfully wealthy in detail. If you compare the feeding of the five thousand, as narrated by St. Mark, with the narrative of the other evangelists, you will find a far greater wealth of detail of external action and scene. Or, again, take the healing of the lunatic child—the details of our Lord’s look and gesture. In fact, we may sum up the whole by saying that St. Mark contains the simple direct narrative of an eyewitness who was strongly impressed by the person of Christ. In other words, there is the impress of historical truth.
Illustration
‘It is upon the Gospel of St. Mark that we depend for so large an amount of our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, much larger than we should imagine. In studying the life of our Lord, very many have been inclined to put aside the Gospel of St. Mark, because it is shorter, and because it only tells them, as they think, what St. Matthew tells at greater length, and St. Luke in a more interesting manner. But that is a mistake. His Gospel is full of interest, full of meaning, and, to adapt the words of our text, is “profitable” for the ministry.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
ST. MARK’S CAREER AND CHARACTER
It is in the steady rising up from less to more, from weak beginnings to a nobler ending, that we are to find the true lesson of St. Mark’s career and character. He does not seem to have been what one would call a strong character. We never see him alone. He seems to be essentially a subordinate character, always second to some one, ever serving God through helping and attending some one else. There are many such in God’s Church.
I. On his own level St. Mark was faithful.—There is no doubt of this. We learn it from the repeated testimony of that leader who at first had seemed to reject him with so much sternness. Years pass away and St. Paul is a prisoner in Rome. Twice was St. Paul a prisoner there, and each time there comes a voice from Rome in which St. Paul remembers the nephew of Barnabas, and speaks of him not merely kindly, but with words of praise and commendation. It is pleasant to think it was so, and to dwell upon the human friendships and kindnesses of those old heroes of the first Gospel warfares. If Barnabas had thrown his protection over St. Mark when St. Paul would none of him, St. Paul could not forget that St. Barnabas had done the same by him when at Jerusalem, after his own conversion, the Christians were hard to convince that he was not Saul the persecutor still (Acts 9:26-27).
II. Not all who are companions of Apostolic men and Christian heroes are of Apostolic mould or Apostolic temper.—There are those who need the gentler handling of a Barnabas, who want almost a lifetime to bring them up to that standard of service at which other characters can begin. They are not to be rejected. They are to be dealt with tenderly, not pushed beyond their powers, not laden with a burden too great for them to bear. Neither with them is ultimate fidelity to be too suddenly rewarded by entrusting them with too large a measure of Christian responsibility. They take a long time to grow. Yet they may, in their own secondary line, become illustrious too, and then be advanced to higher trust at last. St. Mark became Evangelist as well as Deacon, and at last, after long discipline, became the Bishop of the mighty and the learned Church of Alexandria itself.
III. Let us notice the bearing of this history on characters like that of St. Barnabas. Under God it would seem that the ultimate career of St. Mark was due to the kindly action of Barnabas, who would not give him up. The tender, kindly, genial figure of St. Barnabas is one of the most humanly winning characters in the New Testament history. There is a human lovableness about it which to some seems almost to detract from its spirituality and apostolicity. God has work for all, and let us remember that if a man may count those whom he has helped to save from falling among the jewels of his heavenly crown, then one of the four Evangelists is most probably to be reckoned among the jewels of the crown of Barnabas.
Illustration
‘It is curious to notice that it is the same Mark still. As the first mention of St. Mark joining St. Paul and St. Barnabas for the Cyprus mission tells that “they had John to be their minister”—i.e. for Deacon—so here it is still St. Mark as Deacon that is asked for. When our version says “ the ministry” it obscures the sense. It should be “is advantageous to me with a view to ministry,” i.e. Deaconship. It is the old word of Acts 13:5; so that as this verse shows us St. Mark’s full and complete satisfactoriness in his capacity, signed and sealed before he died by the Apostle who once rejected his ministration, so too it marks also that after all these years it was not to any higher grade of service that St. Mark had risen. As he had been minister or Deacon to St. Paul and St. Barnabas all those years before, so when St. Paul now sends for him as being advantageous, it is but in the old capacity of minister or Deacon still.’