Mark’s Urgency of Meaning
CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY HE IS RISEN!
Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!
Pi-Ekhristos Aftonf…Khen Omethmi Aftonf!
Today, April 25th, is the feast of Saint Mark, one of the four men who gave us the four Gospels which are the sources of what we know about Jesus Christ. So Happy Nameday to all who have the name Mark. Saint Mark is particularly revered by the Egyptian Coptic Church, because he brought the good news of Christ to Alexandria in Egypt sometime between 40 and 50 AD. In honour of St. Mark, the Paschal greeting in Coptic is included with the English and Greek (transliterated into English). And here is a beautiful Coptic icon of St. Mark. Note images of the port of Alexandria in the background, and the lion who is the traditional symbol of Saint Mark. (All four Gospel writers have their own symbols: John the eagle, Mark the lion, Luke the calf, and Matthew a human being.)
The Gospel of Mark wastes no time in getting started. Mark seems to be in a hurry both at the start of his Gospel and at the end. He begins without any historical or theological introduction. Matthew began his Gospel with a genealogy and then described the birth of Jesus. Luke began with a personal dedication, then events preceding the birth of Jesus, then the birth of Jesus set in the historical context of the Roman Empire. John, on the other hand began with all-encompassing theology! Not Mark. He begins with the shortest introduction, straight to the point:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’ ”
John appeared, baptising in the wilderness……
And then straight into the baptism of Christ. Mark loves to use the adverb εὐθὺς in his Gospel – ‘immediately’, ‘straightaway’. He tells us that Jesus was tempted in the desert for 40 days in one sentence, without anything about the three temptations Matthew and Luke describe. No lingering along the way, Mark is in a hurry, just as Jesus was in a hurry.
Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Repent, change your mind, change your perception of life and the world, because a new world is coming, the world of God’s reign in the hearts and minds of men and women and children! Jesus then calls Peter and Andrew to follow him, and immediately, εὐθὺς, they leave everything and go with Jesus. Everything is moving at breakneck speed in Mark’s Gospel. Mark wants us to understand Christ’s mission was urgent. Humanity’s need was urgent, is urgent! Do we not live in urgent times today?
Many people, many states in these United States, and many countries around the world, feel an urgency to ‘re-open’ so life can return to something more ‘normal’, so businesses can survive. These are very real concerns, and in our own small community we have many businesses that face an uncertain future if this pandemic continues very long. Even those of us who have not experienced much economic anxiety still feel an urgency to get back to normal shopping, normal social interactions, normal worship in a church building rather than looking at a screen, and so on and so on. We have lost so much in just a few weeks’ time. And we have already lost one member of our community to Covid-19.
But there is a deeper urgency that we should be aware of, and this is not an urgency of time. It is an urgency of meaning. When society does ‘re-open’ will we want things to return to ‘normal’? Or is this pandemic teaching us anything about priorities and what is most important about our lives? Will compassion increase after this is over? Will we still check on each other and see if we can help? Will we stop pointing fingers at others and start accepting responsibility for our own actions or inactions? Will we care for the survival of the earth as much as we care for our personal survival? Will we increase our support for local businesses and decrease our support of mega-giants like Amazon and Walmart who devastated local businesses long before coronavirus? Will our world be a better, cleaner, more compassionate world after the pandemic?
Mark concludes his Gospel with another scene of hurry. Most scholars believe that Mark ended his Gospel at verse 16:8, which is how most early manuscripts of the New Testament conclude Mark’s Gospel. The additional 12 verses that are printed in our Bibles were likely added many years after Mark finished writing. Mark most likely finished his Gospel the way the Orthodox Church reads it on Easter night:
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. The priest at Easter midnight throws out those words into the darkness before singing “Christ is Risen” for the first time. Mark ended his Gospel with a conjunction, imagine that! There is his genius, and there’s the door he opens for us. Not just to chant those words at Easter midnight but to take them as an invitation. Whether good grammar or not, Mark ends his Gospel with what could be called an open ending. And there is the genius of our Orthodox celebration of Easter, right there. Mark ended with a conjunction; we start our celebration of Pascha with that conjunction! That conjunction, γάρ, needs to be followed by something. And that something is the challenge for us today. What will we do? When the fear is over, what will we do with our lives? What new world will take shape?
To illumine your path, here is a beautiful image of the women at the tomb, as described in chapter 16 of Mark. This is the work of Julia Stankova and is offered here with her permission. (juliastankova)
