If you enjoy these weekly emails, you could show your support by buying a copy of my latest book, The Gospel According To Sitcom Writer. I’m having a batch of fresh copies delivered next week. Why not buy one while they’re fresh? I’ll mail it you with a personal note, and the book signed. It could be a gift for someone? You could also get a copy of The Sacred Art of Joking while you’re there. And for the next two weeks, order a copy of The Gospel According To Sitcom Writer and you’ll get FREE access to my stand-up theology live show, Water into Wine. How about that?
25th April is St Mark’s Day.
Mark is the writer of the Gospel of St Mark, later known as John Mark in Acts. There is very little dispute about this and the fact that Peter is the main source for this gospel, since Mark was not one of the Twelve. But did he meet Jesus in person? Hold your winged lions. We’ll get to that in good time.
Given Mark’s credentials and close alignment with the mighty St Peter, one would imagine that St Mark’s Day is the cause of at least some celebration. No. Historically, there is little record of St Mark’s Day commemorations, other than at Church’s dedicated to him. Currently that total stands at 179 Anglican churches in England, placing Mark at the bottom of the top 20 most common church dedications.
St Mark is, of course, featured in many a stained-glass window, along with his fellow Evangelists, Matthew, Luke and John. Mark will always be second from the left, and is often accompanied by a lion. It might even be a winged lion. This is most prominent in Venice, home to St Mark’s Square and Basilica. You can see them in the background of this painting from 1516 by a Venetian called Carpaccio who was not, as his name might suggest, a charcutier but an artist:
When writing about St George, I got a little carried away with fire-breathing winged lizards aka dragons, although I stand by it all. On this occasion, I’m happy to admit the winged lion of St Mark is purely symbolic. In Christian tradition, the four Evangelists were each ascribed a creature based on the strange prophetic vision of Ezekiel 1.
Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. (Ezekiel 1:10-11)
Matthew is ascribed the human face, Mark the lion, Luke the ox and John the eagle.
We can look at the other evangelists on their day but for now Mark is given the Lion as his gospel is a kingly one. Jesus is ‘the Lion of Judah’ a direct descendant of Judah’s line. In Genesis 49, Jacob’s blessing on Judah is as follows:
Judah, your brothers will praise you;
your hand will be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons will bow down to you.
You are a lion’s cub, Judah;
you return from the prey, my son.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down,
like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?
The sceptre will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he to whom it belongs shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his.
He will tether his donkey to a vine,
his colt to the choicest branch;
he will wash his garments in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
His eyes will be darker than wine,
his teeth whiter than milk.
This is all well and good but at no point does Mark mention the name Judah in his gospel. But the lion is a kingly beast. And Mark’s gospel is all about Jesus being the Messiah - literally ‘anointed one’ in Hebrew or ‘Christ’ in Greek.
The irony running through Mark’s gospel is that the only ones who can see Jesus’s kingliness and divinity clearly are demons, Blind Bartimeus and the centurion at the foot of the Cross.
Following the King
However, Mark’s gospel is every bit as concerned about what it means to follow the king. After Peter confesses that Jesus is ‘the Christ’ in Mark 8:29, he is told that:
the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
Peter takes this badly, takes Jesus asides, and sets him straight on a few things. Jesus labels him ‘Satan’ for his trouble. He has a long way to go before understanding the way of the cross.
Mark’s Encounter with Jesus?
A key encounter in the book is with a young man who runs up to Jesus asking how he can be saved. When he is told to sell everything and give it away, he “goes away sad because he has great wealth” (Mark 10:22) His wealth is the one thing stopping him from following Jesus. It’s a stark contrast to Bartimaeus shortly afterwards who threw aside his precious cloak – probably his only possession – in order to come to Jesus.
Some Church traditions say that the rich young ruler is Mark himself. There is no hard evidence for this. John Mark did come from a wealthy family so it’s not impossible. And when the man says he’s kept the commandments since he was a boy, Jesus does something he does nowhere else in Mark’s gospel:
“Jesus looked at him and loved him.”
In Mark’s gospel, this is the only time Jesus looks at someone with love. How would Mark know that? Only if he saw that love, went away sad but returned in time for his second appearance in his gospel, this time in the Garden of Gethsemane:
Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. (Mark 14:50-52)
It is suggested that Mark has included this autobiographical detail about himself. Again, we have no hard evidence of this, but it’s fun to speculate. Sadly, this incident is never rendered in stained glass in our churches. But if it were, this is the best BingPics can give us:
To honour St Mark, I won’t recommend running naked through your garden or the church yard. But given Mark’s gospel is the shortest, how about sitting down and reading it rather what watching yet another hour of Netflix? Mark’s gospel contains significantly less nudity, although it clearly contains some.
Moreover, Mark has more miracles than any other gospel. And it moves as fast as Mark in Gethsemane, jump-cutting from scene to scene like a movie directed by Edgar Wright:
So why not celebrate Mark and read about Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, and figure out how to follow him?
While you’re washing up or walking the dog, you could listen to the latest episode of Cooper and Cary Have Words. We talk about a fascinating article by Ted Gioia called The State of the Culture 2024. Link below.
Barry and I talked to Nate Morgan Locke about entertainment, distraction and addiction. He came up with a neat way of summarising the state of the culture that’s in this 30-second clip: