For the Episcopal Cafe Website
by Rev. Liz Jones

Job: 12:7-8, 10

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; The birds of the air and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. In Gods hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.“

I have just returned from South Florida, a place near Sebastian Inlet, on the eastern shores of the Atlantic, and one of my most favorite beaches in the world. It is a wild and unkempt beach. There are no houses, as it is a nature preserve, and lots of land turtles and sea grapes, a wonderful bush that grows leaves that we used to serve salad on when I lived there 50 years ago. This is old Florida, a very old Florida at its best.

Here, the Atlantic is teeming with life, as is the shore. The water is green and blue with easily three- and four-foot waves, cresting in raucous white foam. The sounds are only gorgeous nature: the crashing of waves, the hawking of a gull. The sky reaches to forever; the billowing high clouds, pushed aside by only the sun. Only the silent munching on my ankles of tiny biting mites impacts this idyllic moment.

Best of all, however, is that this is a mothering ground for three different species of turtles: the Green, the Loggerhead, and the Hawksbill. These giant beasts, at least as far as turtles are concerned, live out their lives in a seagrass sea that is 25 miles out, coming in only to lay their eggs and then return to the sea, year after year.

We had our first loggerhead tracks this year, just seen three days ago. Each morning my old friend who I was staying with gets up and is on the beach for sunrise, looking for the tracks of a tremendous turtle dragging herself out of the ocean, up the beach to the shore line, sometimes making a decoy nest, so the raccoons will not find her precious clutch, and then just at dawn dragging her body back down the beach, finally reaching the ocean not to be seen for perhaps, another year. It is an exhaustive journey, and yet she is driven to do it. Which of course, is the point about Mark.

That fishing buddy of Jesus‘s was a man who became committed like our turtles, to depositing his clutch, determined that his story of Jesus would live on forever and in doing so saving the world, just like the Loggerhead.

I’m so glad I’ve met them both: one through scripture and the other through this magnificent planet, Earth. Blessed Mark; blessed Earth Day.

The Feast day of St. Mark

Mark the Evangelist is the person who is traditionally ascribed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark. According to Church tradition, Mark founded the episcopal (Lower case “e”) see of Alexandria, which was one of the five most important sees of early Christianity.
His feast day is celebrated on April 25, and his symbol is the winged lion.

Much of what we know about St. Mark, the author of the Second Gospel, comes largely from the New Testament and early Christian traditions. Mark the Evangelist is believed to be the ‘John Mark’ referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, the history of the early Church found in the Canon of the New Testament.

He was the son of Mary of Jerusalem (Acts 12:12) whose home became a meeting place for the apostles. He is also the cousin of St. Barnabas (Colossians 4:10), a Levite and a Cypriot.

Mark joined St. Paul and St. Barnabas on their first missionary journey to Antioch in 44 A.D. When the group reached Cyprus, Christian tradition holds that Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem, possibly because he was missing his home (Acts 13:13). This incident may have caused Paul to question whether Mark could be a reliable missionary. This created a disagreement between Paul and Barnabas and led Paul to refuse Mark’s accompaniment on their second journey to the churches of Cilicia and the rest of Asia Minor.

However, it can be assumed the troubles between Paul and Mark did not last long, because when Paul was first imprisoned, Mark, who was at the time in Rome with plans of visiting Asia Minor, visited him as one of his trusted companions (Col 4:10).

Mark’s hopes to visit Asia Minor were most likely carried out, because during Paul’s second captivity and just before his martyrdom, Paul wrote to Timothy at Ephesus advising him to “take Mark and bring him with you [to Rome], for he is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). If Mark returned to Rome at this time, he was probably there when Paul was martyred.

According to Christian tradition, Mark also held a close relationship with St. Peter, who referred to Mark has ‘his son’ in his letter addressed to a number of churches in Asia Minor (1 Peter 5:13). Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Papias all indicate that Mark was an interpreter for Peter.

Although Papias states Mark had not personally heard the Lord speak firsthand and, like Luke, Mark was not one of the twelve apostles, some believe Mark was likely speaking of himself when he wrote the description of Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemani. “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked” (Mark 14:51-52).

St. Mark lived for years in Alexandria, where he died as a martyr while being dragged through the streets.

Mark’s Gospel was probably written between 60 and 70 A.D., and was based upon the teachings of St. Peter. It is believed Mark provided both Luke and Matthew with basic sources for their Gospel’s.

He was probably the first bishop of Alexandria, Egypt and the founder of the Church of Alexandria, although he is not mentioned in connection to the city by either Clement of Alexandria nor by Origen.

In 828, relics of St. Mark were stolen from Alexandria and taken to Venice, Italy. There they are enshrined in a beautiful cathedral dedicated to the saint.

St. Mark’s symbol is a winged lion. This is believed to be derived from his description of St. John the Baptist, as “a voice of one crying out in the desert” (Mark 1:3). The wings come from Ezekiel’s vision of four winged creatures as the evangelists.

He is often depicted as writing or holding his Gospel. He is sometimes shown as a bishop on a throne or as a man helping Venetian sailors.

From the Catholic Online website and Wikipedia

Artwork Details

During the Easter season, Sermons That Work is pleased to present reflections from bishops of The Episcopal Church on the resurrection of our Lord. Check back each week for a brief exploration of how Jesus Christ’s rising from the grave changes everything. To listen to this reflection, scan the QR code on this page and subscribe to the Sermons That Work podcast.

The Gospel for the Sunday after Easter tells us of Thomas who, famously, in his doubt, requires the certainty of touching His Lord’s hands and side before he will believe. The Lord does not rebuke him, though He does bless the later followers ready to believe without this evidence. But at the hearing of His Lord’s voice, Thomas, without touching, responds in faith: “My Lord and my God.” This is a reflection on these themes.

In chapter 15 of his first letter to the Church in Corinth, Paul tells us that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then “we are of all people most to be pitied” (v. 19). Apparently Eastertide is joyful, but also risky! God Himself is clearly not risk averse: witness how He enlists Adam, Abraham, Mary, etc. in risky missions with varied results. Likewise the risen Jesus Christ calls us His people to a risky following. In this vein, great modern philosophers have compared the life of faith to a gamble (Pascal) or a leap (Kiekegaard).

On the other hand, we who are “wearied by the changes and chances” of this life (Book of Common Prayer) quite reasonably come to church to rest in something that can be counted on, that is certain. Isn’t this what Jesus encourages us to do when he tells us to build our homes on rock and not sand (Matthew 7:24)? How do we balance the reality of risk and the longing for something certain? How can we conceive of this certainty that does not close off our minds and hearts?

In the thirteen century, Thomas Aquinas poses for himself this very question: is hope certain (Summa II/II, 18.4)? He answered “yes and no,” which may seem the kind of answer that gave scholastics a bad name! But it is what he means by “yes and no” which is helpful to us. Do we have a certain hope in Christ? Thomas replies that, insofar as we are doing the hoping, it is most uncertain, like everything about us. But insofar as it is Christ in whom we hope, it is utterly certain. By “certain,” he does not mean something that can be proved with a theorem, but rather he means that the One in whom we hope is trustworthy. “Certainty,” like faith, has a “fiduciary” dimension.

At the heart of the Christian life is being summoned anew by the news of the resurrection of Jesus. It does not depend on us, as if faith were some problem solved in our heads (though God does call us to faithful thinking), nor an exertion of our will (though He would have us love Him with all our wills). Rather we are continually turned away from our untrustworthy selves to our trustworthy Lord. As a result, I am given the gift of an uncertain certainty, by which, on the disciples’ path, beset by doubts, I am enabled to say, “My Lord and my God.”

This reflection, titled “Certain”, was written by the Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner, Bishop of Dallas. He has served, among other places, in central Tanganyika, Navajoland in The Episcopal Church, and as principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto. He has written a book on the relation of Christianity to other religions, a book on the theology of ordination, and a commentary on Daniel from a missiological perspective.