The Advent poem this morning is built again
on an imaginary scene from the life of
John Mark.
John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark.
He also had a mother named Mary who
owned a house in Jerusalem, we learn in
the Book of Acts.
There was a servant in this house named
Rhoda, a servant girl.
The setting that this poem takes is the
early sixties, first century.
In Timothy's house in the city of Ephesus
with Timothy's children sitting on the hearth in
front of John Mark.
John Mark sat by the winter flames in
Ephesus with little James and Mary on the
floor in front of him and watched the
children hunt for words to ask why tears
ran down his smiling face.
He held a brown and beaten parchment in
his hand and fingered tenderly the band that
Timothy had broken just an hour before.
Oh, sweet, sweet trust, he thought.
Is there a taste among mere men more
pleasant than the tongue of one dear friend
who says to some self-doubting soul, I
trust you.
Come and be my toil and battle mate
and let us venture something great.
He closed his eyes and let his mind
imagine ending well, refined but not defeated by
the fear of man.
His faithful wife sat near him on the
hearth and understood more deeply than an angel
could or any man because it touched the
woman in his life who clutched the hope
of love long scorned more than it touched
the feeling of a man.
At last the little James found words.
Sometimes my daddy says the birds don't sow
or reap but God takes care of them
and they have clothes to wear and food
to eat so you don't need to be
afraid.
When I learn how to read, he told
me yesterday, you might be finished with your
book.
At night, he said, he'd read me lots
of things that Jesus said.
My daddy brings me up to bed at
night and lays his hand here on my
head and prays and blesses me.
He said that when he has your book,
he'll bless me then with lots more words
of Jesus.
I sure hope you're not too sad to
try to finish, Mr. Mark.
That's what the children called John Mark and
not with first names.
Timothy had taught them fearlessness was not the
same as disrespect and that a name and
title take more pluck and poise in youth
than treating men like boys.
What makes you think, young man, that I'm
afraid?
John Mark replied, one time my daddy was
afraid to tell the silversmiths that if they
sell their images and don't trust Jesus Christ,
they'd miss eternal life.
And later, I could hear him through the
floorboard cry.
And when I saw your tears tonight, I
thought that maybe it was fright and you
remember being scared and then felt sorry.
John Mark stared at James and Mary on
the floor and marveled.
Young man, you know more at five than
most men know who live to be ten
times your age.
So give thanks, son.
Your father cares enough to show his heart
and doesn't bluff his way around the truth.
You've been well taught.
But even now, and in a family like
this, there might be something you can learn
tonight.
Then Mary spoke.
Our daddy said that we don't have to
go to bed so long as you tell
stories and we stay awake and I can
stand up if I have to so I
don't get sleepy.
Then James added, won't you tell us, Mr.
Mark, why you were sorrowful but smiling through
your tears?
And why the parchment there is special?
John Mark was aware of Rhoda's eyes.
They seemed to say, John, tell these little
ones the way God made a marriage in
a man.
So John Mark leaned down and began, well,
children, let me tell you first a big
mistake.
One of the worst I ever made some
15 years ago.
God set me free from fears that I
had felt through all my life and gave
to me a godly wife.
The great apostle Paul told me in Antioch,
he thought that we should go together on
the sea to Cyprus, Barnabas and he and
I, because I knew the laws and customs
there and Jesus was unknown.
I grew up there, a strict and kosher
Jew and never kicked against the rules.
I never shook an unclean hand.
I never took a meal with Gentiles all
my life.
At this point, John Mark saw his wife
wince as she always did at this point
in the story.
But the kiss that flew between their faces
fell like petals from a rose, pastel and
sweet, and sailed like laden ships with fragrant
smiles across her lips.
And so we set out for the King
of Kings and preached Christ through a string
of synagogues and saw the Word awaken hundreds
when they heard that Jesus the Messiah came,
just like the prophet Micah's claim in Bethlehem,
and that He died the way Isaiah prophesied
for sins, and how on Him God laid
all our iniquity, then made Him rise up
from the dead, prolong His days forever, put
a song in all those who believe, and
count them righteous from an endless fount of
grace.
My days on Cyprus passed in joy and
harmony.
At last we sailed from Paphos on the
western coast, and then at dawn the next
day, Paul and Barnabas and I and those
who went with us from Cyprus landed on
the coast of southern Asia where the boast
of raw Pamphilian sin was bold, and Perga's
pagan priests extolled the goddess Leto, Mother of
the World, they said, and here is where
I made my great mistake.
I watched the trade of leadership from Barnabas
to Paul, the younger man, and thus from
that day on Paul preached, and I was
stunned at how he reached out to the
Gentile pagans there and ate with them, and
didn't care if he had washed his hands.
He talked to merchants on the Sabbath, walked
among the prostitutes, ignored the dietary laws, explored
the pagan temples and their shrines, and with
the gospel quoted lines from godless heathen poetry,
and preached that we are free from Jewish
ways and even loosed from circumcision, he reduced
the whole demand of how someone is justified
with God, and none of all these laws
the least avails but this alone, our faith.
It fails to honor Moses and the law,
I thought.
That was my dreadful flaw and my big
mistake.
What happened then, James said?
I left the team, and when I got
home to Jerusalem, I told the elders, all
of them, what I had seen, and they
began to plan a team to go and
teach in Antioch that no one preach in
Jesus' name that Jewish laws are cancelled now.
A lengthy pause revealed that Mary there was
sound asleep, but little James was wound up
like a spring and said, Were you afraid
you might be wrong?
It's true what Paul was saying, isn't it?
It is.
And ever since I quit, I knew the
bottom of my great mistake was not the
worth and weight of truth, but fear, just
like you said.
The many forms of fear and dread.
The fear of mobs in Perga.
Fear of elders and apostles near my home
that I have known for years.
Fear of change and fear of peers, and
deep, deep down the fear that Jews might
have to eat with Greeks and lose our
vaunted eminence among the nations and the glory
sung for centuries that we alone of all
the peoples could be known by God's electing
grace.
So then, said James, how did you change?
And when did you feel free from fear?
Two ways, my little sage.
The first displays the power of truth well
voiced.
And second, how the Lord rejoiced to free
me from the reflex of disgust and put
a kind of love here in its place
that I doubt not will last forever.
First, Paul got a chance to make his
case before the elders on the council floor
there in Jerusalem.
And I heard truth so mighty and so
high, it filled the room with light.
And then James, Jesus' brother, spoke.
And when he did, I broke.
He quoted from the prophet Amos.
There will come a day, he said, when
God will take from all the foreign tribes
and make a dwelling for His king and
call them by His name and they will
fall in worship as the Israel of God
in Christ and He will dwell with them
and they with Him and there will be
one flock and they will wear one righteousness.
My arguments collapsed and fell just like the
tents of Midian.
And I told Paul that I was wrong.
He said, for all you've done, I do
forgive you, Mark.
But you must show that this new ark
of truth can float.
And so we went our separate ways.
And Jesus sent to me a liberty I
would not thought was possible.
And could not have in any other way.
James interrupted him to say, Is this the
other thing God did for you, the way
you said, to rid you from the reflex
of disgust?
It is, my little James.
And trust me here, this was the sweetest
pain and surgery I'll ever gain.
I fell in love with Rhoda, James.
The boy looked up and saw the flames
of love in Rhoda's burning eyes.
She was, John said, a precious prize I
never wanted, little James.
Why not, the boy inquired.
It shames me just to speak the truth,
John said.
Because she was a Greek.
And bred with Gentile blood.
And servant girl who cleaned our house.
A hidden pearl behind polluted hands.
And I avoided her.
Until the sky of my deceit and arrogance
came crashing down at once.
And suddenly, I loved what I once called
a swine.
And found to my astonishment that she had
long loved me in spite of all my
wrong.
So James, that was the fatal thrust against
the reflex of disgust.
And there she sits, my liberty.
The servant girl that set me free.
Now all one heard was crackling fire.
And then James spoke.
May I inquire once more tonight?
The parchment, sir?
What's that?
This, James, is like the myrrh the wise
men brought to Jesus.
Or like honey, sweet to taste and more
to be desired than precious gold.
It is a priceless letter rolled and sent
from the Apostle Paul.
He tells your dad, give Mark this call.
I want you here in Rome, he wrote.
Because I've seen the ark does float.
And now on Christmas Eve, we light the
candle here and pray.
Oh, might the holy flame of truth burn
bright.
And here consume the works of night.
And may the doctrines that we trace advance
the purposes of grace.
And all the wisdom from above promote the
great designs of love.
And so may everyone be meek.
In Christ there is no Jew or Greek.
And may we too be freed from fear.
And every race be welcome here.