Mark is an Evangelist who
doesn’t mess about. He goes headlong into things.
As he tells us, here we
have the beginning of his Gospel. Then in only the first eight verses that we
have as our reading for today he briefly gives us an important prophecy from
the prophet Isaiah, and then pushes John the Baptist on to the stage. But in
four short verses he manages to sum up completely his whole life.
Then in the very next verse
he brings on Jesus and before you know it has him baptised. We are swiftly
moved on to Jesus temptation in the wilderness and by verse fourteen, before we
have even turned the page, Mark launches into an account of Jesus’ public
ministry. Whew!
It is breathtaking, and it
is wonderful. Mark goes straight for it. He is a no-nonsense Evangelist, no
frills, just the essentials. But you can understand his logic. It is after all
Good News, and so why go around the houses. Get down to basics, and do it fast.
Not only is he swift but
also he is uncompromising. We get the prophecy about a messenger coming before
Jesus and as soon as he gives it to us Mark says: ‘…and so it was that
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness.’ No qualifications. From prophecy
to fulfilment in one breath.
And not some people from
Judea and not some people from Jerusalem went to receive Baptism from John. No,
for Mark tells us it was all the people from Judea and all the
people from Jerusalem.
Neither is it the Good News
about Jesus who was a nice bloke and who from reading this story about him you
might come round to thinking that he was the Son of God. No, for Mark, it is
unequivocal. This is the Good News about Jesus, the Son of God.
Mark is a true believer and
he is not going to hang around and wait for you to make up your mind. He gets
in there and proclaims the Gospel. He is, in a way, just like John the
Baptist—uncompromising. And I believe that is just how one should be with the
Gospel—uncompromising. Why be anything other? Why water it down. Why apologise?
We have been given a
precious treasure. We have been given a sacred duty by the High King of Heaven.
In the words Mark himself uses, we have been instructed to ‘Go out to the whole
world, proclaim the Good News to all creation.’
In his own way the prophet
Isaiah is just as uncompromising: ‘Let every valley be filled in, every
mountain and hill laid low.’ Plenty of work there for the JCB drivers in our
congregation. And I’m sure they wouldn’t hang about either.
But Isaiah also gives us a
tenderness that is found missing in Mark. Yes he has the trumpeter go up the
high mountain to blare out his message at Jerusalem and he has the Lord coming
in glory, with power and as a victor. But he also lets us know the gentler side
that the Lord will be like a shepherd feeding his flock and gathering his lambs
to his breast.
But what is all this about?
The answer is clear: both Isaiah and Mark in their somewhat similar but yet
also different ways are proclaiming to the world the most important event that
ever happened or ever will happen to the human race—the incarnation of our Lord
and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
This incomparable event
that burst on the world 2000 years ago deserves some direct language. And I
suggest that it deserves some direct language even today, perhaps more
especially today.
People around us are
watering our religion down, in fact we do it ourselves, ‘Oh, its only a small
sin, God wouldn’t worry his head about that.’ Listen to yourselves saying it to
yourself if not to others. When it comes to Christmas even Christians reduce
the holiest night of the year to the level of twittering robins on a glitter
covered so-called Christmas card with a capital X. The razzmatazz of the
multi-million pound shopping conglomerates has hijacked Christmas and reduced
it to a saccharine coated message of shop-till-you-drop.
Mark and Isaiah and John
the Baptist, and even Jesus himself, all used uncompromising language. Why?
Because surely they knew better than anyone that the message of God would be
compromised all down the line till today and well beyond.
But it wasn’t what the
commercial world would do that bothered them it is what you and I do. It is
about our belief and out faith and whether we give precedence to the teaching
of Jesus and the rules and doctrines of his Church.
So let us stick to our
guns. Let us have the confidence of a Mark or a John the Baptist and stick our
necks out a bit and take up the task that Jesus has given us to go out and
proclaim the Good News.
Notice the words ‘go
out’—not stay in and watch the mass from Westminster Cathedral on the telly. Be
clear about it, just going out to Church on a Sunday morning is already in a
very concrete way beginning to carry out this mission.
But it is also more active
than that. It is important to get this far, here to Church on a Sunday; but
from here we are impelled much further. As the priest says at the end of each
mass: ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’ That’s active. Loving and
serving the Lord can’t be done sitting slouched on a sofa.
Loving and serving the Lord
is what we are here for, it is our privileged task, we were chosen and selected
for this sacred ministry by God himself. So let’s not shrink back from it,
let’s not water it down, let’s not compromise it.
And by our loving and
serving we will be creating that ‘new heaven and a new earth’ that St Peter
talks about. The world about us will one day collapse into flames and something
entirely new will be revealed by God.
But it won’t be new or
unfamiliar to us, because we know that it will be the fulfilment of all that
God has promised, of all that we have been proclaiming, of all that we have
been waiting for.