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![[Photo of the Colosseum in Rome]](rome.jpg)
“The men seized Jesus and arrested him [and] 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 14:46, 50–52)
Jerusalem, AD 30. Despite the joyous arrival of Jesus Christ into Israel’s capital a week earlier things for the followers of this enigmatic religious leader take a turn for the worst at a prayer meeting in a garden called Gethsemane. An armed mob, tipped off by a former friend and disciple, backed-up by the strong arm of the law and the local aristocracy make a noisy entrance, arrest Jesus and leave. Peter draws his sword and cuts off the High Priest’s servant’s ear. Everyone flees despite only a few hours earlier claiming they would never abandon their leader. And for one young man, to fear and cowardice was added embarrassment, as he returned home that night with no clothes on, stark naked.
Rome, AD 66. The Roman Empire, now thirteen years under the rule of Nero, finds its capital teeming with people called ‘Christians’. These followers of Jesus Christ — a man said to have died and then risen again over thirty years earlier — now worship their God in the houses and churches of the streets of Rome. In one corner of the city, in an upstairs room, two men talk. The first, an aged and respected elder lies back on his bed and speaks of the curious night he cut somebody’s ear off. The second younger man, sits at a table and writes. He laughs to himself quietly. That was the same night he lost his clothes …
The career of John Mark, the likely author of the third gospel, is a secret hidden in the shadows of New Testament History. Papias writing in c. AD 140 quoted a source as saying that Mark assembled the earliest comprehensive rendition of the life of Christ under the direction of the apostle Peter. Peter, the gruff and blunt fisherman disciple, now frail and near to death (he was martyred under Nero whilst in Rome) had just promised in his second preserved letter to “make every effort to see that after my departure, you [the church] will always be able to remember … our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:15,16). Wanting an appropriate scribe to record the events of Christ’s life, Peter found in Mark a fellow eyewitness, somebody young and energetic who would be responsible for copying and distributing the manuscript.
For Mark, however, things had not always been so good. If indeed he was implicitly the naive teenager who fled naked that night in Gethsemane then his sole recorded act contemporary to Christ was one of shamefulness and weakness. Despite this, Mark had all the potential to go far in the early church. He was the son of Mary, an influential Christian lady who lived in Jerusalem and held meetings in her house (Acts 12:12) and often Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas on short journeys (Acts 12:25). Not surprisingly, then, that this young hopeful was called to the front line for more demanding work and was appointed as a helper to Paul and Barnabas as they left for their first missionary journey c. AD 46. But even though John Mark received the blessing of the church at Antioch, successfully completed an evangelistic tour of Cyprus and witnessed many miracles, he deserts the party at Perga to return home (Acts 13:13). Why did he leave? It is not clear from Scripture although homesickness for Jerusalem, a personality clash with Paul or serious illness have been suggested by scholars today. As Mark’s boat touched into Caeserea and he made the short trek to Jerusalem, the thought must have crossed his mind that not for the first time he had deserted friends in need.
Three years later, Paul and Barnabas were planning their next missionary journey and Mark’s name was put forward again. Paul was unconvinced: he wanted little to do with an unreliable youth prone to deserting. Barnabas, a cousin to Mark, preferred to offer a second chance. The dispute turned frosty and the two missionaries parted company because of the argument (Acts 15:35–41). Things could not have turned out worse for Mark: he had indirectly caused a rift between the most famous missionary duo of the early church.
If our knowledge ended there we would be justified in thinking that Mark, sunk by his failures, disappeared into the anonymity of the early church, assumed a minor role or, at worst, lost his faith altogether. Acts picks up the story of Paul and Silas and tells us nothing further of Barnabas or John Mark.
The story is not finished though. Written about ten years after Mark’s desertion, Paul’s letters to the church in Colosse and to Philemon contain greetings from a “Mark, the cousin of Barnabas” (Col 4:10). By the time Nero had been Emperor of Rome for a decade Paul — now in chains for his faith — writes his second letter to Timothy about c. 63 AD. The Apostle makes a plea: “Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry” (2 Tim 4:11). And so, some twenty years late Mark is reinstated at the forefront of the early church work and is accepted once again by Paul. In returning to Rome we expect that Mark made his connections with Peter here and the first comprehensive life of Christ was compiled. With the benefit of hindsight we see that Mark’s gifts did not lie in frontier missionary work, but rather he was an essential tool and a faithful brother to the aging apostolic generation.
We don’t know if Mark took his sources from the immaculate Jewish oral tradition which Peter and his contemporaries may well have subscribed to, whether he consulted a variety of older fragmentary writings, or even if he just used his own and Peter’s combined knowledge to assemble his account, but his book remains, as the NIV Study Bible says, “a simple, succinct, unadorned, yet vivid account of Jesus’ ministry”.
And this must surely be the point of the story. Peter, Mark and Paul would have it no other way. The very reason the book was written in the first place was to allow others to look into these things themselves. When we now peer into this ancient text we find the Mark depicts an active Jesus, (a man of wise words but not at the expense of action), a compassionate Jesus (influential in high places but who preferred the company of beggars and prostitutes) and a loving Jesus (who chose to sacrifice himself as a payment for a fallen mankind). For the writer of the gospel, the last point is the punch-line: the book is steeped in the significance of the cross. From the very first verse John Mark unashamedly advocates Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the promised saviour of the world.
The question before us is the same one dealt with by Peter and Mark nearly 2000 years ago. It is the same question which thousands have faced when coming face to face with the life, teachings, death and resurrection of the Christ of the New Testament gospels. It is also the same question we face today:
“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”
(Mark 8:29)
This term the Christian Union — in affiliation with the Universities, Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) — has several thousand copies of Mark’s Gospel available free. The campaign is called Identity and has been set up to encourage students to look into the claims Jesus Christ made about himself. For more information about Identity, or to receive a free copy of Mark’s Gospel write to socs25@york.ac.uk.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005