The man came to my door late Wednesday afternoon. It was hot, and I’d left my office door open to catch the breeze as I sat counseling with a couple. I was totally engrossed in our conversation as I became aware of the man at the door. He was tall, thin, probably mid-fifties or so, and he was holding a business card in his hand. When I looked toward him, he said, “I’m a computer support person, and I’m looking for the office.” I responded, “The office is closed.” He looked at me for a long moment, nodded his head, turned around and went back down the stairs. It took about a minute for me to know how very much I wanted a do-over, and by that time, he was long gone.
It’s pretty easy for me to imagine the man’s story. Many years ago, as the aerospace recession was making its way west, I was laid off from my drafting job in Phoenix. I looked for work every way I knew how, and I finally got out the phone book and made a list of every small business that I thought might possibly need someone to do some drafting on a contract basis. I bundled up some samples of my work and began knocking on doors in search of work. The list wasn’t very long in those days, and I didn’t get any work, but at least no one was rude to me. I hope no one else has been rude to the man who came to our door.
Early in the week, I had been thinking I would preach today about testifying. I was especially drawn to the passage from Isaiah—How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” I thought also about the passage from Ephesians and Paul’s urging to speak the truth in love. Since the encounter on Wednesday, when I neither announced good news nor told the truth in love, I’ve realized that I still need to talk today about testifying. The thing is—everything we do testifies to who we are. Everything we do paints a picture for the people we meet in every single day of our lives. Everything we say—everything we do—everything we don’t say or do sends a message.
That’s where our patron saint comes into the story. Today we celebrate our patronal feast — the feast of St. Mark, for whom our church is named. This would be a really good day to tell you all about Mark, the writer of the earliest gospel. I’d like to tell you a few snippets about his life, his ministry, his theology, his understanding of the Good News. I really would. Unfortunately, as I’ve said every year, we really don’t know very much about any of those things. We don’t really even know who this man Mark was. Tradition leaves us with a blurry picture of a man whom we can’t identify. So why do we call Mark a saint? Why do we honor him? Why is he important to us?
Perhaps Mark is important to us because he shows us the key. By the time Mark wrote, people had been preaching Jesus as the Christ for several decades. If we had only the letters written by Paul, written before Mark’s gospel, we would have a clear picture of the way God has acted in the world through Christ, but we would have no picture of Jesus himself or of his life.
Mark paints that picture for us, and the portrait begins with the first words he writes:
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”
Mark helps us know the man who refused to show off his power in order to prove himself—a man who would certainly have refused to do snake-handling or poison-drinking tricks to point to his connection with God. Mark shows us the pattern of grace-filled life that Jesus gives us. Mark records Jesus’ commandment to love God and our neighbor. Throughout the gospel legacy Mark gives us, we see the picture of a man who never stopped speaking and teaching and living the good news of God’s grace he was sent to give us. Mark shows us a man who lives in awareness of grace.
And the good news, my friends, is that grace is still with us. It surrounds us and it’s always in us. You heard me correctly. Grace is always in us. Whether we’re living in grace is another matter. It’s our choice whether to live in or out of the grace. We’re in grace when our faces are turned to God. We’re in grace when we feel the presence of God. We’re in grace when we know how we are blessed. It’s not always easy to know when we’re out of the grace. Sometimes we figure it out as soon as we’ve said the words we regret or as soon as we realize we’ve made a choice to live outside our baptismal covenant. Late Wednesday afternoon, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had not been in grace when I spoke with the man at my door. Sometimes we don’t know we’re out—we don’t know we’ve stopped paying attention to the grace that surrounds us—until the Holy Spirit breaks into our lives in a way that leaves us breathless with the nearness of God.
Mark helps us by giving us a key—by showing us through Jesus’ actions and teachings how to pay right-now, immediate, in this very moment attention to God’s presence. He shows us how—and God calls us to show others. Each of us shares Mark’s ministry of evangelism, the ministry of telling the good news to the people we meet. Telling the good news does not mean we are called to convince or coerce or change anyone. What it means is that we are each called to show others how God’s grace brings new life to our lives every day. It means that we are called to acknowledge our flaws and our failures—as well as our trust in God’s forgiveness—whenever we miss the mark. It means that we are called to know how grace changes our own lives. And all this means we have to give it a little thought.
So as we celebrate the gift of this St. Mark’s community, I invite you to ask yourself some questions: What is the Good News in your life? How do you experience God’s grace in our community? With whom do you want to share the Good News?