No Insignificant Parts in the Body of Christ

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Rev. Steve Felton

Typed from audio transcript

Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

"Get Mark and bring him with you because he's helpful to me in my ministry."

In addition to serving as Pastoral Assistant down at Trinity on University Avenue, I also work downtown at the same place some of the members here do where I analyze business needs and then I write computer programs to try to satisfy those needs. Not too long ago, I was making a change to about a 14,000-line program and I made a little mistake in it. As a result of that mistake, we sent out messages and assessed a late charge totaling something over $100,000 to a bunch of customers who weren't really late. As a result, we got lots of phone calls and a lot of people other than me got to apologize for my mistake, and it just created a whole lot of work and more than a little embarrassment. It was just a little mistake, too. A small, insignificant thing I thought. But that shows you how vitally important small, insignificant things can be when you spread them out and you look at the whole picture and all the effects they have.

It was the same kind of point that St. Paul made when he wrote to the Corinthians in the 12th Chapter of his first letter. He said, "Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." Now he wasn't just talking about our human bodies. He was talking about the greater body of the church, and he was talking about the weaker parts of the church, the members that you don't think much of or we don't seem to be stars or at least we aren't the ones up waving our arms around and leading. They're indispensable. The evangelist, St. Mark, was just such a humble but indispensable part of the church. Compared to other people who lived at the time of Jesus, like Peter or Paul or even Timothy, who Paul was writing to, well, Mark doesn't seem to have played such a critical role at all. In fact, tradition says he was the young man that was talked about in Mark 14, the time when Jesus was arrested in the garden. It said, "A young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus and when they seized him, he fled naked leaving his garment behind." Now if you want someone who's important in the church, that's not the kind of passage that sets you up for importance exactly.

But Mark's work behind the scenes was vitally important to Paul and to Peter and to Timothy, and his work behind the scenes bore a lot of fruit. We know him best as the inspired writer of the second gospel, a work that has brought blessing upon the church through the centuries and continues to bring blessing today. Brady got to hear a little bit of that work just a little bit ago, in fact.

Today, we consider how God has blessed us all through Mark, the faithful assistant. So who was he? Sometimes, in the scriptures, he's called John Mark. And sometimes, in the scriptures, he's just called Mark. And other places, he's called just John. But every place he's written about, the context makes it evident that it is the same God. He gave faithful service to Timothy, for instance, because when Paul wrote the letter, he was evidently helping Timothy out in his ministry. At that time, that was probably in the region of Ephesus in the southwest corner of what is now Turkey.

Mark also gave faithful service to St. Paul. In the early years, they had a rift between them. In St. Paul's first missionary journey, John Mark went along on that journey and, when they got to Perga, Mark turned aside and he went back to Jerusalem. It's evident from Acts 15 when Paul was putting together the second missionary journey that he considered Mark leaving him to just be an act of desertion. Paul wasn't happy about it all. But later years, Mark found favor with Paul and Mark served him. According to Galatians 4 and according to the letter of Philemon, Paul was working right along with Mark. Mark was right there helping him out. Now Paul, in his ministry, is near the end of his race. That's what he wrote in that part of a letter that we read today.

For you Drake Relays fans, did any of you watch the marathon yesterday? Not a lot of early risers. I was trying to drive around Des Moines, and it seemed like every place I turned, there was a big stream of runners and policemen saying, "Turn here. You can't go through." And I drove around in circles a couple of times before I finally found a way to get around the marathon, but I saw some runners near the end of the race and some of them were looking more than a little bit tired. I think that's what St. Paul felt like. I think he felt about like a marathoner in Mile 23 just hoping that it's going to be over before long. He's ready and he's willing for his race to be over. He's just waiting for his own crown of righteousness. He's feeling lonely in his ministry, like others have run ahead of him and left him behind and others have dropped out of the race and it's just him running now and so what does Paul ask for to help him make it through? He says, "Bring Mark. He's helpful to me in my ministry." And he thought that Mark's faithful service would bring encouragement to him. Mark didn't just help Paul, and he didn't just help Timothy either. He helped Peter, too.

Around 60 A.D., Peter was martyred in Rome. That would be about 30 years after Jesus died and was resurrected to life again. And it said that, as Mark was with Peter in Rome, he collected the stories from Peter telling about all the times that Jesus taught directly to just the twelve disciples and the times that he talked to just Peter and James and John. And Mark put all Peter's stories together with his own remembrances of Jesus' ministry, and he recorded that second gospel for us. Mark was important in the ministry of Peter, too, but he was just an assistant. His faithful service has blessed the church through the centuries, and it still blesses us today. You see, the gospel that Mark recorded, The Good News, he thought it was good news, too, because he just used the word three times today in that lesson we read, his gospel was the same gospel that still brings people to saving faith.

When Brady was baptized, it wasn't just water that saved him. It was water put together with words and that power of God that flows through the words and the power that God chooses to put into the water when it goes with the words that made this brand new Christian, this new brother of ours in the faith. That's the kind of thing that Mark recorded for us, to hear again and to give us confidence again in who we are. The power that God works through the words that Mark recorded and through the other evangelists that they recorded still gives disciples the power to go out and serve faithfully. To serve with reckless abandon in this wild world we live in. Faith produces disciples who are willing to go and serve where they're needed, wherever they're called in the world. Mark was willing to go and serve the apostle Paul, and he was willing to go to Rome where there were Christians being killed. Mark was brought into faith and empowered in the faith by the very words that he recorded.

My former vicarage supervisor, before I ever became a pastor, heard the word of God and it gave him power to travel off to Uzbekistan, about half a world away from here in a very troubled part of the world. And today, day after day, I remember in my prayers Pastor Bob Fiel and his wife, Sue, who are out giving the same words from Mark and the other evangelists to people who do not know Jesus. He's announcing and he's bringing Christ, blessing the people there. How blessed is the congregation that has disciples, whether they're pastors or workers in the church or the lay people sitting in the pew, how blessed is the church to be blessed with disciples who just say, "I'll go where I'm needed, and I'll serve when I'm called." How blessed is Gloria Dei as it prepares to welcome a brand new pastor here, a man who's willing to come and be a faithful assistant and stand at the side of Pastor Burcham as they both then minister to all of you and bring God's Word to you? Who knows what's going to be in store for him and in store for you as you welcome him to this congregation? I'm sure you all have plans, and I just about guarantee you that all your plans won't work out exactly the way you want, because you know what? God has plans, too. That's the way God works. Wherever His words proclaim, then God's plan goes into effect and it gives you the power to work for Him and the power to spread the word out. And even though you think, even in your own life, that I'm going to serve God in this way, sometimes His word gives you the power to serve Him in this way. And as your pastors think they're going to serve you in this way, God's Word works in them and strange things happen as new Christians join the family of God.

How great is our God that He's provided disciples who are willing to go and able to stay the course even when the going gets rough? You know, Des Moines's a pretty sedate city and Urbandale's a pretty calm part of it basically, but we read things in the paper that are disturbing sometimes and we hear those people that we work with say things that don't sound at all like they're part of God's world. And we hear actions and activities on the news that make us think, "What a wilderness we're living in." We're the ones who are surrounded by the servants of Satan. We're the ones who need bolstering and need faith. But how great it is that God's Word comes into our lives and gives us strength even when the going gets tough. We may think we're going to be unstable and not fit to stand up to the task. That's the way Mark was early in his ministry. He went running off and left Paul behind but, later on, he matured and he became a faithful and a courageous helper to the apostles.

That same kind of power that went out to St. Mark is flowing out to us, too, when we hear God's Word. Even if we felt unstable as we do God's work in the church or as we speak to our neighbors or to the others in our family, God's Word pours in and it gives us the chance to stand up and be faithful, to assist those in putting out God's Word.

How great it is that God has provided disciples willing to confess the gospel in the face of fierce opposition. You know, we live in a nation where there are people complaining that we shouldn't even have "Under God" on our coins. How the people in this nation need to hear about the one God, not the generic God, but the one God who in Jesus Christ put Himself on the cross for us and gave Himself for us that His blood might cover all our sins, that His death might make us fit to be presented before Him and that His resurrection before God would give us a place to go when we finish our race, would give us a crown of righteousness waiting for us just like the one waiting for St. Paul.

We pray for Tim Phillips who's coming to stand beside Pastor Burcham and provide the help that's needed. We pray for him that he'll be ready to stand and face the challenges and to experience the joys of work in this community for God's greater good.

Now Mark was closely associated with some of the brightest lights in the church of his day with Peter and Paul and Timothy. And he also worked a lot with Barnabas and yet he never appears himself to be in the limelight. We don't hear much about his work, but he was always content to just serve as an assistant. Even his gospel doesn't have his name in there anywhere. He wrote it anonymously. Does it mean he was unimportant? No. No, that's why we commemorate him this morning. Similarly, we have opportunities to just serve anonymously in this church, to not be in the limelight, to just assist the work that goes on here and sometimes we're called to do that and asked by others to help out and other times, we just see the need and jump in to fill it, not expecting any glory in this life but you know what? There's a crown of righteousness waiting for you. There's a place in heaven prepared for you.

Now may God's peace and His mercy, which has invited you into this body today, stay with you and keep you confident that He just cares for you. He has the place for you, and He's drawing you ever there and He's never going to let go for you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church