'... John, departing from them, returned to Jerusalem.'--ACTS xiii. 13.
The few brief notices of John Mark in Scripture are sufficient to give
us an outline of his life, and some inkling of his character. He was
the son of a well-to-do Christian woman in Jerusalem, whose house
appears to have been the resort of the brethren as early as the period
of Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison. As the cousin of
Barnabas he was naturally selected to be the attendant and secular
factotum of Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. For
some reason, faint-heartedness, lack of interest, levity of
disposition, or whatever it may have been, he very quickly abandoned
that office and returned to his home. His kindly-natured and indulgent
relative sought to reinstate him in his former position on the second
journey of Paul and himself. Paul's kinder severity refused to comply
with the wish of his colleague Barnabas, and so they part, and Barnabas
and Mark sail away to Cyprus, and drop out of the Acts of the Apostles.
We hear no more about him until near the end of the Apostle Paul's
life, when the Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon show him as
again the companion of Paul in his captivity. He seems to have left him
in Rome, to have gone to Asia Minor for a space, to have returned to
the Apostle during his last imprisonment and immediately prior to his
death, and then to have attached himself to the Apostle Peter, and
under his direction and instruction to have written his Gospel.
Now these are the bones of his story; can we put flesh and blood upon
them: and can we get any lessons out of them? I think we may; at any
rate I am going to try.
I. Consider then, first, his--what shall I call it? well, if I may use
the word which Paul himself designates it by, in its correct
signification, we may call it his--apostasy.
It was not a departure from Christ, but it was a departure from very
plain duty. And if you will notice the point of time at which Mark
threw up the work that was laid upon him, you will see the reason for
his doing so. The first place to which the bold evangelists went was
Cyprus. Barnabas was a native of Cyprus, which was perhaps the reason
for selecting it as the place in which to begin the mission. For the
same reason, because it was the native place of his relative, it would
be very easy work for John Mark as long as they stopped in Cyprus,
among his friends, with people that knew him, and with whom no doubt he
was familiar. But as soon as they crossed the strait that separated the
island from the mainland, and set foot upon the soil of Asia Minor, so
soon he turned tail; like some recruit that goes into battle, full of
fervour, but as soon as the bullets begin to 'ping' makes the best of
his way to the rear. He was quite ready for missionary work as long as
it was easy work; quite ready to do it as long as he was moving upon
known ground and there was no great call upon his heroism, or his
self-sacrifice; he does not wait to test the difficulties, but is
frightened by the imagination of them, does not throw himself into the
work and see how he gets on with it, but before he has gone a mile into
the land, or made any real experience of the perils and hardships, has
had quite enough of it, and goes away back to his mother in Jerusalem.
Yes, and we find exactly the same thing in all kinds of strenuous life.
Many begin to run, but one after another, as 'lap' after 'lap' of the
racecourse is got over, has had enough of it, and drops on one side; a
hundred started, and at the end the field is reduced to three or four.
All you men that have grey hairs on your heads can remember many of
your companions that set out in the course with you, 'did run well' for
a little while: what has become of them? This thing hindered one, the
other thing hindered another; the swiftly formed resolution died down
as fast as it blazed up; and there are perhaps some three or four that,
'by patient continuance in well-doing,' have been tolerably faithful to
their juvenile ideal; and to use the homely word of the homely Abraham
Lincoln, kept 'pegging away' at what they knew to be the task that was
laid upon them.
This is very 'threadbare' morality, very very familiar and
old-fashioned teaching; but I am accustomed to believe that no teaching
is threadbare until it is practised; and that however well-worn the
platitudes may be, you and I want them once again unless we have obeyed
them, and done all which they enjoin. And so in regard to every career
which has in it anything of honour and of effort, let John Mark teach
us the lesson not swiftly to begin and inconsiderately to venture upon
a course, but once begun to let nothing discourage, 'nor bate one jot
of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer right onward.'
And still further and more solemnly still, how like this story is to
the experience of hundreds and thousands of young Christians! Any man
who has held such an office as I hold, for as many years as I have
filled it, will have his memory full--and, may I say, his eyes not
empty--of men and women who began like this man, earnest, fervid, full
of zeal, and who, like him, have slackened in their work; who were
Sunday-school teachers, workers amongst the poor, I know not what, when
they were young men and women, and who now are idle and unprofitable
servants.
Some of you, dear brethren, need the word of exhortation and earnest
beseeching to contrast the sluggishness, the indolence of your present,
with the brightness and the fervour of your past. And I beseech you, do
not let your Christian life be like that snow that is on the ground
about us to-day--when it first lights upon the earth, radiant and
white, but day by day gets more covered with a veil of sooty blackness
until it becomes dark and foul.
Many of us have to acknowledge that the fervour of early days has died
down into coldness. The river that leapt from its source rejoicing, and
bickered amongst the hills in such swift and musical descent, creeps
sluggish and almost stagnant amongst the flats of later life, or has
been lost and swallowed up altogether in the thirsty and encroaching
sands of a barren worldliness. Oh! my friends, let us all ponder this
lesson, and see to it that no repetition of the apostasy of this man
darken our Christian lives and sadden our Christian conscience.
II. And now let me ask you to look next, in the development of this
little piece of biography, to Mark's eclipse.
Paul and Barnabas differed about how to treat the renegade. Which of
them was right? Would it have been better to have put him back in his
old post, and given him another chance, and said nothing about the
failure; or was it better to do what the sterner wisdom of Paul did,
and declare that a man who had once so forgotten himself and abandoned
his work was not the man to put in the same place again? Barnabas'
highest quality, as far as we know, was a certain kind of broad
generosity and rejoicing to discern good in all men. He was a 'son of
consolation'; the gentle kindness of his natural disposition, added to
the ties of relationship, influenced him in his wish regarding his
cousin Mark. He made a mistake. It would have been the cruellest thing
that could have been done to his relative to have put him back again
without acknowledgment, without repentance, without his riding
quarantine for a bit, and holding his tongue for a while. He would not
then have known his fault as he ought to have known it, and so there
would never have been the chance of his conquering it.
The Church manifestly sympathised with Paul, and thought that he took
the right view; for the contrast is very significant between the
unsympathising silence which the narrative records as attending the
departure of Barnabas and Mark--'Barnabas took Mark, and sailed away to
Cyprus'--and the emphasis with which it tells us that the other partner
in the dispute, Paul, 'took Silas and departed, being recommended by
the brethren to the grace of God.'
The people at Antioch had no doubt who was right, and I think they were
right in so deciding. So let us learn that God treats His renegades as
Paul treated Mark, and not as Barnabas would have treated him, He is
ready, even infinitely ready, to forgive and to restore, but desires to
see the consciousness of the sin first, and desires, before large tasks
are re-committed to hands that once have dropped them, to have some
kind of evidence that the hands have grown stronger and the heart
purified from its cowardice and its selfishness. Forgiveness does not
mean impunity. The infinite mercy of God is not mere weak indulgence
which so deals with a man's failures and sins as to convey the
impression that these are of no moment whatsoever. And Paul's severity
which said: 'No, such work is not fit for such hands until the heart
has been "broken and healed,"' is of a piece with God's severity which
is love. 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest
vengeance of their inventions.' Let us learn the difference between a
weak charity which loves too foolishly, and therefore too selfishly, to
let a man inherit the fruit of his doings, and the large mercy which
knows how to take the bitterness out of the chastisement, and yet knows
how to chastise.
And still further, this which I have called Mark's eclipse may teach us
another lesson, viz., that the punishment for shirking work is to be
denied work, just as the converse is true, that in God's administration
of the world and of His Church, the reward for faithful work is to get
more to do, and the filling a narrower sphere is the sure way to have a
wider sphere to fill. So if a man abandons plain duties, then he will
get no work to do. And that is why so many Christian men and women are
idle in this world; and stand in the market-place, saying, with a
certain degree of truth, 'No man hath hired us.' No; because so often
in the past tasks have been presented to you, forced upon you, almost
pressed into your unwilling hands, that you have refused to take; and
you are not going to get any more. You have been asked to work,--I
speak now to professing Christians--duties have been pressed upon you,
fields of service have opened plainly before you, and you have not had
the heart to go into them. And so you stand idle all the day now, and
the work goes to other people that will do it. Thus God honours them,
and passes you by.
Mark sails away to Cyprus, he does not go back to Jerusalem; he and
Barnabas try to get up some little schismatic sort of mission of their
own. Nothing comes of it; nothing ought to have come of it. He drops
out of the story; he has no share in the joyful conflicts and
sacrifices and successes of the Apostle. When he heard how Paul, by
God's help, was flaming like a meteor from East to West, do you not
think he wished that he had not been such a coward? When the Lord was
opening doors, and he saw how the work was prospering in the hands of
ancient companions, and Silas filled the place that he might have
filled, if he had been faithful to God, do you not think the bitter
thought occupied his mind, of how he had flung away what never could
come back to him now? The punishment of indolence is absolute idleness.
So, my friends, let us learn this lesson, that the largest reward that
God can give to him that has been faithful in a few things, is to give
him many things to be faithful over. Beware, all of you professing
Christians, lest to you should come the fate of the slothful servant
with his one burled talent, to whom the punishment of burying it unused
was to lose it altogether; according to that solemn word which was
fulfilled in the temporal sphere in this story on which I am
commenting: 'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath
not, even that he hath shall be taken away.'