In his An Introduction to the New Testament, the late Raymond Brown describes the evangelist known as Mark’s seventh chapter as “A controversy over ritual purity.”[1] On Tuesday, we heard the beginning of the chapter, where Mark explains to his gentile readers about the Jewish customs associated with food and drink. He notes, “The hard-fought struggles over kosher food attested in Acts and Paul would be difficult to explain if Jesus had settled the issue from the beginning.”[2] Mark is also challenging the piety of Jewish Christians who continue the ritual practices of Jews. The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders?—but they eat bread with impure hands.”[3] Jesus’ response was, “You forsake the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of human beings.”[4]

In his An Introduction to the New Testament, the late Raymond Brown describes the evangelist known as Mark’s seventh chapter as “A controversy over ritual purity.”[1] On Tuesday, we heard the beginning of the chapter, where Mark explains to his gentile readers about the Jewish customs associated with food and drink. He notes, “The hard-fought struggles over kosher food attested in Acts and Paul would be difficult to explain if Jesus had settled the issue from the beginning.”[2] Mark is also challenging the piety of Jewish Christians who continue the ritual practices of Jews. The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders?—but they eat bread with impure hands.”[3] Jesus’ response was, “You forsake the commandment of God and hold fast to the tradition of human beings.”[4]

Yesterday, I was a part of a Zoom meeting for a group of Manhattan rectors and academics. We keep two lists of active members. One is for those who will be hosts for lunch, the other for those whose turn it is to make a presentation or read a paper. Father Andrew Mullen, retired rector of Epiphany here in the city, has also for many years been a seasonal chaplain for the Church of England in Europe and elsewhere. There are Episcopal summer chapels, for example, on the Maine coast where people go in the summer. We learned yesterday that to become a chaplain now, the Church of England requires an FBI background check. But before we got to that, we discussed an Ash Wednesday without ashes.

The town of Capernaum was abandoned in the 11th century. By then, it was an Islamic community. In 1894, the site of the ruined town was purchased by Roman Catholic Franciscans in Jerusalem and by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. In the early years of the twentieth century,[1] archeologists would uncover the ruins of a synagogue and of an octagonal church built over a house by it—perhaps really the house of Peter and Andrew. It is literally a few steps away from the synagogue. People could have crowded together outside of it. It is worth noting that they wait until evening, when the sabbath is over, to bring people for healing.

Last year while preparing a sermon for Palm Sunday, that is, the Sunday of the Passion, I came across an explanation for why the cross isn’t found as a common symbol in early Christian art. Unfortunately, when I wanted to refer to later, I couldn’t find the reference. I hope my luck is better this year.

Last year while preparing a sermon for Palm Sunday, that is, the Sunday of the Passion, I came across an explanation for why the cross isn’t found as a common symbol in early Christian art. Unfortunately, when I wanted to refer to later, I couldn’t find the reference. I hope my luck is better this year. The online Encyclopedia Britannica states that crucifixion was banned by the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century in honor of the cross. But realistic portrayals of his crucifixion do not begin until the early fifth century. The explanation that I came across last year stated that crucifixion was such a cruel and horrible punishment that it needed to pass out of living memory before Jesus’ suffering could become part of the devotional life of believers.

I wasn’t happy with myself this morning when I read in my copy of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “According to a late and historically worthless, but widely distributed legend, St. Blasius was Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia and martyred under Licinius in the early 4th century.”[1] I never blessed throats until I came to Saint Mary’s—although Trinity Church, Michigan City, Indiana, had an Anglo-Catholic rector from the late 1940s until 1963, if I recall correctly. The parish had the right equipment.

I woke up early on Monday morning and looked out the window. It was snowing, and I knew it. I recognized the snow for what it was. I did not grow up in the Arctic, but I did grow up in Western New York, and I knew exactly what kind of snow this was—small, sharp flakes, blown by a heavy wind, coming from the east, on a diagonal. I knew what it would feel like if I went outside and tried to walk to Fifth Avenue. I could remember how that snow felt on my face, as I walked home from school on a cold February day. I also knew that if I had gone outside yesterday, I might have had to change my mind. Experience tests knowledge. Maybe those snowflakes would be as wickedly sharp as I’d predicted, but maybe they wouldn’t.

Jesus is in Capernaum teaching, he casts out a demon, and returns to teaching. Hidden in these few verses are pointers to concepts that will be dominant in the rest of the Gospel. Jesus speaks with Authority and not as the scribes. We struggle to figure out what the distinction is and the best I can come up with is that the scribes spoke with reflected authority, they quoted Torah. Jesus speaks with his own Authority and for Mark that is a crucial thought and it enables him to do a New Thing. The rest of the Gospel will be spent pointing out what that New Thing is and I will get to it.

I have a clear memory of sitting on the floor by myself and watching television as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. This morning, I learned from the internet that it was a Sunday, November 24, 1963, two days after President Kennedy’s assassination. It was 11:21 AM in Dallas, 12:21 PM in Virginia Beach. I was three months from being ten-years-old. We would have just gotten home from church. I probably had had enough time to get out of the sport coat, shirt, and tie that was customary in those days. I know my grandparents’ house had a JFK picture, as did, I think, all my New Hampshire relatives’ homes did. I wonder how Kennedy’s assassinations, and those of King and Kennedy when I was 14, still shape some of my emotional responses.

Because of the commemoration yesterday of Gregory of Nyssa, we did not hear the Parable of the Sower and the interpretation the disciples needed to understand it.[1] Matthew and Luke have it also from Mark.[2] It’s about the word sown along the path, upon rocky ground, and among thorns. The passage concludes, “But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”[3] The evangelist we know as Mark follows this with the Parable of the Lamp and the Parable of the Measure.

There were three philosopher theologians in the latter half of the fourth century that were mostly responsible for defeating the heresy of Arianism. This heresy denied the true divinity of Jesus Christ by subordinating the Son to the Father. They are Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia—in the middle of modern Turkey, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, bishop of Nyssa, also in Cappadocia, and Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, also Cappadocia, who would become bishop of Constantinople.

I’m a graduate of the University of Virginia, which was commonly called when I entered in 1972, “Mr. Jefferson’s University.” I suspect that for many years that titled has not had as much use. The Vietnam War was ongoing with no end in sight; the draft for soldiers was real. When the birthdate lottery happened, to see where one stood in the next year’s draft, I was in the student newspaper’s office watching the Associated Press teleprinter. None of us knew that night that ours was the year the draft ended.

This morning I started with my copy of the second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church to see what information they have on Vincent. It’s a short entry: “St. Vincent (4th cent.), the proto-martyr of Spain. According to a tradition of the late fourth century onwards, referred to be St. Augustine [of Hippo] and by Prudentius” [a Spanish Latin poet and hymn-writer] who died c. 410, “St. Vincent was educated and ordained deacon by Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa, and suffered in the Diocletianic persecution.”[1]

My second edition copy of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian begins the entry on Saint Agnes with these words, “She has been venerated as a virgin in Rome since the 4th cent., but the early legends of her martyrdom vary considerably, and nothing certain can be deduced as to the date or manner of her death.”[1] By contrast, the authorized biographical sketch for her commemoration in Lesser Feasts and Fasts begins, “As a child of twelve years, Agnes suffered for her faith, in Rome, during the cruel persecution of the Emperor Diocletian.”[2] I think the point, as it were, goes to the Oxford Dictionary.

The evangelists we know as Matthew and Luke are wonderful evangelists. Reading the evangelist we know as John brings the majesty of God to my soul. But I like reading and studying the first gospel, the one by the evangelist we call Mark. Almost always, his narrative moves quickly—Mark’s word is “immediately.” Matthew and Luke pick it up from Mark—fourteen times in Matthew, twelve in Luke, once in John—but thirty-four times in what by far is the shortest gospel, Mark.

On Sunday, we had the first eleven verses of Mark, words about John the Baptist and his ministry, the baptism of Jesus by John, “the heavens being ripped apart,” and the words of the Father for Jesus, “You are my beloved son; in you I have taken delight.”[1] We should have heard the next two verses that complete the story of Jesus’ baptism: “And immediately the Spirit cast [Jesus] out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, begin tested by Satan; and he was with the wild animals; and the angels were serving him.”[2]

In Mark, after Jesus’ transfiguration,[1] Jesus will tell the three disciples he has brought with him to the mountain, Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of man should have risen from the dead.” Only Mark’s Jesus is a Jesus who does not know that his disciples did not understand what they had seen and heard on the mountain, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” In Mark, these words will be spoken by the person we can call the first to believe in the Crucified, “the centurion, who stood facing [Jesus on the cross], saw that he thus breathed his last, [and] said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’ ”[2]

The feeding of the five thousand is a story told in all four gospels. Instead of manna from heaven, Jesus himself looks up to heaven, then blesses and breaks the loaves. Then he divides two fish. All ate and were satisfied. A great deal of bread and fish was left uneaten.

The first words spoken in this gospel are words from the Magi’s lips. In the first century of the Christian Era, a Magus could be an astronomer who studied and recorded the movement of stars and planets. It could refer to astrologers, who claimed to be able to understand the meaning of motion in the heavens for the lives of human beings. It could also mean “wonder-workers”—magicians.