Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Tuesday of Easter 3 and St. Mark

25 April 2023

Text: Luke 7:18-35

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia! 

Today, the church honors St. Mark the Evangelist, whose Gospel is the shortest and most direct.  He was a colleague of St. Peter, and likely compiled a good bit of his narrative from Peter’s recollections of the life and ministry of Jesus.  Tradition says that Mark was the first bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, and was martyred for the faith. 

The word “martyr” is based on the Greek word for “witness.”  And St. Mark was both a witness of some of the events in our Lord’s life, and also in the life of the events of the apostolic church’s growth and confession after our Lord’s ascension. 

For what is central to martyrdom is not the death of the confessor, but rather the life of the one confessed: our Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified one who is risen, indeed.  And in this sense, all of the Old Testament is a martyrdom to Jesus – of those to whom God revealed the Gospel of the coming of His Son to redeem the world.  And the last of the Old Testament prophets – “and more than a prophet” – is found in the New Testament: St. John the Baptist.  John asks for testimony about Jesus, and our Lord doesn’t have to give it Himself.  He points the followers of John to look at what they “have seen and heard,” namely the blind seeing, the lame walking, lepers cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead raised, and those suffering the poverty of being trapped in the effects of the Fall hearing the Good News, the Gospel, of Jesus Christ.

For John’s followers are seeing the witness of the Old Testament prophecies become reality in Jesus, in the one to whom John the Baptist points, the one whom Mark writes under the Spirit’s inspiration.

And John also came to bear witness to us the connection between discipleship and baptism.  And for this witness of baptizing and preaching Jesus, St. John the Baptist would become a martyr, a witness, unto his own death – even he, none of whom is greater than he, and yet of whom the least of the kingdom is indeed greater than he.  For our greatness is not of ourselves, but of Christ – the one John preached and of whom Mark wrote.  Those who believed – even notorious sinners, “declared God just, having been baptized by John,” while the “Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.”

The church joins John in preaching Christ and baptizing in His name, and the church joins St. Mark in bearing witness to the Good News inspired by the Holy Spirit.  

For Mark, O Lord, we praise You,
The weak by grace made strong,
Whose labors and whose Gospel
Enrich our triumph song.
May we, in all our weakness,
Reflect Your servant life
And follow in Your footsteps,
Enduring cross and strife. (LSB 518:15)

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.