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Tetramorph” Series) Mark’s Winged Lion: Our Mission Is Multi-Directional (#2 in the Gospel “Tetramorph” series) Immediately . immediately . immediately . (Mark 5:2, 29, 30 – 3 of the 17 times Mark uses “immediately”) A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, October 27, 2019 (Volume 03 Number 15) Christ of the Hills UMC, 700 Balearic Drive, Hot Springs Village, Arkansas 71909 A tetramorph is an image with a cluster of four shapes. The most famous biblical cluster of four is, of course, the Four Gospels. In Christian art, they are often seen in a cluster with Matthew as a Man, Mark as a Lion, Luke as an Ox, and John as an Eagle, each figure having wings. The example I offered last Sunday was from The Book of Kells, a richly illuminated Latin manuscript of the four gospels created by Celtic monks around 800 A. D. Residing at Trinity College in Dublin, The Book of Kells is absolutely spectacular to see. Today, I’m fast forwarding four centuries to the 13th century. Leaving Dublin, let’s go to Paris to see a different gospel tetramorph. This is an ivory carving now at Paris’ Cluny Museum and produced by Cluniac monks. A fascinating feature of this tetramorph is that the four gospels surround an image of Jesus on the throne in majesty. This is precisely as John describes it in Revelation 4: After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open, and a throne, with one seated upon the throne! Around the throne are four living creatures. Jesus is seated in a geometric figure known as the mandorla. Often in my teaching and writing I’ve called attention to the mandorla, the almond-shape created when two circles overlap. Mandorla is the Italian word meaning Almond. In Christian art, only Jesus can be seated in the mandola. Why? Because he alone bridged the two circles of divinity and humanity, bringing them together to overlap. Turn that mandorla sideways and you have the fish so well known as a symbol of Christianity. Mark, the Winged Lion, is located in the lower left quadrant of the Cluniac Ivory, below Matthew, seen as the Winged Man. Last Sunday we noted how fitting that association is, since Matthew opens with genealogy. In Matthew we are immediately in the world of biology and DNA. Matthew stresses Jesus’ compassion, his engaging and embracing of fallen humanity to suffering alongside them. Compassion literally means, “to suffer with.” Last Sunday we considered that Matthew the Winged Man teaches us is that the church is Called to Compassion, finding wings as we follow Jesus by embracing a broken world with the love of God. Today we come to Mark, the Winged Lion. Unlike Matthew’s plodding genealogical opening, Mark pounces out of the gate like a lion. Mark is the peripatetic gospel. I’ve loved that word, since I heard a college football announcer use it to describe Coach Lou Holtz on the Razorback sideline, prowling back and forth, multi-directional. In Mark, Jesus is always on the move, back and forth responding to needs as they arise and opportunities as they surface. As I have emphasized in my text above, it’s no wonder that one of Mark’s favorite words is “immediately,” used three times in Chapter 5 alone, the record of a very busy day in Jesus’ ministry. One of my favorite books in my library is a book on Kabbalistic (mystical) Judaism, titled, God Is a Verb by Rabbi David Cooper. That idea is highlighted in the bestselling book from 2007, The Shack, by William Young. I was in my second year in Mountain Home and the book was so popular and talked about so much that I hosted a couple of lunch sessions called Shack and Soup. People brought soup and over lunch I led a discussion on some key passages. In one such passage, Papa (God) speaks to Mackenzie, who wanted to talk about the “rules” of religion. “Mackenzie, I will take a verb over a noun anytime . I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active, and moving. I am a being verb . and as my essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or principle that reeks of rules: something growing and alive dies. Nouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but if the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless ‘I am,’ there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the universe alive.” So it is with the church. If it’s a bit difficult for us to think of God as a verb, it’s certainly not hard to think of church as a verb. We are defined by –ing words: worshiping, fellowshipping, learning, loving, healing, caring. When we pull up at church, we’re not arriving at a building as a noun, but rather to the church as a verb -- a moving, living Body of the Risen Christ, animated by the Spirit, the divine energy which fell upon the disciples on Pentecost and launched the infant church out of Jerusalem in a multi-directional fashion. No wonder Mark became symbolized by the Winged Lion! Mark moves with a level of intensity unmatched by any of the other gospels. No time for genealogy, let’s jump right in the waters of baptism with Jesus and get busy with ministry. Our reading was from Mark 5. In Matthew, Jesus is barely getting started in Chapter 5, just having been baptized and spent forty long days in the Judean wilderness, and calling his disciples to be fishers of people. Not so in Mark! All those things are distant in rearview mirror. By Chapter 5 in Mark, Jesus has already accomplished huge things. He’s already shown himself a miracle worker, calming the turbulent Galilean sea, driving a legion of demons into a herd of swine. Mark, you might say, conditions the reader immediately to Mega Events. The pace is so rapid that the understandable question is, what’s the next big thing? The appearance of Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, seems to open the door to the next big thing, a chance for Jesus to impact the religious establishment by coming to the aid of one so important in the synagogue and the community. Here’s an event in which Jesus could win over the religious establishment by healing the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Why, he’ll surel skyrocket up the charts! Just then, though, the drama is interrupted by something seemingly much smaller. “Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.” This story seems out of place. Don’t bother Jesus now. He’s on the verge of the next astounding thing. How dare this other story intrude on the narrative. But it does, creating in Mark 5 what I call a “narrative sandwich.” I ate a sandwich the other day that was messy and unwieldy, lacking a coherent theme. It was so chaotic that I had to open it and pick at it – here an avocado piece, there some cheese, there some onion, there some tomato, there some turkey. And there . well, that’s a mystery! But it was all so good when I developed a new plan. “Bring me some ranch dressing,” I asked. I decided to employ the Stab and Dip my method. Mark 5 is a Stab and Dip chapter. It’s all over the place! Mark, I think, wants us to take the whole messy thing into our minds for the full effect. Jesus has just received an invitation to go home with the biggest cheese in town, and the crowds follow. But an ordinary woman interrupts the flow. Twelve years sick, she was, sandwiched in the story of a twelve year old girl. Mark 5 tells the story of Jesus in verb-like fashion, full of action. Jesus is not “in ministry” as a noun. No, but Jesus is “in ministry” as a verb. Mark’s Jesus is busy, multi-directional. “Who touched me?” he asks. “Jesus,” his disciples said, “This woman is not on your schedule today. Tell her to make an appointment. Hurry! We’ve got the next big thing we’re rushing to do.” The late Henri Nouwen said that in the prime of his career he became frustrated by the many interruptions to his work. Teaching at Notre Dame, he had a heavy agenda and didn't like to be disturbed. Until one day it dawned on him that interruptions WERE his work. Amazingly, Henri Nouwen interrupted his entire life path by giving himself in amazing ways to those with special needs who were being overlooked. I want now to offer you another image of St. Mark as the Winged Lion. This is image shows one of the many winged lions in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy. I’m looking forward so much to leading our group there next June, which will be my third trip to Venice. The patron saint of Venice is Mark. Why is Mark the patron saint of Venice? Well, legend has it, that -- even in death -- Mark was on the move! He was buried in Alexandria, Egypt, by tradition connected to the Coptic Church.
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