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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 631. His Lost Opportunity
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His Lost Opportunity
1. John Mark is described as the “minister” or “attendant” of the Apostles. In the account of the journey he is brought before the reader's notice in a curiously incidental way. He was not essential to the expedition; he had not been selected by the Spirit; he had not been formally delegated by the Church of Antioch; he was an extra hand, taken by Barnabas and Saul on their own responsibility.
The general character of his duties is expressly stated; it was personal, not evangelistic, service to which he was called. Blass defines this service too strictly when he comments “velut ad baptizandum”; Mark may have been required to baptize converts, but his work would include all those minor details which could safely be delegated to a younger man, such as arrangements for travel, the provision of food and lodging, conveying messages, negotiating interviews, and the like.
Dr. Chase has suggested another meaning for the term “minister.” It is the word which was used of the synagogue attendant. It might thus be John's official title, and the meaning of the verse would be, “And they had with them also John, the synagogue minister.” If this interpretation is the true one, we have an important fact about Mark which reveals how close his ties with Judaism were. Among his fellow-Jews he was known as Ἰωάνης ὑπηρέτης, John minister.
Since service is the highest lot,
And all are in one body bound,
In all the world, the place is not
Which may not with this bliss be crowned.
The little child, in trustful glee,
With love and gladness brimming o'er,
Many a cup of ministry
May for a weary veteran pour.
The lonely glory of a throne
May yet this lowly joy preserve;
Love may make that a stepping-stone,
And raise “I reign” into “I serve.”
This, by the ministries of prayer,
The loneliest life with blessings crowds,
Can consecrate each petty care,
Make angels' ladders out of clouds.
Since service is the highest lot,
And angels know no higher bliss,
Then with what good her cup is fraught
Who was created but for this!
2. It is not stated that the Holy Spirit prescribed the details of the route. How then should Paul and Barnabas proceed? To leave Syria they must go first to Seleucia, the harbour of Antioch, where they would find ships going south to the Syrian coast and Egypt, and west either by way of Cyprus or along the coast of Asia Minor. The western route led towards the Roman world, to which all Paul's subsequent history proves that he considered himself called by the Spirit. The Apostles embarked in a ship for Cyprus, which was very closely connected by commerce and general intercourse with the Syrian coast. After traversing the island from east to west, they must go onward. Ships going westward naturally went across to the coast of Pamphylia, and the Apostles, after reaching Paphos, near the west end of Cyprus, sailed in one of these ships, and landed at Attalia in Pamphylia.
Pamphylia was the natural continuation of the work that had been going on, first in Syria and Cilicia for many years, and next in Cyprus. They went to Pamphylia to preach there, and, as they did not actually preach there, something must have occurred to make them change their plan. Further, the reason for this change of plan must have been merely a temporary one, for they preached in Pamphylia on their return journey.
If you will carefully consider what it is that you have done most often during this day, I think you can hardly avoid being drawn to this conclusion: that you have really done nothing else from morning to night but change your mind. You began by waking up. Now that act of waking is itself a passage of the mind from an unconscious to a conscious state, which is about the greatest change that the mind can undergo. Your first idea upon waking was probably that you were going to rest for some time longer; but this rapidly passed away, and was changed into a desire for action, which again transformed itself into volition, and produced the physical act of getting up. From this arose a series of new sensations; that is to say, a change of mind from the state of not perceiving or feeling these things to the state of feeling them. And so afterwards.1 [Note: W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, i. 79.]
3. This change of plan is connected in Acts with something which happened at Perga. John Mark left the Apostles there, and returned alone to Jerusalem. It is characteristic of St. Luke that he very rarely gives reasons for the facts that he speaks of, so that we are left to conjecture what the motive may have been which prompted the desertion. Several motives have been suggested.
(1) John, who had been converted by Peter, and had left his mother at Jerusalem, where he knew she was liable to persecution, may have been disappointed about Paul's evident intention to make the Gentiles the main object of his care, and pleading filial duty as an excuse, determined to return home. Perga, as the entrance of one of the great highways to the important Galatian centres of trade and commerce, would be frequented by merchantmen, and it may be the presence in the harbour of a vessel bound for Joppa proved irresistible, and he took his passage home. Such an explanation accounts for the fact that Barnabas was divided in his feelings towards the deserter. His relationship to and sympathy with the mother of John would lead him to appreciate the motives for his cousin's return; while in the eyes of Paul he was without excuse.
Mark's motives may well have been the same as those which prompted exactly the opposite line of action on the part of Thomas Oliver. At John Oliver's death there were seven young children to provide for, six being unable to earn anything on account of age. Little “Tommy,” seeing the difficulty his mother was put to in providing for them all-it was a poverty that could be felt-took the matter in hand with regard to himself, and went to seek his own living without consulting anyone, going from one place to another in search of a job of work. So he became a little “runaway” on purpose to help her, not at all realizing the difficult position she would be placed in by not knowing of his whereabouts. For, besides her own anxiety, she was worried and interviewed by officials as to what had become of him.
It is curious how he that had thus unwittingly caused her so much anxiety should have become in later years a real comfort and help to her,-before his mother passed away, she lovingly said to him, in gratitude for his thoughtful kindness: “I have had many children, but I have only one son.”1 [Note: Jessy L. Mylne, Holding up the Standard, 4.]
(2) It was due to cowardice. If Paul had kept to the Cilician coast, there would have been no danger, but to penetrate into the interior was a most perilous enterprise. Between Perga and Pisidian Antioch the country was inhabited by a wild and lawless people, given up to violence and brigandage, for which the rugged mountain passes offered a favourable opportunity. There were, in addition, dangers from swollen rivers and torrents. His courage failed him, and little wonder that it did, when he realized the nature of the country Paul and Barnabas were about to traverse. It is to the hardships suffered in that region that Paul refers in the eleventh chapter of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of being “in journeyings often”-he had to travel long distances on foot along rough roads; “in perils of rivers”-he had to ford wild bridgeless mountain torrents; “in perils of robbers”-the mountains were the haunts of brigands; “in perils from my countrymen”-as at Iconium, where, we read, “the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles,” and “there was an assault made both of the Gentiles, and also of the Jews with their rulers, to use them despitefully, and to stone them,” which threats were carried out at Lystra, the evangelists' next stopping-place, whither their persecutors followed them. Such sufferings and dangers might well daunt the timid mind of Mark.
I remember talking once with a brave general who had fought through our war. He was telling me about an officer whom he had rebuked upon the field of battle for cowardice. “I did not blame the man for being a coward,” he said; “he could not help that. He was born so. It was no more disgrace to him to be afraid than it was credit for me not to yield to the temptation which I never felt. What I blamed him for was simply that, having found out that physically he was a coward, he yet allowed himself to occupy a place where cowardice could do such mischief. So I degraded him.” That was treating physical courage as if it were a thing entirely apart from reason and from a man's own control. And so it is to a large extent as it concerns the individual.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 322.]
Life is too great for us or too petty.… We must die daily on the levels of ignoble compromise or perish tragically among the precipices. On the one hand is a life-unsatisfying and secure, a plane of dulled gratifications, mean advantages, petty triumphs, adaptations, acquiescences and submissions, and on the other a steep and terrible climb, set with sharp stones and bramble thickets.2 [Note: H. G. Wells.]
(3) John Mark was willing to come into Pamphylia with them, but not willing to go on into the country north of Taurus, and therefore he evidently considered that the latter proposal was a departure from the original scheme. Cyprus and Pamphylia were countries of similar situation to Cilicia and Syria, and in the closest possible relations with them, whereas it was a serious and novel step to go into the country north of Taurus. We need not therefore suppose that John Mark was actuated solely or mainly by cowardice; the facts of the situation show that he could advance perfectly plausible arguments against the change of plan, which was to carry their work into a region new in character and not hitherto contemplated by the Church. It seems no unwarrantable addition, but a plain inference from the facts, to picture the dissension as proceeding on lines like these; and it relieves John Mark from a serious charge which is not quite in keeping with his boldness in originally starting on this first of missionary journeys.
No reason is given for this sudden change of plan. Ramsay explains it by supposing that Paul was stricken at Perga with malarial fever, and it was necessary for him to leave the enervating climate of Pamphylia for the high lands of the interior, and that Antioch, which was 3600 feet above the sea, was chosen for this reason. This would also explain Paul's statement that it was by reason of physical infirmity that he first preached the gospel to the Galatians, and his personal sensitiveness to the desertion of John Mark.
4. By and by Paul and Barnabas, having completed their missionary tour in Asia Minor, in which they often “hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” returned to Antioch and Jerusalem, and, having “rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles,” they were ready to start again. Mark was present on this occasion, and heard the story of their missionary adventures, part of which he had shared, and he offered to go with them. He had failed once, but now he felt confident that he would not do so a second time. Barnabas was anxious to take him, but, we read, Paul opposed it-“Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work.” Barnabas, however, was “determined to take him.” And then, we read, “the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus,” his native place.
It may sound absurd to talk of nepotism in men who could only promote their relatives to stripes and imprisonments; but the principle which Barnabas sanctioned, when he would have taken John Mark with them after he had deserted them on the former journey, was the same as that which has wrought so much evil in all ages of the Church, though the material rewards were so different. He was preferring to a post of danger a man who might turn his back upon the enemy just when it behoved him to fight. Paul may have been very sharp in rebuking what must have struck him as unfaithfulness to their cause and their invisible Captain. His righteous indignation may have passed, like the mildness of Barnabas, into the evil which is akin to it.
No fault can be found with either of them for the motives by which they were influenced. Barnabas was a man of a mild, conciliatory character, and of much natural affection. We can almost hear him pleading his cousin's cause, attributing his former wavering to his thoughtlessness and the inconsistency of his untried youth; and it may be that he was ready with his illustrations to prove that no man ought to be condemned for a single failure. Even Peter himself had had his commission renewed; and Mark's desertion and cowardice were as nothing in comparison with his. Then there was at the bottom of all his arguments the natural longing to see a near kinsman approving himself as a faithful minister in the great missionary cause. On these grounds Barnabas was quite justified in wishing to give his cousin another trial.
Paul, however, looked at the case with other eyes. He was a man of a stern, unbending sense of duty, of unflinching courage, of a whole-hearted devotion to anything that he took in hand. He knew too, by a hard experience, what tremendous difficulties confronted those who undertook to preach the gospel in heathen lands; and he felt that this was just a case where his Master's verdict must be rigidly enforced: “no man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” With such an estimate as this of the all-exacting nature of the work before him, no one can condemn Paul's decision.
“And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus.” If as the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work, how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation!1 [Note: Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. iv. § 1.]
“Tell us young ones, you gray old man,
What is your secret, if you can.
We have a ship as good as you,
Show us how to keep our crew.”
So in his ear the youngster cries;
Then the gray Boatswain straight replies:-
“All your crew be sure you know,-
Never let one of your shipmates go.
“If he leaves you, change your tack,
Follow him close and fetch him back;
When you've hauled him in at last,
Grapple his flipper and hold him fast.
“If you've wronged him, speak him fair,
Say you're sorry, and make it square;
If he's wronged you, wink so tight,
None of you see what's plain in sight.
“When the world goes hard and wrong,
Lend a hand to help him along.”2 [Note: O. W. Holmes, The Old Cruiser.]
5. Say, if you like, that this contention between Apostles was a flaw on the way towards a more perfect development of character. It may have been so; but it was a beautiful protest at the same time on the part of two men who both believed themselves to be right, and who both were right in their different estimates of the same situation.
“I will not take a man,” says Paul, “with me to the work who has shown that he has no staying powers.” “I will not abandon a man,” says Barnabas, “who has good stuff in him, and whom some day you will learn to value.”
It is the old exhibition of δικαιοσύνη and ἐπιεικεια, of justice and equity. Paul represents justice, sternly right on a matter of principle. Barnabas represents the modifying, qualifying considerations, which prevent justice from becoming a disabling sternness. But they both felt the extreme importance of a matter of principle. Barnabas did not say, “My dear Paul, I think you are hard, but still, for the sake of peace, I will let Mark go his way, and shift for himself.” St. Paul did not say, “My dear Barnabas, I think you are unduly lenient, and we shall live to repent it; still, rather than make a scandal, we will take him.” No, they separated, and each made his protest.
Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when winds were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off.1 [Note: Moore.]
(1) It teaches us first that there will be differences: “it must needs be that offences coma.” They came in the first and golden age of Christianity; can we hope to escape them? This is a calming reflection; it helps us to keep our heads and to keep our temper and to escape from panic.
(2) It teaches the very, very old truth that there may be much reason on both sides of a disagreement. Paul was right in insisting on taking none but true men and tried into action: Barnabas was right (thank God) in believing that a man may fail in duty once and yet prove a good man, as we know Mark did. And so to-day they are right who insist on the value of sacraments and exalt the corporate life of the Church and assert the sacred value of it: but they too are right who insist on “experiential religion” and the reality of direct intercourse between God and the single soul: but both are wrong when they deny, or fail to accept, the truth for which the others contend.
(3) It teaches that when Christian teachers differ, the right thing to do is to go and work in separate fields; not to abuse the other on platforms or in the press, still less to mob the churches or meetings of a differing party, but to see if there be not in this wide world, so well supplied still with people who are without Christianity of any sort or colour, room for the separate, unconflicting energy of that part of the truth which each sees most clearly. Barnabas did not go to Asia Minor and get in the way of Paul: he went to Cyprus. And any modern Christian can find a Cyprus that will absorb his energies, if only he will look for one.
Although a difference in opinions or modes of worship may prevent an entire external union, need it prevent our union in affection? Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences. These remaining as they are, they may forward one another in love and in good works.… I dare not presume to impose my mode of worship on any other. I believe it is truly primitive and apostolical. But my belief is no rule for another. I ask not therefore of him with whom I would unite in love, Are you of my church? Of my congregation? Do you receive the same form of church-government, and allow the same church officers with me? Do you join in the same form of prayer wherein I worship God? I inquire not, Do you receive the supper of the Lord, in the same posture and manner as I do? Nor, whether in the administration of baptism, you agree with me in admitting sureties for the baptized, in the manner of administering it, or the age of those to whom it should be administered. Nay, I ask not of you (as clear as I am in my own mind) whether you allow baptism and the Lord's Supper at all. Let all these things stand by: we will talk of them, if need be, at a more convenient season. My only question at present is, Is thine heart right as my heart is with thy heart? If it be, give me thine hand. I do not mean, Be of my opinion. You need not. I do not expect or desire it. Neither do I mean, I will be of your opinion. I cannot. It does not depend on my choice: I can no more think than I can see or hear as I will. Keep you your opinion, I mine: and that as steadily as ever. You need not even endeavour to come over to me, or bring me over to you. I do not desire you to dispute those points, or to hear or speak one word concerning them. Let all opinions alone on one side and on the other. Only give me thine hand.1 [Note: John Wesley.]
“I've often thought that those three men-father, Mr. Fermor, and the Vicar-although they may differ about small things, think very much alike about great things. Each has lived and loved and worked, and-this is the supreme test-not one of them is afraid to die.”2 [Note: H. A. Vachell, The Other Side, 103.]