The Lord Worked With Them: Saint Mark the Evangelist (Mark 16:15-20)

April 25, 2026, Saint Mark the Evangelist, Red-Letter Holy Day, Season of Easter

Mark 16:15–20, Psalm 2, Isaiah 52:7–10, Ephesians 4:7–8, 11–16

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Today the Church remembers Saint Mark the Evangelist, and the Gospel appointed for his feast brings us immediately to the risen Jesus. Verse 15 says, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15, ESV)It is fitting that the Church remembers an evangelist by hearing Christ command that the Gospel be carried outward. Mark spent his life within that command. He served among the earliest missionaries, became closely associated with the Apostle Peter, and by his hand God gave the Church the Gospel that bears his name. Yet if we begin with what Mark accomplished, we begin in the wrong place. Before Jesus says go, he has already died for sinners and risen from the dead. Before there is a messenger, there is good news. Before there is obedience, there is grace.

That order matters because Christians can hear “Go into all the world” and immediately turn it into another measure of failure. We remember conversations in which we should have spoken and did not. We think about children or grandchildren who have drifted from the faith and wonder whether we said too little, too much, or the wrong thing entirely. Some hear a missionary command and assume it belongs to someone younger, bolder, better trained, or more naturally gifted. But the Gospel never begins with the quality of the messenger. It begins with the saving work of Jesus Christ.

The Collect for Saint Mark makes that order unmistakable: “Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” God is the giver. Mark is the hand through which the gift comes. Only after giving thanks for what God has already given does the Collect ask for grace to know the truth and not to be carried about by every wind of false doctrine. The Church receives before she proclaims. We are not sent into the world carrying something we invented. We have been entrusted with something true.

Isaiah 52 says the same thing from another direction. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” (Isaiah 52:7, ESV) The messenger’s feet are beautiful because of the news they carry. Your God reigns. The Church does not possess good news because Christians are unusually impressive people. We have good news because Jesus Christ is Lord, because the crucified One has risen, because sin has been atoned for, death has been defeated, and forgiveness is offered in his Name.

That is what gospel means: good news. Mark’s Gospel begins with that announcement: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1, ESV) Mark does not place himself at the center. The Gospel is about Christ. Even Mark’s characteristic urgency serves that purpose. Again and again he uses the word euthys (yoo-THEES), “immediately.” Jesus calls, teaches, heals, confronts demons, crosses the sea, and moves relentlessly toward Jerusalem, the Cross, and the empty tomb. Mark’s hand serves Christ’s Gospel.

That makes Mark himself a particularly encouraging saint for ordinary Christians because his own record was not flawless. Acts tells us that John Mark went with Barnabas and Saul on an early missionary journey, but at Perga he turned back and returned to Jerusalem. Scripture does not tell us why. Whatever happened, Paul judged the departure serious enough that when Barnabas later wanted to take Mark again, Paul refused. Acts 15 tells us that the disagreement became sharp enough that Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus while Paul chose Silas. Colossians 4:10 adds that Mark was Barnabas’s cousin. That family connection does not explain everything Barnabas saw in him, but it helps us understand why Barnabas was unwilling simply to give up on him.

If Scripture ended there, Mark might be remembered as the missionary who failed and had to be carried by a sympathetic relative. Many Christians know what it is to fear that one failure will become the sentence written over the rest of life. We remember the years we wasted, the relationship we damaged, the season when fear won, the opportunity we lost, or the sin we would give almost anything to undo. Even after confessing that Christ forgives sinners, we can continue quietly sentencing ourselves. We may believe in grace for heaven while assuming that usefulness to God expired somewhere in the past.

But Mark’s story does not end in Acts 15. Years later Paul names him among his fellow workers, and near the end of Paul’s life he writes to Timothy, “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:11, ESV) The man Paul once refused to take became the man Paul specifically wanted beside him. Scripture does not tell us every step of that restoration, and we do not need to invent what God has not told us. The facts are enough. Failure did not have the final word. That does not mean failure does not matter. Repentance is real because sin is real. But forgiveness is also real. Restoration is real. Grace can do more with what we have broken than we imagine. The Church does not remember him as Mark the Quitter. She remembers Saint Mark the Evangelist. If you belong to Christ, the worst thing you have done does not have the right to give you your final name.

There is a particular word here for those who wonder whether their useful years are behind them. Our culture measures usefulness by productivity, speed, visibility, and youth. Christ does not. You may not be able to do what you did twenty years ago. Your strength may be less. Your world may have become physically smaller. But smaller is not the same thing as meaningless. There may still be a grandchild who will listen when you speak about Christ, a friend who trusts you enough to tell you what he fears, a widow who needs someone to pray with her, a younger Christian who needs wisdom you learned through both faithfulness and failure, or a neighbor who has begun asking questions. You do not retire from bearing witness to the mercy of Jesus Christ.

Then we return to the primary text. Verse 15 says, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”Certainly this command sends the Church across nations and languages, and the missionary task continues until Christ returns. But most Christians begin with the portion of the world God has placed immediately around them. Your family is part of the world. Hiawassee is part of the world. The person sitting across from you at lunch is part of the world. The relative who no longer attends church, the person in the hospital bed, the neighbor who assumes God could never forgive what he has done, and the friend who asks why you still have hope are all part of the world into which Christ sends his Church.

Verse 16 tells us why this matters: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16, ESV) The Gospel is not merely useful advice for improving the present life. It is news about salvation. Psalm 2 names God’s Anointed as the Son whose reign extends to the nations. Jesus Christ is not one spiritual possibility among many. He is the risen Lord.

Some of us need to hear that before we think about telling anyone else. You cannot carry good news that you have never received. Christian faith is not possessed merely because your family was Christian or because your name has been on a church roll for decades. Jesus says, “Whoever believes.” Faith is entrusting yourself to Christ, confessing him as Lord, turning from sin, and resting your hope in what he has done rather than what you can do for yourself. If you have spent years near Christianity without actually trusting Christ, the Gospel is still for you. You are not being asked to become worthy. Christ died for sinners. Christ rose from the dead. Repent and believe.

Jesus joins belief and Baptism because the New Testament does not imagine a permanently private Christianity detached from Christ’s visible Church. Baptism marks us as Christ’s own and brings us into the covenant life of his people. Yet notice how verse 16 ends: “whoever does not believe will be condemned.” The decisive problem is unbelief. Salvation is found in Christ and received through faith, and Baptism belongs ordinarily and properly to the life of those joined to him.

Verses 17 and 18 speak of signs accompanying those who believe: demons cast out, new tongues, protection amid deadly dangers, and healing. Acts shows us these kinds of signs accompanying the apostolic mission as the Gospel moves outward. They are not instructions to manufacture spectacle or test God. Their purpose is to testify that the risen Christ is active in the mission he commands. The Church goes, but she does not go alone.

Verse 19 makes that even clearer: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” (Mark 16:19, ESV) His Ascension does not mean abandonment. He reigns. Psalm 2 has already told us that the Son is King, and Ephesians tells us that the ascended Christ gives gifts to his Church: “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,” in order “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11–12, ESV) Ministry is not something performed by clergy while everyone else watches. Not everyone is called to preach or to overseas mission, but every Christian has been placed among actual people and given opportunities to bear faithful witness.

Sometimes that witness is a clear explanation of the Gospel. Sometimes it begins with “I will pray for you.” Sometimes it means opening Scripture with a grandchild, telling someone why you are not without hope at a funeral, inviting a friend to church, or answering the question, “Why do you believe this?” with the truth you actually know. You do not have to know everything before you can say something true about Jesus. You can say that he is the Son of God, that he died for sinners and rose from the dead, that forgiveness is real, and that your hope in the face of death rests on a Savior whose grave is empty. You can tell someone what his mercy has done for you, and you can invite that person to come and hear more.

But if the Church is going to proclaim the Gospel, she must proclaim the Gospel she was given. This is why the Collect moves from thanksgiving for Mark’s Gospel to the prayer that we may “know the truth, and not be carried about by every wind of false doctrine.” Ephesians 4 says the same thing. Paul does not want Christians to remain children, “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.” (Ephesians 4:14, ESV)

We must not reinvent Christianity every generation. The Church does not have authority to alter the apostolic faith because some part of it becomes unfashionable, difficult, or offensive. We are stewards of something received. Jesus Christ is not ours to redesign. The Gospel is not ours to improve. Sin is not ours to redefine. The faith once delivered does not become untrue because the culture changes its mind about marriage, sexuality, repentance, judgment, the uniqueness of Christ, or the bodily Resurrection.

That does not give Christians permission to become harsh. Ephesians immediately tells us to be “speaking the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15, ESV) Truth without love can become a weapon. What passes for love without truth can leave people comfortable while withholding the very Gospel they need. Christ does not ask us to choose between the two. We speak truth because we love, and we love because Christ first loved us enough to tell us the truth about our sin and then bear that sin himself.

The pressure on the Church is rarely stated as deny Jesus outright. More often it sounds like this: soften this teaching, stop talking about that one, treat what Christians have confessed for centuries as if it were endlessly negotiable, keep your convictions private, or call holy what Scripture calls sin because someone may be offended. But once the Church begins editing the message in order to make it acceptable, she is no longer faithfully proclaiming what she received. Even here, however, grace comes first. The Collect does not tell us to make ourselves clever enough to identify every error. It asks God to give us grace to know the truth. Our steadfastness is itself a gift. Christ gives his Word, the apostolic witness, pastors and teachers, and his Spirit. The same Lord who commands his Church to preserve and proclaim the truth also supplies what his people need.

That brings us to verse 20, and this is where the whole sermon comes to rest: “And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.” (Mark 16:20, ESV)Jesus commanded them to go, and they went. Their obedience mattered. Their voices mattered. Their feet mattered. But Mark does not let the Gospel end as a celebration of human effort. The Lord worked with them.

That is the word for anyone carrying concern for someone who does not believe. You may have prayed for years and seen little change. You may wonder whether you have said the wrong thing or whether it is too late. Saint Mark’s feast does not give us a technique that guarantees another person’s conversion. It gives us something better. The Lord works. We pray, speak when the opportunity comes, love faithfully, refuse manipulation, tell the truth, and entrust the people we love to a Savior whose reach is greater than ours.

It is also the word for anyone wondering what God could still do with what remains of life. Mark knew failure. Peter knew failure. The first disciples knew fear and flight. Yet the risen Christ did not abandon his Church or cancel his mission. He restored servants and used them. The point is not that Mark eventually became impressive enough to prove Paul wrong. The point is that grace was not finished with him.

The same is true for the Church in a confused age. We may sometimes feel as though the cultural winds are stronger than our witness. Churches themselves can become uncertain about what they believe. People we love can walk away. But the truth of the Gospel does not depend upon the mood of the age. Jesus Christ is still risen. Psalm 2 still names him as the Son. Isaiah still says, “Your God reigns.” And Mark still tells us that the Lord works with his people.

So receive the Gospel before you carry it. Hold fast to the truth you have received. Do not reinvent it. Do not be ashamed of it. Speak it with love. Tell it to the people God has placed within reach. Do not assume that age, weakness, ordinary circumstances, or even past failure make you useless to Christ. Someone carried the Gospel far enough for you to hear it. Someone taught you the Name of Jesus, opened a Bible, preached a sermon, prayed for you, brought you to church, answered a question, or lived faithfully long enough for you to see that hope in Christ was real. Now there are people within reach of your life.

The feet are still beautiful when they carry good news. Mark carried it through weakness and restoration. The Church still carries it today. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was crucified. He is risen. He reigns. Salvation is found in him. And when we go, we do not go alone. Mark tells us why: “The Lord worked with them.” He still does.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.