Rev Dr Tess Kuin Lawton
Chaplain at Magdalen College School

Saturday was St Mark’s Day. No reason for you to know that.

After all, he’s not St George, or St David or St Andrew and no-one paints their face green and dresses up as a leprechaun to celebrate his feast. But he’s rather special, nonetheless.

In an era where people are inclined to worship at the altar of botox and celebrity, I’d like to make a case for saints like Mark.

So, a few crossword trivia facts about him: He was a disciple and secretary of Jesus’s best friend, Peter.

He was probably from a wealthy merchant family with links to Jews across the various Mediterranean ports.

He is one of the four evangelists ("Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on") and is represented by a lion, hence the proliferation of statues of lions in St Mark’s Square in Venice.

The reason is because the opening verses of his book refer to John the Baptist as a "voice crying out in the wilderness".

John’s voice was said to sound like a roaring lion.

A bishop writing in the 2nd century refers to Mark as "Mark the short-fingered", either because he did indeed have this physical characteristic or because he wrote so briefly and economically.

His gospel is the earliest and shortest of the four and might easily have been overlooked if it were not for his links to Peter.

Do we feel we know him any better now?

Well, here are a couple more things that might help us get closer to the truth.

Mark’s gospel has been described as the Cinderella of the Gospels.

None of the early Church Fathers, or the medieval scholastics wrote commentaries on Mark.

In the weeks leading up to Easter, it was Matthew and John that were used in public worship; and so it was these which were given stunning musical settings.

Yet two famous theologians, Jurgen Moltmann and Archbishop Anthony Bloom, have both recorded that reading Mark was what gave them faith.

Anthony Bloom began to read it in order to prove the "emptiness and stupidity" of Christianity: "The feeling I had occurs sometimes when you are walking along in the street and suddenly you turn around because you feel someone is looking at you. While I was reading … I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a Presence… I realised immediately: if Christ is standing here alive, that means he is the risen Christ."

Now, I teach a lot of pupils who tell me that they would love to have faith but they just can’t seem to make the leap.

They tell me that what they would most like is for God to do something radical that they just can’t ignore.

Sometimes, if they are in the mood to listen, I tell them that God has already done that.

The word ‘euangelion’ (Gospel) means an announcement or proclamation.

The sort of thing that comes from Buckingham Palace when a new baby has been born.

St Mark’s Gospel is an announcement that from now on God is taking over.

As Rowan Williams puts it, St Mark has written a book about change, a book about "how the world came to look different, under different management".

This is a book about how one person altered the way the world looks and continues to do so for readers past and present.

There are worse ways to try to work out what the Christian faith is about than reading the Gospel of Mark (try biblegateway.com).

But be ready. As CS Lewis once wrote of Mark: "He’s not a tame lion, you know."