The Rev Richard Baxter considers the story of John Mark as reflected in Acts 15:36-41.

SOME mistakes can be left safely in the past, but others follow us around, like the albatross which was hung around the neck of the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s poem as a constant reminder of his terrible error in killing that bird.

John Mark was given a great opportunity and he made a big mistake. As a young man, he was invited to go with Paul and Barnabas on what became known as their first missionary journey. The team travelled to Cyprus and then Pamphylia in southern Turkey, before going on to Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. It was an opportunity to learn from the greatest Christian leaders of the time, and John Mark blew it.

After they had been to Cyprus and travelled on to Perga, John decided he couldn’t cope any more, and he went home to Jerusalem. We don’t really know why. Maybe the encounters with people like Elymas or Bar-Jesus the sorcerer on the fringes of the Roman governor’s entourage in Cyprus, felt a bit too risky and intense. Maybe Paul was too demanding a taskmaster, intolerant of weakness or uncertainty. Maybe John Mark was just homesick. For whatever reason, John Mark abandoned his companions and went back home.

Later, when Paul and Barnabas were about to set out on a second journey, John Mark’s mistakes caught up with him.

Barnabas wanted to take the young man along once more, but Paul was adamant that he would do no such thing. He was not travelling with someone who had given up and deserted them on the last journey. His work was too important to be entrusted to someone he considered unreliable. Barnabas (whose name means son of encouragement, and who may also have been the young man’s uncle) was nevertheless determined to give John Mark another chance. He and Paul had a furious row.

The dispute could not be resolved, so Paul went off with Silas through Syria and Cilicia in southern Turkey, while Barnabas took John Mark and headed to Cyprus. We don’t know much about the subsequent mission of Barnabas and Mark, as Acts focuses on Paul’s story, but there is at least a strong hint that John Mark may have repaid Barnabas’s trust and restored Paul’s faith in him. In Colossians (4:10), written much later than the fall-out, Paul talks about sending Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, to visit that church, so even Paul was won over in the end.

If, as seems likely, John Mark is the person who eventually came to write the gospel we attribute to Mark, then Barnabas’s decision not to allow that one youthful failure to exclude the young man from all future service was fully justified.

“ Christianity is supremely the religion of the new beginning and the second chance, so we should not be too quick to write off as worthless those who make mistakes along the way.

John Mark’s weakness or folly may have had consequences, and it certainly put future obstacles in his way, but a single mistake was not the end of the road. One door was closed off to him, but other opportunities opened up. Christianity is supremely the religion of the new beginning and the second chance, so we should not be too quick to write off as worthless those who make mistakes along the way. We are not defined by our failures, but by what God can make of us, failures and all. ¤