25 April 2024 Mark 16:15-20 Feast of St. Mark
The so-called “longer ending” of Mark (16:9-20) is believed not to have been written by Mark the Evangelist, but added at the end of the first century, or the start of the second century, to make it harmonize more with the resurrection accounts in the other gospels. It gives us a valuable glimpse of the state of Christian evangelization at the start of the second century. The longer ending shows a very confident and energetic style of evangelization involving public preaching, healings and exorcisms, even the translation of the gospel into new languages.
This energetic public witness, however, did not continue. In A.D. 112 Christianity became officially illegal.
Pliny, Roman governor of Bithynia (in modern Turkey) wrote to the Emperor Trajan, seeking his advice on how to deal with a group called Christians he had never heard of before. A professional association of silversmiths had complained that the preaching of these Christians was cutting into their business, and fewer people were buying the silver trinkets they sold outside temples like the one of Artemis at Ephesus. Roman officials were famously tolerant of new religions, right up until the time they started interfering with politics or business. Trajan replied that Christians should be given an opportunity to recant their religious beliefs, but if they wouldn’t, they could be punished, even killed. From the days of Paul the Apostle, Roman officials had been mostly unable to tell the difference between a Christian and a Jew, and since it was legal to be a Jew, that made it legal to be a Christian. After A.D. 112, however, those days were over. Romans now made a distinction between Christians and Jews, and you weren’t allowed to be a Christian.
Public, itinerant preaching quickly came to a stop. From the time of Trajan to the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, by which Constantine made Christianity legal again, we don’t know the name of a single Christian evangelist.
This is not to say, however, that the Church did not grow during this time. It did. By the middle of the third century it had grown so much that the Roman government began official campaigns of persecution, which wound up hurting the Roman government far more than they hurt the Church. Everybody knows about the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Persecution accelerated the declining and falling.
The Church grew after it became illegal because ordinary Christians took on the task of bearing witness to their families, neighbors, and friends. Their witness, particularly during times of epidemic disease in the late second and mid-third centuries, was so inspirational that there was a very sharp spike in Church membership. You might say that the hardships imposed on the Church led to a Christian revival, which in time outlived the Roman Empire, created the civilization of the Middle Ages, created things like hospitals, universities, the Renaissance, modern science, and the civilization of the West.
And it all started when ordinary Christians began witnessing earnestly to their families, neighbors and friends. It all started when the ambient culture started making it harder on the Church. It all started because lay people did their job, and did it well.
So let’s see.
An ambient culture that became increasingly hostile to Christianity.
A legal and cultural environment that was hostile to Christianity.
Epidemic disease that terrified many, and created a wider opening for Christian witness.
Lay people doing their job, and creating Christian revival.
Sound a little familiar?
Christian revival anyone?
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