GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 4:22
The Message of the Yearbooks
A few years ago, Alice and I attended my sixtieth Granite City Senior High School class reunion—in 2020, in fact. Alice took along her class yearbook and mine. She graduated in June of 1960, and I graduated in January of 1961, so there are two yearbooks. At the meeting, she passed around the yearbooks, and we reminisced about those long-gone high school days. It was surprising how young everyone looked in the yearbook photos. Sometime after we returned home, Alice wanted to check a photo in her yearbook, so she began looking for it, but she couldn’t find it. She was sure that she took the books with her when we left the party, but she couldn’t find them. Jumping ahead to 2025, five years later, she came into the den carrying—yeah, that’s right—our two high school class yearbooks. “Where?” I asked. It seemed that five years before, she was going to put them on a shelf in a closet. But the shelf was high, so she laid them on a sheet on a lower shelf. Later, she put another sheet on the stack, covering the yearbooks. There they lay for five years until she needed to use a particular sheet, moved the sheet, and there were they were—the yearbooks. They were there all the time, waiting for her or someone to uncover them.
St. Mark said that Jesus spoke several axioms to his disciples, after his parable of the farmer sowing his seed. According to Mark, Jesus said, “For nothing is hidden except that it may be revealed; nor is anything hidden but in order that it might come into the light.” (4:22) Biblical scholars understand Jesus’ meaning in several different ways. According to one school, Jesus was talking about the messianic prophecies of the prophets, which would be revealed through his—Jesus’—life, death, and resurrection. According to another school, Jesus was referring to his message wrapped in the parables he used to teach his audience. According to yet another school, Jesus was referring to truth itself, for there is something about truth that is indestructible. About truth, William Barclay wrote, “Men may refuse to face it; they may try to suppress it; they may even try to obliterate it; they may refuse to accept it, but ‘great is the truth and in the end it will prevail.’” Like Alice’s yearbooks lying hidden between the sheets, waiting to be revealed, the Old Testament messianic message, Jesus’ message, or truth is there, waiting to be revealed—“for nothing is hidden except that it may be revealed.” An axiom true for Jesus and true still.
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