BEYOND WINTER: The
Poignant Griefs of An Old Man—
I don’t have any sons, boys who bear my genes or whom I raised, so I can’t really say what losing a son would be like, but I think it would be a little like losing Mark Cox, who died August 29, 2025.
It was about eight years ago that this tall [6’4”], handsome man, dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and silk tie, slipped into our row at church just as the prelude ended, and sat down beside Helen. He crossed his legs. Helen nudged me and nodded at his socks. They were reticulated, pictures of giraffes, his legs so long that they displayed the whole animal. Then we started singing the first hymn. He had a beautiful baritone voice and sang with gusto. Helen had him adopted even before exchanging names after the service.
Michael was with him that day. He, too, was handsome, but dressed more like a special ed teacher than the manager of a men’s clothing store. They hadn’t been together long, and were church shopping, not an easy thing to do for a gay couple. But they had come to the right church. St. Mark’s UMC accepts everyone. As Mark himself complained a few years later, “We’ll accept anyone, as long as they’re not Christian. What’s the point of being included if all you get out of it is good coffee?”
Mark was that rare Christian, gay and born again. As he said to me in an email not long ago, “It’s important to me to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is my savior.”
The church tried to keep Mark out, but he would not go, because he knew Christ was his savior. Mark understood that you can’t separate Christ and Church, because Church is the post-resurrection Body of Christ.
Not just the earthly institution/organization that we call church, although the organization is a part of Christ’s Body. So even if the institutional church treats you badly, and tries to keep you out, if you are a follower of Christ, you can’t give up on it.
Mark never gave up on the church, even though so many of its ways, and so many of its congregations, told him that he was not only a sinner but an “abomination.” They tried to keep him out, and he would not have it, because he knew that he was saved through Christ. With that salvation came membership in the Church, even if the church didn’t like it.
Mark and Michael got married at St. Mark’s. I was pleased, but a little worried. I knew that Michael didn’t share Mark’s emphasis on Christ as Savior. To him, the church was primarily a place to do good for others. He participated in all the many helping activities of our congregation, what Methodists call “social holiness.” Mark was into the moral and spiritual aspects of faith, “personal holiness.” I think that was what split them apart in the end.
We were close to both of them, emotionally and socially. Before covid isolation, when Helen and I were still able to get around, we often ate together, at our house, or theirs, or some restaurant. They came to us for a listening ear when they were down, or struggling with some personal or medical problem. When Covid 19 isolated us, they brought groceries to us. It was that kind of relationship, the kind you’d have with sons.
Indeed, one day after worship, a man there for the first time encountered Mark in the aisle and started chatting. He noticed Helen standing there and asked, “Is this your mother?” Mark just said, “Yes.”
At a Quarryland Chorus concert, where Mark was singing, Michael brought one of his teacher friends. We chatted. After we went back to our seats, another friend overheard the teacher say, "Who are those people?" Michael said, "They think they're our parents." Well...
As they were getting ready to leave Bloomington, to move to North Carolina, the late Dan Hughes, one of our Lay Leaders, said, “We’re going to miss Mark so much. He’s a beacon.”
That he was. In the words of one of those old hymns he loved so much, Let the lower lights be burning. Send a gleam across the wave. Some poor fainting, struggling saman, you may rescue, you may save. Mark was that kind of beacon, especially for other gay folks who had been hurt so badly by the church that they were frightened to keep trying. But when they saw him, towering above the crowd, singing out, they knew they had a home.
The beacon has gone out. It’s way too much like losing a son. But I trust that his salvation, in Christ, is sure.
John Robert McFarland
Mark and I talked
frequently of what hymns we wanted to sing in church. We most often longed for:
“He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me, and talks with
me, along life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask
me how I know he lives? He lives, within, my heart!” He wanted to lead it,
making the congregation draw out that last “He lives” forever and ever…
Blessings to Mark!!
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