| Scriptures: | Acts 10:34-43 Mark 16:1-8 |
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had
seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Huh?
That’s it? That’s the end of the story? Pretty blunt and anti-climactic,
isn’t it? Most Biblical historians think that Mark, the first gospel to be
written, really did end with that verse – verse eight – and that it was later
writers who added material to make it feel like more of a conclusion and more
in line with the other gospel writers. There’s both a Shorter Ending
and a Longer Ending
to Mark – the Longer being verses 9-20, which
concludes with Jesus’ ascension and the disciples going out to proclaim the
good news everywhere
. Here’s the shorter ending, referring to those
frightened women: And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to
those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from
east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal
salvation.
Doesn’t sound a whole lot like the tenor of Mark’s terse and
non-flowery prose, does it? Something must have happened to make later
Christians feel that Mark just hadn’t quite gotten it right with his abrupt
ending.
Yet, many of the important elements are here – especially the announcement
by ayoung man
(Mark doesn’t call him an angel) that Jesus has been
raised and the importance of telling the disciples about it. Nevertheless, the
image of the women running away because they were afraid and keeping quiet
about it all is the lasting impression Mark seems to want to leave with us.
Let’s stay with this image for a moment. What if this were the conclusion, and the three women keep this amazing revelation to themselves? What would have happened to the disciples, who had already abandoned their crucified lord? What would have happened to the Christian church?
Contemporary novels, movies, and television have made us into a people who
like to have our stories neatly tied up by the end. Recall the final episodes
of M.A.S.H.
and Friends
where the lives of the characters came to
a satisfying conclusion. But then remember a couple of years ago when the last
episode of The Sopranos
caused all kinds of angst because it was an
unresolved ending. Mark’s ending, though, is more like last week’s
final E.R.
where some stories are ended but the E.R. itself is about to
burst into renewed activity with new stories to follow.
In a column in The Christian Century Thomas Long offers a story told
by Donald H. Juel about one of his students who had memorized the whole of Mark
in order to do a dramatic, Broadway-style reading before a live
audience. After careful study, the student had decided to go with the
scholarly consensus regarding the ending. At his first performance, however,
after he spoke that ambiguous last verse he stood there awkwardly, shifting
from one foot to the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure,
waiting for a proper ending. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said,
Amen!
and made his exit. The relieved audience applauded loudly and
appreciatively. Upon reflection, though, the student realized that by
providing the audience a satisfying conclusion, his "Amen!" had actually
betrayed the dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when
he reached the final verse he simply paused for a half beat and left the stage
in silence. The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were
obvious,
said Juel, and as people exited the buzz of conversation was
dominated by the experience of the non-ending.
Happy endings may be nice, but for the Christian what is important is that
the story – our story -- continues on. If our reaction to the abrupt ending of
Mark is, as Tim Geddert notes, but what happens? do the women eventually run to
tell the disciples?, then Mark’s gospel is telling us: That’s their story.
What matters here is your story. You have now heard the message; will
you go?
Geddert also points out that the very first line of Mark’s gospel
is “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.
The story is not yet over. Our story is its continuation.
I believe, along with the majority of Biblical scholars, that Mark purposely
ended his gospel where he did with verse eight, because the focus for Mark, as
it was for Paul and Peter was Christ crucified. That wonderful preacher Fred
Craddock puts it this way: For Mark, the resurrection served the cross;
Easter did not eradicate but vindicated Good Friday.
I know that it kind
of jars our sensibilities to be reminded of Good Friday on this beautiful
Easter morning when we are to focus on new and renewing life. But as Mark
Lewis Taylor has written: To follow the executed God today is to let die
the god of religious respectability.
At the heart of the Gospel of Mark is
the way of the cross.
Last week on Palm Sunday and again on Maundy Thursday we talked about how
the disciples failed Jesus – how they deserted and denied and betrayed him.
The disciples were all men, and a major part of the narrative of Holy Week is
how his male followers fell short. Now, here at the end of Mark’s tale he
wants to show how the women who followed and loved him also failed him
initially with their silence. But then just before their final failure both
groups are offered what Tim Geddert calls discipleship-renewal
on the
other side of the cross and the resurrection. They are assured that, whatever
failure intervenes, they can return to Jesus and start over.
It is not until after Jesus dies that Mark tells the story of the women
disciples. We learn that they too followed and served Jesus in Galilee, then
they followed him to Jerusalem. And, as we said on Palm Sunday, they did
not abandon Jesus in the crisis, and therefore they serve as witnesses
to his death, burial, and resurrection. However, in the end, the women also
fail by running in fear and keeping silent, but not before they too, just like
the men, are offered the opportunity to meet the risen Jesus on the other side
of failure, to go back to Galilee, and start over
. That’s the
invitation in the young man’s directive: Go, tell his disciples and Peter
that he is going ahead of you into Galilee; there you will see him, just as he
told you.
And, eventually, the invitation is accepted.
A sidebar: that’s a very strange locution: tell his disciples and
Peter…
Wasn’t Peter one of the disciples? Why is he singled out in this
way? It’s as if someone would have said, Go tell the Beatles, and
Ringo.
Or Go tell the US Senators and Harry Reid.
Well, as you know from the Maundy Thursday mime, Peter is the one who denies
Jesus three times, and so it’s important that he be especially included in the
invitation to know the risen Christ. And look at what happens. Peter becomes
the most zealous of the disciples. He is the one set apart to bring the
message of good news to the Gentiles, as he does in the passage from the book
of Acts that we read. And just look at the universality of that
message: he is Lord of all,
Peter proclaims. God raised him on the
third day and allowed him to appear…..
Peter’s magnificent witness and his
all-embracing inclusiveness stem directly from that inclusion of him by the
young man at the tomb and foreshadow the kind of extravagant welcome we seek to
offer in the United Church of Christ
This, then, is what the young man at the tomb is wanting the women to tell
the disciples: this Jesus whom you followed and then abandoned and who was
treated like a common criminal has become God’s exclamation point on both the
reality and yet the unreality of death. This resurrection that the young man
announces to the three women takes the reality of the cross and makes it into a
new reality that transcends the cross’ cruelty and its seeming finality – once
again, as we have noted before, using C.S. Lewis’ language, the one is the
Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time
, but the other is the Deeper Magic
from Before the Dawn of Time.
It is also significant that the young man includes the women in the
invitation that is being offered: Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he
is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he
told you.
No wonder that the initial reaction was terror at the
prospect and then amazement that they, too, would have a part in the new story
and see their risen Lord. No wonder that the initial reaction was just to shut
down, to keep this astounding thing to themselves. No wonder that paralyzing
fear would seem to be the last word. Just like their male counterparts, who
have, throughout Mark’s Gospel, feared and run and disobeyed, the women display
fear and silence and even the possibility of disobedience. We can recall times
when we, too, have known that kind of fear when faced with the responsibilities
that the cross confers on us. What Mark is describing here is a very
human response.
Serene Jones has written a beautiful meditation on the state these women
were in, where their hearts and minds might have been, overwhelmed by grief and
fear. She writes, Imagine, too, the raw determination that must have driven
them there -- that time of day, that time in history, in that season of
unrelenting violence. To these women, Jesus' body still matters. The
remaining physicality of his life still has a claim on their hearts.
As it
so often goes, these outsiders
make their way to the center of what's
happening (although they think everything is over, done and buried) to do what
has to be done, the work others often don't want to do. The tomb turns out to
be one of those spaces where so much of life unfolds,
Jones
writes, the hard work of loving, of being present, the grit that allows
human life to keep going in the very moments that it encounters the reality of
violence and relentless march of death.
She claims that God is there, even
in the places of death where we are broken by violence and by love and by
the sheer exhaustion of the labor it takes to go on.
But, of course,
ultimately faithfulness overcomes fear. We know from the testimony of the
other Gospel writers that the women did run to tell the disciples…and
Peter. And Mark himself must have been aware of this or he would not have come
to write his gospel. What began in a tomb with terror and astonishment and
silence became the disciples’ and the women’s experience of the resurrected
Christ, which prompts our alleluias today. Here’s how one contemporary
dramatist, P.W. Turner, in his play Christ In the Concrete City depicts
how the disciples receive the news as Mary runs to tell them:
Peter! John! He’s alive! He’s alive! I’ve seen the Lord.
You must be mad! Where? When? What do you mean? Mary, what are you talking about?
Just now, in the garden. I saw Jesus.
When you were with Peter and John? But we were with you in the
garden.
It’s this business of the empty tomb coming after the strain of everything else. She needs a good rest.
Wouldn’t you like to lie down, dear?
We ought to get her away for a holiday before she goes off her head altogether.
Not necessarily. Perhaps she’s not mad. Perhaps we’re just stupid. The tombstone rolled aside. Those graveclothes so – so – undisturbed. Things he used to say that we never understood. Remarks that come back after the event. Remarks about the rising of the dead. Mary, tell us what happened.
After you went away I stayed beside the grave. I was crying because they wouldn’t leave him alone even after they’d killed him. Then I turned away. And there was – a man – standing there. I suppose I thought he was the gardener. And he asked me why I was crying. And I asked him to tell me where he had taken the body. I -- -I wanted to go and do what I could for him.
And then he said, “Mary”, and I realized who he was. It was the Lord. It was the Lord, and I’ve seen him and he isn’t dead any more. He’s alive, and his hands and his feet bear the wounds from what they did to him.
Yes, that’s it – he said, “Mary”, didn’t he? And he said it with the old inflection of voice, -- and then – she just knew.
Yes, that is how it happened.
And how it happens.
For it happens not as the plausible end
Of a religious story,
But as God’s act
In the hideous situation.
For the Word, which is Christ.
Was made flesh,
And died,
And Christ is risen indeed, and goes before you into Galilee.
Your Galilee,
The Galilee of the modern industrial city
Of the neon lights and the multiplex.
Where you jostle Christ on the pavement
Among the plate-glass windows.
Galilee Street,
The street on which you live,
And where he waits to move in,
Fulfilling his promise to be with us.
Always.
Even to the end of the world
Arise, rejoice!
Thy light is come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
April 12, 2009