Saying Nothing

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 a young 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