After the Good Friday worship service Jim Spawton and Gary Boisseau were packing things up from doing the support work of Zoom. I’m not sure why but Jim brought up on his computer King Herod’s song from the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Every time I think about that musical I can’t help but smirk, and I did it then too.
If you remember Jesus Christ Superstar was controversial from the beginning. There are many reasons. One of the biggest was that there is no depiction of the resurrection. Lyricist Tim Rice objected to including the resurrection because he wanted to depict Jesus as just a man, and because he was opposed to anything to do with the miraculous. So, the musical ends with Jesus dying on the cross.
I find myself thinking, “Tim Rice, for a man who was so opposed to including Christian theology in the music, you inadvertently hit the nail on the head! Your musical is one of the 20th Century’s biggest expressions of the absolute core of Christian theology!”
If you know the musical you know that throughout are little whispers and hints of the title phrase, “Jesus Christ, superstar.” They’re like teasers all along. But at the moment of Jesus’ death it finally comes in full force. It’s full band, full cast, full lights, everything is reverberating “Jesus Christ, superstar!”
Yes Tim Rice, you got it perfectly; the core of Christian faith! Jesus dead. And in so doing you put any Christian exactly where they need to be in their relationship with God. We call it the Theology of the Cross.
All four of the gospels in the Bible -Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - put far more emphasis on Jesus’ death than on the resurrection. But of the four, none focuses to exclusively on the cross as Mark does.
Our gospel reading today is the original ending of Mark’s gospel. There’s nothing more. That’s the end of the story. How much space does Mark give to the resurrected Jesus? Jesus is the main character of the story after all. None, not one bit. Jesus leaves the stage when his body is carried off to the tomb. He does not return. There is no resurrected Jesus. The young man at the tomb tells the women they will see him in Galilee, so we know Jesus is resurrected and the resurrected Jesus will be interacting with his followers, but as far as his role in what Mark wrote is concerned, Jesus is done.
We don’t like this ending. Or I’ll admit I don’t. I want to spend time with the resurrected Jesus. I want to see him, hear him, touch him. The other gospels record such interactions. Mark does not.
Is Mark being careless or sloppy? Is he being mean? Was writing the gospel a school project and he’d reached the minimum word limit set by the teacher and so he decides to wrap it up as quickly as possible? Given that he ends with the word “because” you do wonder what is going on!?!
No. Mark is a concise, deep, and profound theologian. He knows, he can anticipate, exactly what’s going on the hearts and minds of his readers. Mark knows full well – probably because he felt it within himself – that instead of being Theologians of the Cross (which is what we need to be as Christians) we are strongly drawn to being Theologians of Glory.
Don’t mistake what being a Theologian of Glory is. That does not mean, as the name may suggest, someone egotistical seeking fame and fortune. A Theologian of Glory is simply anyone who wants to see the world through human terms. It is someone who wants to see measurable success for their efforts. It is someone who thinks, “I am a good person. I work hard, I earn a living, I am generous, and I deserve what I have.” A Theologian of Glory thinks, “I know I’m not perfect, but I try to be a good and upright person. I have good morals. I am a model of what God desires.” I think we are all like that.
A Theologian of Glory does a very logical thing with Holy Week. A Theologian of Glory likes to come to worship on Palm Sunday and welcome Jesus in with fanfare like the rest of the crowds; and then come to worship again on Easter and celebrate the resurrection. What’s been left out? Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
No one actually likes those days. Who wants to spend time on Jesus being betrayed and arrested, his followers failing and scattering, and him being tortured and ultimately executed? No one does. We all have tendencies towards being Theologians of Glory. We want faith to make sense on our terms. We want to live our lives and have them be good with God.
We do not want to be what we need to be – Theologians of the Cross.
Yet over and over and over again as we’ve been reading Mark’s gospel Mark has been pointing us to the cross. And here we are on Easter Sunday and Mark is still pointing us backward towards the cross.
I’m not going to dive into all that we dove into on Good Friday, but let me just say that as Mark depicts it, Jesus’ death is God’s ultimate word to humanity. It is not the final word, but it is the ultimate word. When Jesus dies indeed it is like the stage lights of the universe all come blazing on, the full band goes double forte, and the whole company sings in unison, “Jesus Christ, Superstar!”
Dead.
In Mark’s gospel dead Jesus as superstar echoes out to the empty tomb.
One of the reasons I translated Mark’s gospel myself is that I do not know of a single English translation of the Bible that the final verses of Mark’s gospel even remotely right. I remember seminary professors shaking their heads in frustration at how outright wrong all English translations get it, especially missing Mark’s subtleties. For Mark the most subtle detail is often profound.
English translations all quote the young man at the tomb saying to the women, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised…”
Nope.
Dead wrong.
They get the verb tenses swapped. Mark chooses to use the unusual Perfect Tense when referring to the crucifixion and the common past tense when referring to the resurrection. Whenever a biblical author uses an obscure or unusual verb tense translators need to pay attention. They often miss it.
Now quite frankly English is just too clunky and impoverished a language to capture the richness of Greek. So those who attempt to translate into English do have an impossible task on their hands. However, as much as English can get it, is what we read today, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who has been [the rare and unusual Perfect Tense] crucified. He was [the common Simple Past Tense] raised.” What the Greek says clearly is that Jesus as the crucified one is his ongoing and eternal reality. That is how we are to relate to Jesus; and the love of God that he embodied. Resurrection was a moment. Or put very simply, resurrection tells us nothing about God’s love for us. Crucifixion says it all.
Again, the dead Jesus is God’s ultimate word. It is not God’s final word but it is the ultimate word.
And so, speaking of final words, what is Mark’s final word?
In Greek it is [gar] which translates into to our English word “because”: “And to no one nothing did they speak. They were afraid because.”
Final word. Mark puts down his pen. End of story.
Yeah, right Mark?!?! How did your grammar teacher in school feel about you turning in writing assignments and ending your stories with the word because?
Did you ever dare do that? Did you ever write a story for English class and have the final word be “because”? You don’t have to be an English scholar, you could have gotten straight F’s in English throughout your entire life, and you know full well you don’t end a story with the word “because.”
Mark, the brilliant (probably genius) author that he is, has written what is perhaps the most complex piece of literature you’ll ever encounter. Word choices, verb tenses, choice of details, story structures, parallels, multiple levels of meaning - it’s all deliberate and expertly crafted…
And he ends with an incomplete sentence.
If know Mark’s gospel well or if you’ve heard me preach on it before you know exactly what I’m going to say next.
Mark’s gospel ends with an incomplete sentence.
Mark’s gospel begins with an incomplete sentence.
Put them together and what do you have? A complete, and grammatically correct sentence. “And to no one nothing did they speak. They were afraid because… the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
The story is a circle. It goes round and round. It has neither beginning nor ending.
Yet typical of Mark that circular story goes two directions.
Indeed the empty tomb and Jesus going on to Galilee where they will meet him is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
But at the exactly the same time it takes us in the direction of the beginning.
Like it or not I think we are all Theologians of Glory. Mark knows that. It is deep in who we are. We do not like Good Friday. We want to worship the resurrected Lord, not the crucified Lord.
Even so, we are faith filled enough that we do not put a symbol of the resurrection in the front of our worship space. Front and center, high above everything else we put an execution device. That’s pretty twisted when you think about it. Islamic scholars do a good job about pointing that out about Christianity. It is a good and accurate critique that reminds us of the center of our faith.
The cross is God’s ultimate word. And so Mark’s gospel takes us back into the story of Jesus again and again and again. It is an endless loop that is intended to run throughout our entire lives. It is an endless loop that encourages us to be that which is contrary to everything we want to be,
but it makes us what we need to be – Theologians of the Cross.
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