Inside the back of the bulletin are two cartoons. In one of them there are two women at the empty tomb. The caption reads, “Well, I certainly hope you kept the receipt for those burial spices!” Indeed, those burial spices are quite irrelevant!
If you were here for worship last week you may remember we talked about another woman who anointed Jesus for his burial. That woman was unnamed but her actions of pouring quite a bit of expensive ointment on Jesus head were recorded in detail. She is to be a contrast to the women, all of whom are named, who come to the tomb having bought their own spices for Jesus.
Mark’s gospel is full of details and quirks; including things like whose name is given and whose name is not. The reason why the bulletin has my own translation rather than The New Revised Standard Version is because all the translations into English smooth over the quirks in an effort to read better. That’s good translating. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, when the details and quirks are important you miss them. Mark’s quirkiest bit of the entire gospel is the very last line of his entire gospel. It is a literal translation to say, “And to no one nothing did they speak. The reason they were afraid was because.”
That’s the end. He put down his pen. He stopped writing there. End of story.
Except that’s no way to end a story! They didn’t have grammar lessons in those days the way we might today, but still, no way did any teacher of his ever tell him it was okay to end a story with the because. The grammar is wrong, wrong, wrong no matter what language you use!
Plus, this is the story of Jesus. Jesus is resurrected from the dead. There are a number of stories of resurrection appearances. In them the resurrected Jesus meets with his disciples. He talks to them. They touch him. He eats with them. He even cooks breakfast for them. All of those stories are about giving the reads proof that Jesus did indeed historically bodily rise from the dead. He was no ghost.
The Bible is vague in many many places. In many places our scriptures could be called legends, or heroic tales; or even myths. But the resurrection is meant to be a reliable historical account. It is so absolutely central to our faith.
But Mark leaves us with an empty tomb. The resurrected Jesus never appears.
So we have a bad sentence, and a bad end to the story. We feel cheated, jipped. Mark’s gospel is like reading a great story only to have the ending fail miserably!
It has often been suggested that the original ending of Mark’s gospel has been lost. That’s why it ends so abruptly. But that is not the case. Mark ended where he ended very deliberately. He’s no fool. And he also knows how to tell a story filled with subtleties that convey deep meaning. Mark’s gospel is a masterpiece of literature, and among the most complex things ever written.
If you have very good memory you might be able to recall what I said about this gospel when we’ve had it as our Easter text three years ago. I know, it can be hard to remember breakfast, let alone a sermon from three years ago. But in case you do manage to remember, you’ll recall that Mark’s gospel is actually circular.
Mark’s final sentence is an incomplete sentence: “And to no one nothing did they speak. The reason they were afraid was because.” And Mark’s gospel also begins with an incomplete sentence: “beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” So you put both incomplete sentences together and they form a complete sentence:
“The reason they were afraid because the beginning of the gospel.”
The empty tomb is not the end of the story. It is actually the beginning. Mark is up to something else that we don’t usually expect from what we read. But he’s not the only author to hint at that sort of thing.
The final lines of C.S. Lewis’ children’s book, The Last Battle, which ultimately concludes the seven book Chronicles of Narnia series, he writes, “… for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
I’m pulling in the idea from C.S. Lewis and imposing it on Marks, but I think it can be safely said that Mark is setting us up for the Great Story of God’s universe.
Mark’s gospel is just the cover and title page. The rest of the story is us, and in it we have a part that lasts a lifetime. We are called by God to live that adventure. And what an adventure life is intended to be!
Let’s get at how that works by coming from a different angle. The other three gospels in the Bible (Matthew, Luke, and John) take a very different approach to the story of Jesus after the resurrection. They record Jesus appearing to any number of the disciples any number of times. And then, at some point, Jesus ascends into heaven. For those gospels, the ascension is an essential part of the story of Jesus. They give it a definite conclusion. That then is the clear turning point for the disciples’ journey of faith. Up until that point they had followed Jesus. They had relied on him to answer their questions and to give them guidance. Then after the resurrection Jesus appears and disappears, on and off for a number of days. They can’t control him or contain him. He is real. They can touch him. Yet his resurrected body isn’t bound by the laws of nature the way he was before the crucifixion. And so between the time of the resurrection and the forty days until the ascension, the disciples were living in an in-between time. Would they see Jesus again? When? They didn’t know. When? Where? But the ascension signals to them that they will not see Jesus again. They don’t feel ready for that. But they discover that they indeed are ready. They do go out to preach and teach and make the word of Jesus a reality.
But that is in the other gospels. Mark’s coming at the situation differently. He does not want to give a closed end to the possible appearances of the resurrected Jesus. He wants to keep that possibility open. The young man in the tomb giving the women directions and a promise, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter, that he is leading before you to Galilee. There you will see him as he told you.”
My colleague, Rev. Andrew Gookin, pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Rochester, says this of Mark’s gospel: “The way of Jesus, according to Mark, is a way of mystery and paradox. God’s Messiah is crucified… and yet he lives. Terror and amazement seize the women… and yet somehow(!) the good news is proclaimed. The disciples are nowhere to be found… and yet they carry the ministry of Jesus to Galilee and beyond.”
Andrew concludes by making the tie in with the beginning of Mark’s gospel: “Christ is risen, and this is only the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”
The chapters that follow have yet to be written, because those chapters are our lives. We are the living continuation of Mark’s gospel.
Will we see the resurrected Jesus in bodily form the way the disciples do as recorded in the other gospels? It’s been a long time. We might be tempted to say no. But Mark leaves it open.
Here on Easter as we celebrate the resurrection Mark does not want us to think that our time centuries later is in any way shape or form less likely to experience the presence of the resurrected Jesus than his time. This is not an old story from times past. This is an ongoing story.
The story of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is still only in its beginnings. The times are still exciting. Possibilities still abound. God is still doing new and unpredictable things. The time of the gospel is now, in and around us; for Jesus is not at all gone, but instead still in and around us here and now. Not diminished. Not weakened.
It seems to me that this is what Mark is up to when he ends his gospel with the word because…
Because Jesus isn’t done yet.
Let me conclude by reminding us of the origin of the word gospel. Gospel means good news. But good news of what?
Originally a gospel was the runner coming back from the battlefield with good news. The battle had been won! Victory had been accomplished.
So hear again Mark’s first and last incomplete sentences: “The reason they were afraid was because of the beginning of the good news that the battle had been won, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The battle is death. God has won.
That yanks the rug out from underneath everything that our lives are based upon. Our lives are based upon the idea that the world is a fragile place and death and destruction are always just around the corner. There are political elections that seem all so essential, ships hit bridges and they collapse, nations invade nations, people starve and die, people overdose from drugs, we may face financial or legal difficulties, family strife, medical problems, the list can seem to go on and on.
But Mark reminds us of the truth that puts all of that in proper perspective: …because the beginning of the battle victory, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Nothing now can change that. The story is only beginning. The chapters ahead are good.
No comments:
Post a Comment