RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - April 12, 2009

“When is an Ending Not an Ending?”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 16:1-8

Jesus was dead – dead as a doornail. In fact, by the time Joseph of Arimathea went through all the rigamarole of getting permission from Pilate to take his bruised and broken body off the cross, it was so close to the setting sun on Friday that the best Joseph could do was hastily lay him out in a cave-like tomb and seal it with a rock, so that grave robbers and rodents could not get in.

It was not until after the Jewish Sabbath was over and the sun was rising – early in the morning when the dew was still on the grass and the mist was gently disentangling itself from the trees – that his corpse could be properly prepared and anointed for burial.

That is why Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome walked through the garden to the tomb that first Easter morning. The only reason they were there was because they knew that Jesus was dead – dead as a doornail.

That is why the women carried with them their embalming ointments and spices. That is why they brought their towels to wash away the flecks of dried blood that had pooled around his scratches and wounds. That is why they brought the linen swaddling clothes to wrap him in – almost as if he were a baby again.

And that is why they brought their tears and the whispered words of their final goodbyes. And all the while as the first rays of the sun swept through the garden ahead of them, they openly wondered why in heaven’s name they were coming to do these things when a stone they could not move blocked the entrance of the cave where he lay.

What happened next, of course, rocked and shocked and forever transformed the world. First off, there was no boulder in front of the entrance. That in and of itself was good news and solved the biggest of their problems – or so they thought. Next, they found the young man in white sitting inside the cave. That was disquieting to say the least – as was the terse Easter message he proclaimed.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said with just the hint of a smile on his lips. “I know who you are looking for, and he has been raised. Go and pass on this Good News to the others – and do not forget to tell Peter. Of all people, remember to tell Peter that Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee, and he will see you there.”

The women were stunned into bewildered silence (who would not be?). Within moments, their bewilderment turned to alarm and then to abject fear. Terrified, they left the tomb and the garden, not once looking back. They told no one.

That’s it. That is the end of Mark’s Gospel. There are no tales of Jesus appearing to his friends – no Doubting Thomas, no Road to Emmaus. There are no fireside chats on the beach with Peter. There is no Great Commission, no glorious sending forth to spread the Good News throughout the world.

In fact, in the original Greek, Mark’s Gospel ends with a preposition. “They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid for…” For whom? Themselves? The other disciples? The world? Who knows? Of course, English translators solved that particular issue by simply removing the preposition, but doing so does not solve the bigger problem of the Gospel writer’s abrupt conclusion.

Now, if you look in your pew Bibles, you will see that there are other verses tacked on to what we read this morning. These verses are the result of second century Christians feeling (perhaps as we do) that surely Mark could not have intended such an ambiguous ending to such a glorious and transformative story. Clearly the early church understood that faithful Christians knew that there was more, so why not tell them?

And so, some of our church fathers tinkered with the Gospel – just to give it a more fitting conclusion. There are, in fact, four different endings to Mark’s Gospel that at one time or another appeared in print (and still do) after verse 8. However, modern scholars almost unanimously agree that the original version of the Gospel ended with the women leaving in fear and silence.

And so we can say quite confidently that Mark finishes his Gospel as abruptly as he begins it. Just as there is no birth story for a prelude, at the end of his narrative, there is no postlude. The Gospel writer leaves us hanging with an ambiguous and hardly joyful conclusion. Is that any way to run a resurrection?

Wouldn’t you think that Mark would want to leave his readers in those early persecuted congregations with a soaring vision of reassurance and conclusiveness? Is there any Good News in the silence and fear of the women?

Let’s give Mark the benefit of the doubt for a moment. What if he had a different brand of pastoral wisdom in mind? Maybe Mark figured that the empty tomb should be enough to inspire and renew faith. Maybe Mark was injecting a dose of healthy realism to his narrative.

Maybe with those jagged edges that end his Gospel, Mark was refusing, as Patrick Wilson speculates, “to tie the loose ends of the gospel into a tidy bow…The final verses are ambiguous: a promise greeted by fear; a pledge that that we will "see him" swamped by our own uncertainty and dread…(But) isn't this the world we live in? No.. thinly fabricated happily-every-afters, but a world in which we hold tightly to the promise and fearfully tread our way through a tangle of doubts and amazements.”

And so, in this year of economic dislocation, ecological uncertainty, and a world on edge, Easter dawns for us with both the promise of the young man in the tomb and the fear of the three women held in precarious balance and tension. Do we throw it all away as a hopeful flight of fancy, or do we search for a deeper significance? Those are the real Easter questions.

We who live in faith – or in hope – or who are not quite ready to throw it all away – ought to consider embracing Mark’s story of the resurrection because it is a powerful one for our time and culture. As Tim Geddert proposes, “Yes, happy endings are wonderful. The problem is they let us put down the book with a sigh of relief and say, ‘Great story!’ This is a different kind of book. You cannot put it down, even if you want to. Whether this book has a good or a bad ending depends on you. For you are still writing it!”

In short, Mark writes an ending that is not an ending – because he knew that there is no ending – because the story goes on, down through the ages – beyond the three women, beyond Peter and the other disciples who betrayed and denied Jesus and when he needed them most fled to protect their own hides – down through the ages even to us mired in global recession, belittled by war, and plagued by a deteriorating environment.

As Scott Hoezee wrote, “You can almost see in your mind's eye the evangelist Mark, nodding his head and saying, "You bet there's more to it than this! You bet it cannot end in silence! So what are you doing to continue the story? What are you doing to break the silence? You're right," Mark might agree, "this can't be the end of the story. But it is you who have to finish it."

That is our challenge! And we answer that challenge by recalling the instructive words of the young man in white in the tomb. Jesus has gone on to Galilee, he told the women, there to meet those who believe in his mission.

The Risen Christ has gone on before us too. That is the Good News of Easter. The Risen Christ will always be before us, beckoning us to venture, as Cynthia Campbell writes, to “where charity and love prevail over injustice and violence; where compassion and hope replace cynicism and despair; where peace and love take root in lives that are empty and lost; where human beings know joy and justice, dignity and delight.”

Mark’s Gospel has no end – and that should be both a tremendous comfort and an awesome challenge to us. It is a comfort because Mark, the earliest of all the Gospel writers, is so confident that Christ is risen that he has chosen not to provide any evidence other than the empty tomb itself.

It is a challenge because so clearly we have a role to play in the story now. The message of the resurrection, the message of the Good News of Jesus, the message of the Way that Mark proclaimed throughout his Gospel is now our message to live and to affirm.

And so wherever else Easter may find you this morning, may it find you embracing the promise of the young man in white more than clinging to the fear of the women at the tomb.

May it find you proclaiming that God is God, that hope does emerge from despair, that love is stronger than hate, that in the end, life ought to concern us much more than death. May it find you living from this day forward as if Christ has risen. Christ has risen indeed.

Sermon - April 12, 2009

“When is an Ending Not an Ending?”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Mark 16:1-8

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 16:1-8