Easter Sunday (April 8, 2012) – Mark 16:1-8
Mark 16:1-8
How Would You End It?
Resurrection of our Lord (Easter Sunday) – April 8, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Every three years we get to hear Mark’s account of the resurrection.
And every three years we get to ask: What the……!!!!!!??????
This is how Mark’s Gospel ends.
And if you think it’s weird in English, try it in Greek: it’s not even a complete sentence.
To no one anything they said; afraid they were for. . .
It’s like Mark keeled over in mid-sentence, or, as I’ve said before,
like he was plucked up mid-sentence by some big hand from the sky,
like in a Monty Python animation.
I mean: Doesn’t Mark know that everyone likes a happy, satisfying ending better than
a – let’s face it – weird ambiguous one?
Doesn’t he know that people liked the conventional, satisfying final episode of
the TV show Friends where everything was resolved way way better than
the weird, ambiguous unsatisfying final episode of The Sopranos?
I mean, Mark: Where’s the angel?
Where’s the earthquake?
Where’s Jesus eating with the disciples and forgiving them and breathing on them?
And, for that matter: where is Jesus?
I mean, Mark, really: How can you have a resurrection story without a risen Jesus?
You all got up out of bed for this?
Well, you can take some comfort from the fact that you’re not the only one who
has thought this ending is weird.
Far from it.
At least two different people, long ago, tried to give poor old Mark a better end,
a more whiz-bang ending.
These two endings are in your Bibles: you can go check them out this afternoon.
Only problem is: Mark didn’t write them.
It seems he wanted to end his Gospel the weird way, for your edification on Easter morning.
But why?
The clue is in the words of the young man to the women:
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.
Who are “his disciples”? Well, Peter, James, and John, certainly, but also, well, you.
And where is Galilee? Well, north of Jerusalem, yes, but it also features in the
beginning of Mark’s Gospel: In those days, Jesus appeared in Nazareth of Galilee we read in verse 9 of chapter 1.
It seems that Mark is sending us back to the beginning of his Gospel,
to re-read it, and to discover the risen Jesus in the stories told there.
In upsetting the status quo; in healing the sick; in feeding the hungry; in forgiving the sinful;
in casting out the demonic; in challenging injustice;
in welcoming the rejected little ones of this world into his embrace.
In summoning followers.
Wherever these things are happening, Mark is suggesting, there the risen Christ is present.
As the writer Leo Tolstoy titled one of his stories, Where Love Is, God Is.
There’s an old Jewish story about two rabbis discussing when the Messiah will come.
One looks at the other and says, “Oh, Messiah has already come.”
And the other, astonished, says, “Where?”
To which he replies, “Go to the city gate, and there you will see him unwrapping and
wrapping the bandages of the sick.”
There is where the crucified and risen Messiah is present.
Present, perhaps, but hidden, certainly.
It’s not obvious in these gritty, earthy stories in Mark that this is where
the God of all being is fully present.
It’s funny to go back and re-read Mark’s Gospel because what is clear is that it’s not really
obvious to anybody that the living God is present in every humble thing Jesus is doing.
What we see, though, in reading Mark a second time is a God whose power is expressed in
service and in a deeply compassionate love.
Turns out we see Jesus in the places where he always conducts his ministry.
Way back in January, we read the opening lines of Mark’s Gospel, and, let’s face it,
it wasn’t much of a beginning either.
No birth story. No angels. No shepherds. No magi. No back story of any kind.
Just this plopped in front of us:
The beginning of the good news of Jesus of Nazareth.
Turns out, Mark’s whole Gospel is just the beginning of the Good News.
Something has started in Jesus that is still happening.
That thing is Easter.
The story of Mark doesn’t end with Jesus’s resurrection,
but continues all the way up to this moment.
It turns out that Easter is happening right now.
And if you heed the young man’s words and look for him, you will find him:
in the places where he always conducts his ministry, as Mark suggests.
This was true for the generation that came right after Mark wrote his Gospel.
Easter for the community of theologian Justin Martyr in the 2nd century, wasn’t about
something that had happened a hundred years before him,
but about something that was happening in his community right then:
He wrote, We who once took most pleasure in accumulating wealth and property now share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with men of different tribes . . . now, since the resurrection of Christ, live familiarly with and [even] pray for our enemies. (quoted by Daniel Clendenin at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20081020JJ.shtml)
A generation later still, the theologian Tertullian wrote of his community:
Our care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy. . . . See, they say, how they love one another and how ready they are to serve and die for one another. (Ibid.)
70 generations later still, we read this in this year’s annual report of our community,
First Lutheran Church.
It’s in the report of our Kids Club, a drop-in ministry for neighbourhood children that
began in response to the shooting of some children on our block,
staffed by two of our young adults:
Having personal connections and acting as a brother or sister has a strong positive impact in our ministry. . . . Our final meal with parents and children really showed how much connection there was. [At the end of the summer program], The goodbye hugs, the games, and smiles said a lot. The kids really appreciated a safe space, especially those who came from foster care, rough households, or who had difficulty interacting with other children.
When you re-read Mark’s Gospel you hear Jesus say,
Whoever welcomes one of these little ones welcomes me. (9:37)
When you read this alongside our Kids Club report, you know exactly where the risen Christ is:
right where he said he’d be.
Right where he conducts his ministry.
Easter is happening right now, it turns out, right in our congregation.
In the case of Kids Club, it shows us that death doesn’t have the final word.
That violence doesn’t have the final word.
But that life and love do.
The good news, the great news on this Easter morning, that Mark give us is just this.
We have a God who meets us exactly at the point where things seems worst,
maybe a neighbourhood shooting.
Not just to be with us, although there is certainly that, but to do something incredible.
To turn what looked like an ending into a new beginning.
To turn what looks like failure into a new future.
Jesus is on the loose now, doing this.
And so we can take heart: In our relationships, betrayal is not the last word.
In our communities, injustice is not the last word.
Rather, sharing gets the last word.
Fairness gets the last word.
Equitableness gets the last word.
Grace gets the last word.
Writer and editor John Buchanan writes, living in a world where a resurrection happened means
“goodness and truth are not ultimately overwhelmed by evil.”
(Christian Century, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-03/life-after-resurrection)
On Good Friday, Jesus’s followers lost that faith.
But then came a resurrection, and this meant that Jesus’s life was not lived in vain,
and that living the way he lived was worth working for.
Because of the resurrection, truth and goodness and love are the final realities.
The older you get, I think this is a hard truth to hang on to.
Things happen to you. Health fails. People disappoint you.
It’s easy to become bitter and cynical.
I once did two funerals in close proximity to each other.
They were for two women who had had very similar difficult experiences in life.
As young women they had both lived through the second world war in Germany,
which was not a good time to be a young woman.
One became completely embittered by her experiences, cynical, mean, turned in on herself.
The other chose to allow her suffering to attune herself to others’ suffering.
She became a person known for her compassion and empathy.
She gave life to a lot of people out of a tomb of suffering.
That’s Easter.
Mark would say, “Amen to that, preacher. Wrap it up now. Good ending!”
Only, he probably wouldn’t.
That’s too neat an ending for Mark. Too satisfying. Too conventional.
Mark wouldn’t be satisfied with any ending that wrapped things up too neatly.
Mark is not going to be satisfied unless he helps us understand that
when we re-read his Gospel we discover that, along with all the rest that Jesus does,
He also summons disciples to follow him.
Mark is not going to be satisfied until we get to the end and understand that
when the young man in the tomb says to the women,
“he’s going ahead of you, you’ll see him, just like he told you,”
he’s not saying it to some women 2000 years ago.
He’s saying it to you.
The ending he wants is for you to meet the risen, living, breathing Jesus of all compassion and
all mercy and all grace now.
The ending he wants is for you to go where he is – where the hungry are to feed,
where the sinful are to forgive,
where the sick are to mend,
where the poor are to bring comfort,
where the oppressed are to bring justice,
where the little ones are to be embraced,
where the imprisoned are to walk with,
where the dying are to console.
The ending he wants is for you to go where he is – and follow him.
Without end.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
