Glory

April 3, 1994

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Scripture: Mark 16:1-8

My stars, what kind of ending do we have here? Is this any way to wind up a Gospel? Is this any way to close an account of the most transcendent, revolutionary event in the history of the human race? What’s going on here, anyway? If Gospel means “good news”, what kind of good news is this? “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

PERIOD....End of statement, end of document, last word, CURTAIN! That’s the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark.

Well....as far as we know, it’s the conclusion of the Gospel of Mark. It’s the conclusion of the oldest manuscripts that have come down to us of the Gospel of Mark. You can get a lively debate going among scholars quickly over the question of whether Mark deliberately stopped there, or was somehow prevented from going on, or intended to add more to bring the story to a more fitting conclusion.... or even that there WAS more there originally that now is gone. One popular theory which could be correct, is the Lost Scroll Fragment Theory. If the original New Testament documents, the so-called original manuscripts, were written on scrolls, which had to be unrolled to be read, and rolled back again....over time, after many readings, goes the theory, it is certainly possible that the ending of a scroll could get frayed, or tattered, or worn, and finally be lost entirely.

Maybe something like that explains the abruptness of the ending. Because it IS an abrupt ending. So abrupt that the early Church felt obliged to tack something else on, to round it out, and bring it to closure. Those attempts now appear as footnotes in most modern translations.

You can see them handled that way in the Revised Standard Version Bible in front of you, the shorter ending and the longer ending. Those aren’t in the old manuscripts. So different in tone and wording, they couldn’t have been written by Mark himself.

So we’re left with what we have. And we don’t really know if it’s all Mark wanted us to have or not. But there it is, and that’s what we work with, a truncated Easter message, a resurrection account that suddenly stops, almost in mid-sentence, leaving us hanging, waiting, wondering, and in a way perplexed and unsatisfied, the way we feel before we know the outcome of any unfolding adventure..... Is that all?

Tell us what happened next...We stand before Mark’s ending almost expecting Paul Harvey[1] to break in and say, “In a moment, the rest of the story.”

Here we are on Easter Sunday morning, 2000 years after the event itself. Could it be, do you suppose....but maybe we’re not quite ready for that. If we don’t have it all, if we don’t have it complete, we do have something. We have 8 verses. Let’s start there and let them take us as far as they can.

What a miserable night that Saturday night must have been. The second night after a death in the family is sometimes more painful than the first. There is the protection of numbness in the beginning, blessed numbness. It can’t have happened, there must be some mistake....we’ll wake up in a minute and it’ll be all right...

A kind of protective armor, a deadening of the senses keeps the full reality at bay for a few hours. You’re so stunned you don’t feel much of anything. The finality of it is more intense by the second night. I doubt if those women in the story got a lot of sleep.

Early in the morning they went out to anoint the body. It was all they had left. They had tried to save His life, they had done everything they could, but who were they against the power of the establishment? All they could do was stand by helplessly and watch, their very hearts crushed by the tragedy and cruelty of it all.

But at least they could give Him a decent burial. The disposition of the body on Friday was done hurriedly and perfunctorily. They had to do whatever they could before sundown.... Sabbath law. The rest would have to wait.

So early in the morning of the first day of the week, the 3 of them, Mary the mother of James, Mary Magdalene, his friend, and Salome, who may have been his mother’s sister, went out to the garden with the requisite spices and oils. You can see them in your mind’s eye, can’t you? Mark gives us just enough to trigger our imagination, and make the image spring to life---

3 figures, shrouded in robes, trudging through the morning mist... stooped both by the weight of the burial ointments, and the heaviness of their collective loss. You could cut the pathos of that scene with a knife.

Yet even in grief, even in sleeplessness, they have had not lost touch with practicality. The stone that covered the mouth of the tomb, they knew that stone was there, that ponderous stone that had been shoved into place to keep people out, would have to be moved before they could do their mournful job.

“Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?”, one asks, and the others shake their heads, without knowing the answer, but determined, driven, even, somehow, to find a way to pay their respects to this Man who had totally altered their lives.

Here was duty, paying tribute, even in death; Here was remembered appreciation, manifesting itself, even in despair; Here was devotion, expressing itself, even in bleakness. Friends, the Church has never given sufficient recognition to the stalwart women of the early Christian community. It  approaches a scandal. I say it as a chastened male who is just beginning in these latter days to learn.

BUT THERE IT IS....Just look at the record. All the men have fled, even before He was put to death....every one of them.....turned tail and split. THE WOMEN STUCK AROUND AND SAW IT THROUGH.

And here they are, still sticking around, still hanging tough. There was nothing they could change, nothing they could do to undo what was done....they knew that. All they had left now was a corpse, but at least they could lay it away with decency. Somehow they’d see that that was done. You remove your hat, gentlemen, in the face of love’s persistence. When there’s nothing else you can do, you do what you can.

And it’s at that moment, the absolute nadir, in a sense, of expectancy, the apparent end of the line, the lowest point on the continent of human experience... it’s at that moment, when the blackness of night in all its despondency still holds sway, and affection operates, even without hope.... it’s at that moment when nothing remains to hold on to but the ashes of an agonizing  disappointment... it’s at that moment that EVERYTHING IS CHANGED.

The stone is moved and the grace is wide open. Surprisingly, Mark’s account doesn’t shout the news out loud. There is no fanfare of trumpets in the background. In fact, given Mark’s customary propensity for breathless exclamation, the report of what happens is almost sedate. It reads virtually like a matter-of-fact Associated Press news bulletin: “When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled away.” It’s almost an understatement.

And what follows that is subdued. By Marken standards, there are no great diapason stops pulled out. You’d think there would be given the magnitude of this thing, but there’s not. The women go inside the tomb and are greeted by what Mark calls “a young man dressed in a white robe.”

We assume that represents an angel, an emissary from God, a messenger, sent to deliver an announcement and instructions...Compare that with Matthew and Luke....talk about restraint---

Matthew’s angel was like lightning, he says, and his clothing, not just white, but white as SNOW....it could almost serve as an advertisement for Clorox.... And he’s not sitting inside the cave, patiently waiting, he’s perched on top of the stone outside, having moved it from in front of the tomb himself to the accompaniment of an EARTHQUAKE. Now there’s an angel!

Luke does even better than that. In his version, there are 2 angels, a kind of celestial

“double-header”, and they are bedecked in robes he depicts as “dazzling”. Those versions put Mark in the shade.

Do you mind if we suspect just a touch of Easter hyperbole? It’s understandable. You need powerful images to do justice to powerful events. Mark’s account is the earliest and the least flowery of them all. The angel, the messenger simply welcomes the stunned women and tries to console them. “Don’t be alarmed. I know why you are here. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He’s not here. Look over there where they placed His body. You can see for yourself. He’s gone. He has been raised. God has done it. You don’t need those burial supplies. He’s not dead.

But now...your job, your assignment. God has done His part. He’s counting on you now to do yours. Go, tell His disciples...AND PETER....Notice that special, personal touch....the disciples AND PETER. Wasn’t Peter a disciple? Why single him out? Ahh, because HE PARTICULARLY NEEDED TO KNOW.

It’s a special, inclusive, forgiving, redemptive word for the disciple still in a state of devastation over having denied Him. GO TELL THEM ALL THE NEWS. And tell them that He’s going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.”

And the final sentence, the last sentence we have, the concluding sentence of the whole Gospel, this strange, cliff-hanging ending, shows them running out of the tomb, with the only sound emanating from the pounding of their feet against the ground as they flee, augmented by the pounding of their hearts, for they were speechless, and they were afraid. THE END.

Do you know what I think? This may be wrong now, this may be entirely wrong, and I’ll have to admit that the preponderance of evidence may well point in another direction,

but my gut feeling now, having lived for a while with this story and this Gospel, is that

that abrupt, truncated ending may just be the place Mark meant to stop.

In a way it doesn’t make much sense, I suppose, but in a way it makes a lot of sense. From the preaching perspective it makes all the sense in the world. AN UNFINISHED RESURRECTION STORY. Exactly! Maybe that’s Mark’s whole point. Maybe that’s precisely why we’re given so little here---no trumpets, no flowers, no shouts of victory, no leaps of joy...Do you realize, not even a resurrection appearance on the part of Jesus? Where is He? The risen Christ Himself is never seen by anybody in the account.

There is only an empty grave, an announcement, a challenge, and a promise.... “He goeth before you to Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.” WHAM!

I think Mark the astute dramatist, Mark the sharp craftsman, Mark the insightful psychologist, Mark the inspired preacher is saying to us, on purpose, Listen, the story is not over. Easter doesn’t really live until it lives in you. YOU HAVE TO FINISH THE STORY.

You see, in a way, in fact, in the biggest and broadest sense, Gospels are not about endings. They’re about beginnings. Mark even says that specifically, way back there in the first verse of his writing. He puts us on notice. Remember? “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” His whole Gospel is a beginning, a commencement, a kick-off, if you will, may I say, a SUNRISE, because the whole point of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection is lost unless the results of it take effect in the individual. Remember how Martin Luther put it, “I care not that Christ died, unless He died for thee.”

What Mark’s open-ended ending does for us, just as it did for these women, is to put the ball right back in our court, to use a tennis phrase....it challenges us to make our own response.... that’s not always a pleasant thing to do.

Will you go, or won’t you? Will you find out for yourself, or hold back? Will you move out in faith, or stay behind and shrivel.... choices like that are never easy. They mean change. They mean a new orientation.

Dr. Howard Thurman, a Black theologian and brilliant scholar, was a native of Florida. He served as Dean of the Chapel at Boston University for a number of years before his retirement. In one of his books, he writes about a crisis that took place one time in his young daughter’s life.

Everybody in the family had made their summer plans. They all had commitments of various types. But just before Thurman and his wife were ready to leave for speaking engagements, word came that a companion who lived with their aged grandmother in another state had died. Someone would have to go and stay with grandmother for the summer.

The family held council and talked it over. Thurman’s commitments couldn’t be cancelled at that date. Nor his wife’s. So it was decided that their daughter would take their place and care for the grandmother until the parents returned from their conferences.

When this decision was reached, the daughter bolted from the table and raced up the

stairs, weeping. She slammed the door of her room behind her. Thurman followed her up the stairs, knocked on the door, and found her stretched across the bed, crying profusely.

He said to her, “Sweet, I didn’t come up here to urge you to stop crying. I came to

explain to you why I think you are crying. I don’t think you’re crying because you don’t

want to go away for the rest of the summer and miss the fun with your friends. It’s more

than that. You’re crying because for the first time in your life the family is asking you

to carry your end of the stick as a family member. Something inside of you knows that

when you get on that train tomorrow, one part of your life will be behind you forever. You will never again be quite as carefree and unaccountable as you were before.”

It’s hard to grow up...and it’s more than just a matter of age. We all want to remain children, in a sense. We all yearn for those days when we were free from responsibility.

But maturity, especially Christian maturity, says you can’t stay in that state of arrested innocence forever. Life won’t let you.

Sooner or later you have to decide. Sooner or later you have to make some choices. Mark’s ending lays it out for us about as starkly and as plainly as it can be presented. Is resurrection true? That’s the wrong question, I think. Mark doesn’t even try to answer that question. He knows you can’t “prove” that, any more than you can “prove” any other important question about life.

There are some things you can prove, of course, some relatively unimportant things. Given the right set up, with all the pieces in place, you can prove certain mathematical formulae. I can prove the Pythagorean Theorem, or I think I still can. I could when I was in the 11th grade, at any rate. It almost gave Mrs. Laird apoplexy, but she finally got me through it.

I can prove the law of gravity, or at least demonstrate it, by throwing a grapefruit up in the air, and watching I descend after it reaches the top of the arc in its flight. If I were clever enough, I suppose I could prove that the earth is round, or measure the weight of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

But these are little things, relatively speaking. I can’t prove anything really important. I can’t prove that God is good, or that health is better than illness, or that justice is finally going to prevail. I can’t prove any of that.

And I certainly can’t prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Mark couldn’t either, andmade no attempt to.... To read him on his own terms, to read him at face value, to read Mark honestly, we need to hear him ask us personally, NOT was the resurrection real. But IS the resurrection real? NOT did it happen, but HAS it happened, to you? NOT did Jesus rise from the grave, but IS HE ALIVE in your heart today?

That does put the ball right back in your court. YOU HAVE TO DECIDE. The deepest truths of life, the life and death issues, can never be “proved”. They can only be “faithed”, if I may be forgiven making a verb out of a noun.

This is Easter Sunday morning. We gather as a group of Christian worshipers to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord. What do we have to celebrate?

Is the whole thing based on a giant mistake, some kind of giant illusion, or on a cruel April Fool’s joke? If all we really have to go on for motivation is a corpse, then a lot of things we thought were important don’t make much difference, do they?

If the sum total of who Christ equals only His birth, plus His life, plus His teaching, plus His healing, plus His compassion, plus His death, and that’s it, then it was a nice interlude, a momentary bright spot on the canvas of human history, but for all that the world can just go on now about its business without worrying about it too much.

If Christ is dead and we are His followers, then all we have to do is work through our grief, as best we can, like those women were trying to do, coming to the tomb that morning, doing something to keep their hands and minds occupied, doing something to keep their hearts from breaking.... What else was there? What else would there be for us?

If Christ is dead, then really all we have is a memory and about all we can do is sit around piously and savor it. That’s what some Christians do.

But if Christ is alive, then the work of Christ is not finished, and our work is not finished...Our job now is to dry the tears of our grief, and see where Christ will lead us next.

The future is as open as the tomb. I guess that’s what Mark is saying to us, isn’t it?

Is it true, or not? What do you THINK? What do YOU think? What DO you think? He’s waiting for you in Galilee....not a place on a map, but a place of need, a place where His work is unfinished, a place where there is hurt, or misery, or loneliness, or human pain. He’s waiting for you in YOUR Galilee, and when you go to Him in faith and commitment, you will know the power and grace of resurrection truth.

We stand this Easter morning between an empty tomb and Galilee, hearing the ancient

words of an unfinished story. How does the story end for you?

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[1] Paul Harvey was an American radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio and he had a segment entitled: “The Rest of the Story” (1918-2009)