The Easter ... Story? Parade? Bonnet? Buffet? (there's
a good one). Actually, the strange title has its root in the
passage we just read. If you translate the Greek literally at
the end of verse 8, you get something like, "They spoke nothing
to no one; they were afraid for..." And there it quits.
Now, you Bible scholars know that these first eight verses
of the sixteenth chapter of Mark are known as the "short ending."
The earliest of reliable ancient manuscripts ended right here:
the encounter of the women with the young man in the tomb where
Jesus had been laid...their amazement and terror. There are no
post-resurrection appearances here, just a story that stops dead:
... Is there more? Of course, there is more, and some pious
scribe took it upon himself to finish it. He added the material
we have in verses 9 through 20 to bring the story to a more
"literarilly-satisfying" conclusion.
Some have defended that effort saying that there is no way
any gospel account of the most important event in human history,
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, could just leave us hanging.
There HAD to have been more. Perhaps the end of the original
manuscript just wore out and was lost from heavy use. Nah. The
end of the manuscript did not fall off, or get worn out. The
better explanation, in my view, is that the end of the manuscript
is still being written!
And no wonder. It really is quite a story. It begins in a
world we know all too well, the Good Friday world, a world of
bullets and bombs, of mobs and mayhem, of violence and victims.
Most of Jesus' friends abandoned him after his arrest and watched
in horror as he was crucified. They had actually begun to
believe him when he said that love is better than hate, that
forgiveness is better than revenge. They had begun to trust him
when he said that the greatest good is love for God and neighbor
and that the way to gain your own best life is to give it away.
Theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who was conscripted at age 17 into
the German army and witnessed the firebombing of his hometown of
Hamburg, in which 40,000 civilians were killed, wrote that "Good
Friday is the center of the world."(1) We know.
So it was over. Their hopes and dreams had died there on
that cross along with their teacher and friend. There had not
been time to render the last services to the body of Jesus. The
Sabbath had intervened and the women who wished to anoint the
body had not been able to do so. As early as possible after the
Sabbath had passed, they set out to perform this sad task.
They were worried about one thing. Tombs had no doors.
When the word "door" is mentioned it really means "opening." In
front of the opening was a groove, and in the groove ran a
circular stone as big as a cart-wheel; and the women knew that it
was quite beyond them to move a stone like that. But when they
reached the tomb, the stone was rolled away. Hallelujah!
The relief they felt upon arrival at the tomb's entrance,
however, is quickly shattered once they enter. They see a young
man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right; his very
presence, appearance or both alarms them. "Do not be alarmed,"
he says. Sure. Right. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene,
who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place
where they laid him." And, of course, the women were greatly
relieved at this news and immediately began praising God and
trading high-fives all around. Uh-huh. They were as terrified
as ever.
"Ladies, calm down...go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He
is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just
as he told you.'" Although you and I might find solace in the
young man's words with the benefit of 2,000 years of hindsight,
it was quickly evident that the women did not. They took
seriously his first instruction...GO. They went. As fast as
their ladylike legs could carry them. As to the rest of it, we
will have to depend upon other sources, because the gospel of
Mark leaves it right there with the rest of the story yet to be
told.
In his commentary on the gospel of Mark, the late Donald H.
Juel tells the story of one of his students who had memorized the
whole of Mark in order to do a dramatic, Broadway-style reading
before a live audience. After careful study, the student had
decided to go with the scholarly consensus regarding the ending.
At his first performance, however, after he spoke that ambiguous
last verse, he stood there awkwardly, shifting from one foot to
the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure,
waiting for a proper ending. Finally, after several anxious
seconds, he said, "Amen!" and made his exit. The relieved
audience applauded loudly and appreciatively. Upon reflection,
though, the student realized that by providing the audience a
satisfying conclusion, his "Amen!" had actually betrayed the
dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when
he reached the final verse he simply paused for a half beat and
left the stage in silence. "The discomfort and uncertainty
within the audience were obvious," said Juel, "and as people
exited...the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience
of the non-ending."
In Tom Long's commentary on our lesson in Christian Century,
he says, "If Mark's ending creates discomfort and uncertainty, it
is partly due to our knowledge of how the Easter story is told in
the other gospels. Easter is supposed to have post-resurrection
appearances, joyful seaside meals, scenes of reconciliation and
forgiveness, garden embraces of the risen Lord, and the
disciples' excited shout, 'He is risen!' But Mark offers us none
of these, choosing instead to end his story with frightened women
fleeing from a cemetery in silence. That's no way to run a
resurrection.
"But Mark was trying to impart a different kind of Easter
joy, trying to reveal another dimension of the Easter faith. As
you come to the last verse and contemplate the unfinished ending,
fretting that the Jesus story ends in mute fear and wondering
where to go from here, suddenly an insight shatters the silence.
'Go tell his disciples,' the young man at the empty tomb said.
'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.'
Who are his disciples? Peter, James, John and Andrew...yes, but
also you. You are a disciple too. Where is Galilee? North of
Jerusalem...yes, but also located in the opening chapter of Mark:
'Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.' In
other words, reader, the story isn't over. Leave the empty tomb
now and go back and read it again. Like the disciples, you did
not understand this story the first time. Now that you have been
to the cross and to the cemetery, read it again."(2)
The story is not over. Even today. If we needed any
reminder of that we got one a week or so ago with the
announcement of the "discovery" of the Gospel of Judas after 1700
years. With all the hype in the press and the National
Geographic special on TV last Sunday night, the only thing to
say, quite honestly, is that there is a good deal LESS here than
meets the eye. Actually, this manuscript was 'discovered' over
35 years ago, but has been circulating among collectors of
antiquities for decades, only recently coming into the hands of
actual researchers for the eye-popping price of $3,000,000,
despite the fact that the lady who had it said it was never about
the money. Uh-huh.
Scholars of ancient church history have long known that a
document purporting to be the "Gospel of Judas" was in existence,
because passages were quoted in the writings of the early church,
most often so that the passages could be refuted. It is one more
example of what is known as "gnostic literature." It is
available today in any major bookstore or on-line at Amazon.com.
The Gospel of Thomas is one that I read years ago; there are a
number of others, including this "new" one. The word "gnostic"
comes from a Greek word for knowledge, and is used to describe
people who believed themselves to be saved by some special
knowledge imparted to them by God rather than by faith or works
or some other way. The gnostics' beliefs were often viewed by
the early church as, at best, unorthodox, and at worst, heresy.
One of the passages in the new gospel portrays Judas as
allowing Jesus to shed his human form through death and pass to a
higher realm: "For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me,"
Jesus tells Judas. That was a Greek idea - the soul is a
prisoner inside the body and is set free at death - an idea that
would not have been in the mind of a Jewish rabbi like Jesus. In
fact, many of the gnostic ideas reflect that perspective.
The church encountered serious differences of opinion in its
early years that its leaders believed needed to be addressed.
Gnosticism was part of the discussion and eventually came to be
understood as just flat WRONG.
In E. J. Dionne's column in the Washington Post Friday, he
writes, "If Judas can make a comeback after all these years, just
about anyone can hope for salvation at the altar of public
opinion. The snake in the Garden of Eden must be looking
for the Web site and e-mail address of Judas's spin doctors."
Then he dealt with the controversy:
Purely as a matter of style, those who made the choices
for the canonical gospels deserve our thanks and
praise. Matthew, Mark, Luke and, in a different way,
John offer a powerful narrative and present a Jesus who
speaks to the world about ethics and justice even as he
makes much larger claims. Garry Wills is correct in
his new book, What Jesus Meant, to insist that Jesus
cannot be reduced to being a gentle teacher of
principles or of politics. But the Jesus of the Gospel
of Judas seems entirely disconnected from human
struggles and laughs at human ignorance.
It's entirely fair for nonbelievers to use a document
such as the Judas Gospel to point out how faith
traditions grow from human sources and from a contest
of ideas among believers. It is simple historical fact
that early Christians struggled over how to define the
faith. They argued about exactly who Jesus was and
disagreed over the proper relationship between the
emerging Jesus Movement and Judaism.(3)
Truth be told, the arguments continue to this day. In fact,
as the gospel of Mark appears to insist, the story is not over.
The world and the church lost a giant this past week,
William Sloane Coffin. It is hard to think of a contemporary
churchman other than Martin Luther King, Jr. who was more
centrally and visibly involved in the tumultuous years of the
civil rights struggle and the antiwar movement. Coffin not only
lived those events but made some of them happen, and he inspired
hundreds of young people to become involved and thus to live
fully as well. As chaplain at Yale University and senior
minister at Riverside Church in New York, Coffin was known for
his powerful sermons and prominent public ministry. He was often
controversial, but his influence on American Protestantism has
been significant.
Sometime after his retirement, he was interviewed on
National Public Television's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.(4) He
had some wonderful things to say. For example,
God is not too hard to believe in. God is too good to
believe in, we being such strangers to such goodness.
The love of God is to me absolutely overwhelming. It's
clear to me, two things: that almost every square inch
of the earth's surface is soaked with the tears and
blood of the innocent, and it's not God's doing. It's
our doing. That's human malpractice. Don't chalk it
up to God. Every time people say, when they see the
innocent suffering, every time they lift their eyes to
heaven and say, "God, how could you let this happen?"
it's well to remember that exactly at that moment God
is asking exactly the same question of us: "How could
you let this happen?" So you have to take
responsibility.
On growing old:
I'd just as soon live a little bit longer. But when
you are 80, you can't complain. Joy in this world
comes from self-fulfillment. Joy is a more profound
experience than mere happiness. When you feel a sense
of undeserved integrity because you think you're in the
right fight -- against segregation, against the war in
Vietnam, against the stupid and cruel discrimination
against gays and lesbians -- these are the right
fights, I feel very deeply. And the sense of self-fulfillment which comes from being in the right fight
is a wonderful thing. I remain hopeful. The opposite
of hope is despair -- not pessimism, despair. And as a
very convinced Christian, I say to myself, "Come on,
Coffin. If Christ never allowed his soul to be
cornered with despair, and his was the greatest
miscarriage of justice maybe in the world, who the hell
am I to say I'm going to despair a bit?" When you get
older, friendship obviously runs deeper and deeper.
And, I would add, nature gets more interesting the
nearer you get to joining it, and also more beautiful.
I can sit on the front porch here and watch the sun
coming in through the maple leaves. You know, God is good.
In regard to our celebration today, he says, "I myself
believe passionately in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because
in my own life I have experienced Christ not as a memory, but as
a presence. So today on Easter we gather not, as it were, to
close the show with the tune 'Thanks for the Memory,' but rather
to reopen the show with the hymn 'Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.'(5)
So let the show and story continue. As we said at the
beginning, it starts out in a Good Friday world and ends...
Well. So what do you DO with the story? The message of the
ending of Mark's gospel is THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. Handle it!
After all, YOU are the one who came here looking for Jesus. But
he is not here. You just missed him. By this time of the
morning, he is already in Galilee.(6) Check there.
A little boy was offered the opportunity to select a dog for
his birthday present. At the pet store, he was shown a number of
puppies. From them he picked one whose tail was wagging
furiously. When he was asked why he selected that particular
dog, the little boy said, "I wanted the one with the happy
ending."(7)
The Easter ... What will the ending be? I am not worried.
I will leave that in the hands of my precious Lord who lived and
died and rose again that I might live. By the grace of my risen
Savior, I will rely on the promise of his word: "Eye has not
seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into [any] heart...the
things which God has prepared for them that love him."(8) But today
we get just a glimpse. That is why we say "Happy Easter."
Amen!
1. Quoted by John Buchanan, "Sunrise," The Christian Century, 4/4/06
2. Thomas G. Long, "Dangling Gospel," The Christian Century, 4/4/06, p. 19
3. E. J. Dionne Jr., "A New Twist On Judas: Beyond the Buzz Over Gospel's Publication,"
The Washington Post, 4/14/06, A-17
4. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week752/profile.html
5. William Sloane Coffin, Credo, (Louisville, KY : Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004),
p. 28
6. William H. Willimon, "Easter Fear," The Intrusive Word, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans,
1994), p. 142
7. Bible Illustrator for Windows, (Hiawatha, IO: Parsons Technology, 1994)
8. I Corinthians 2:9
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