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What Now?
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12 April 2009 The gospel according to Mark is a tough gospel for Easter morning. Here we are all dressed up for spring. The flowers are gorgeous. The sky is showing more days of blue than grey. The weather is warmer. The birds start their songs before any sane being is even awake. Everything seems to sing the joyous song of life. Except Mark. Mark ends his whole story of Jesus on such an odd note that every gospel writer who follows him – which is all the ones we know about – try to improve on his ending. Even some of those writing in Mark’s name add on to the ending...trying to prettify it, rather than leaving us with the favorite trick of the last in a TV series that still hopes to air next season. Mark ends with a cliff-hanger...all question and no answer.[1,159 Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome approach Jesus’ tomb. The three of them–good Jewish women that they are–wait till the sabbath ends so that they can anoint Jesus’ brutalized, dead body. And this is the first unsettling note. The Greek in our translation is glossed over, but it says the women arrive at the tomb very early, just as the sun is coming up...which means they started out before that. Maybe they are too stressed by the trauma of Jesus’ taunting and crucifixion and death to catch more than a few hours of fitful sleep. Maybe they are wrestling with the rapid disassociation between the disciples and Jesus–the denial and desertions. We do not know, except to recognize that being awake before dawn is common for anyone who experiences trauma–so common it’s one of the key symptoms we now identify with PTSD, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Certainly these women and the other disciples are candidates. But as they walk along, Salome and two Marys discuss a practical and mundane concern–who is going to roll away the very large stone that goes across the front of the tomb’s opening? Only the stone has been rolled back already. So in a move that would do Indiana Jones proud, the women enter the tomb, and see a young man dressed in a white robe—cue for an angel—sitting in the tomb. That’s when the women go on hyper-alert; they are alarmed by the figure in front of them. Here they are expecting a dead body, but the body is gone. In its place they have a religious experience and their response is alarm. These women know what we all know: in the world as we all experience it, people die. Everyone dies. In the world these women know, death by brutality is a normal if unwelcome fact of life. In the world as we experience it, millions of people have died horrible, brutal deaths. Even Jesus’ death is not singular in its brutality–two other men are crucified with him at the same time. Under the Roman Empire, thousands more experienced that same horror. By the time we add in death by disease, disasters such as Italy’s earthquake just this week, by the time we add accident and war, there isn’t one of us who hasn’t known death’s harshest presentations. Life doesn’t withhold harsh realities, and Mark’s unflinching narrative tells us that any faith worth its salt can’t pretend otherwise. This gospel isn’t fooling around. Easter doesn’t erase Good Friday. Good Friday is all too real. This is why exactly why Mark’s gospel is so unsettling; the women are fully prepared to deal with Good Friday and its aftermath. Instead, they are confronted with the message that Jesus of Nazareth is risen and goes before them to Galilee. This is the point where the women’s alarm becomes full-fledged fear. And excitement. And terror. They run away from the tomb and don’t breathe a word of their experience to anyone. This isn’t what we expect. We expect glorious reports of the risen Christ. We expect disciples who master their terror and face every situation with steadfast resolve. We expect King Arthur’s Camelot and the knights of the round table; Mark gives us disciples who disappear and a messiah who isn’t even around for his own resurrection appearances. One theologian suggests “that Jewish faith makes its way in the world by creating people who expect more from God, each other, and themselves, than they are likely ever to get.”[1,162] In that way, we are trained in faith to demand justice, even when corruption is the norm; to demand that creation nurture all people, even when greed is the norm; to expect God to be involved in every aspect of the world, even when we experience abandonment and despair.[1,162] Thank God the gospel according to Mark betrays its Jewish heritage! Mark isn’t addressing visitors to Disneyland; he’s speaking to real people facing daunting realities. The women run off in silence and fear...and leave us – every follower since then – begging the question: What now? And when we return to the gospel, we remember that even when death and its forces are as much our reality as they were Salome’s and the Mary’s, we are met at the tomb, at death’s resting place. We are met by the sacred and challenged to “become faithful disciples, carrying the message”[2] of life transformed. We are met by the sacred and equipped with word of the risen Christ who calls us to leave the place of death and move forward to meet him in Galilee, the familiar communities we call home. *** [1] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Mark, The Pilgrim Press, © 2005. |