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April 12, 2009 Sermon

Footprints of Faith
Mark 16: 1-8

Reverend Sally Harris

O One who is there, Give us discerning hearts to recognize the muffled hope in our cynicism, the transformation we carry in our astonishment and the healing from a God beyond our control. Help us to see the rising of faith even when stones seem too big to move and what we expect isn’t there and we are afraid… Remind us that You have gone before us. Amen.

For the last 47 days we have been invited to read through the gospel of Mark. Since Ash Wednesday, February 25th many of us have been reading verse by verse, chapter by chapter this short story. And today we come to the end of this Gospel. It is an abrupt ending.

It is almost as if the author of Mark had suddenly been dragged, mid-sentence, from the writing desk. It is almost as if the storyline was taken out of the author’s control and flung into the unknown, leaving only footprints of faith. This is no way to run a resurrection. We can’t help but look around, half expecting some great pronouncement – some dramatic twist to this action packed rendition of the Jesus story. There is none. The credits roll. It all comes to a grinding halt. In Mark, there is no Great Commission, no road to Emmaus, no breakfast of fish on the beach with the risen Jesus. There is only a promise that we will see him, followed by fear, then silence.

Jesus is not here! He is risen! That’s it? You have got to be kidding? Clearly something must be done about this ending.

And in fact something was… it is generally accepted that later writers added two different endings to the gospel. This short summary statement was found among ancient Greek manuscripts of Mark. “And immediately they reported all these instructions to Peter and his companions. After this, through them, Jesus sent forth the holy and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.

There is also a longer ending (from verses 9 -20) that can best be read as the work of a Christian scribe seeking to overcome the awkwardness of ending here at verse 8. And they went out and fled from the tomb; for terror and astonishment had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the late Donald 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 was obvious and as people exited, the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the nonending."

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.

Surely Mark must have felt tempted to end the story with some kind of soaring vision. Most scholars agree that this was written for a congregation that was marginal, expendable and suffering some form of persecution. Wouldn't these people come to Christian worship hoping for the blessed relief and consolation of a happy ending? What was begun is finished. The world is a reliable place after all: dramas begin and conflicts arise, but all is resolved in the final scene. Our hearts are lifted and the curtain falls. What kind of good news, what kind of gospel ends with devastating ambiguity: promises uttered from the shadows of a tomb, women rushing off afraid? But perhaps the author of Mark is not criticizing the women for their trembling, astonishment, or fear. Perhaps these reactions serve to highlight the super naturalness, the wonder of Jesus' resurrection. Perhaps the author is simply trying to articulate the inarticulate-able. How do you write down the feelings that accompany a breakthrough in human perception? How do you express the astonishment of Easter – the revelation that suddenly we have experienced, borne witness to something beyond our human imaginings, our human understanding, our human experience – something beyond our control that brings such light, such hope, such astonishment that we must wait for words to catch up… to this curve of faith.

Perhaps if we look closely the jagged edges of these final verses do; in fact, trace the author's pastoral wisdom by refusing to tie the loose ends of the gospel into a tidy bow of fleeting consolations. The final verses are ambiguous: a promise greeted by fear; a pledge that we will "see him", swamped by our own uncertainty and dread. What Mark's ending lacks in romance it makes up for in sheer realism. Isn't this the world we live in? No enchanted world of thinly fabricated happily every after's, but a world in which we hold tightly to the promise and fearfully tread our way through a tangle of doubt and amazement.

This is the way Easter dawns upon us: with promise and apprehension. We can either heave the book across the desk in exasperation or look for deeper meanings. Mark's ending, or rather its lack of an ending, leaves us hungry and haunted. We forage back into the Gospel, ravenous for clues. What was it Jesus said in the 14th chapter? "After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." We ponder possible meanings. We do "not cease from exploration," as Eliot has put it. Matthew, Luke and the anonymous authors of the longer and shorter endings understood: this story cannot end here. Mark hinted at the truth in his first verse: "The beginning of the good news..." The story goes on. Jesus’ story goes on, and so does ours. We proceed with the promise that accompanies our uncertainty. We live by faith, then, precariously balancing between the youth's promise: “Do not be afraid, Jesus has risen” and the women's silence and astonishment. We seek ending after ending, only to discover that every ending that we fashion inevitably disappoints us. Every finale forecloses the drama prematurely. An ending says too much, too surely, and therefore it never says enough. Although it may satisfy us for the moment, we sense its failure and falseness. The youth in the tomb understands that there is more to come. " Do not be afraid, Jesus has risen and is not here" not in the tomb, not at the end of the story; "Jesus is going ahead," always ahead of us; and "you will see Jesus," in Galilee and in places we would never have expected. Jesus is going ahead of us, and of his story; there is no end. There are only footprints of faith.

[resources: Patrick Willson, Fred Craddock and Marie Sabin]

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