Sermon
4/1/18
Mark
16:1-8
That’s
How It Could Have Happened
In
1985, the movie Clue was released.
Unlike movies based on books, the movie Clue
was strangely based on the popular board game. You’ve probably played the
game, where you race other players around the board, trying to solve the
murder. You have to make accusations: “I think it was Miss Scarlett with the
Rope in the Conservatory.” The movie brought these characters to life in a
campy comedy film that did very poorly at the box office. In fact, the film did
not earn as much as the movie cost to make. If you went to see the film in
theatres and compared notes with your friend who attended a different showing,
you might find that you’d seen a different ending. The film has three different
ending – three different “solutions” to the mystery – and theatregoers were
treated to one of the three endings at random. Like I said, though, the film wasn’t
very successful in theatres. Eventually though, when released for home viewing,
the movie gained quite a following. I first saw it at home, and it has become
one of my favorites – just a clever, goofy movie. And if you rented the movie, you had a different
experience of the ending: all three endings were shown, one after the other. So
you’d watched the movie through the end, when the mystery was solved, and then,
you’d see this screen: That’s How It Could Have Happened…and then But How about
This? on the next screen. And then finally, But Here’s What Really Happened as
the three endings played one after the other.
I
feel like we need a That’s How It Could Have Happened screen at the end of the
gospel of Mark. When it comes to an account of Easter morning in the gospels,
the gospel of Mark is startlingly different. The gospel of John is usually the
odd gospel of the four, but not when it comes to the account of the
resurrection of Jesus. Mark is really unique. If you flip in your Bibles to
Mark chapter 16, you’ll see the brief account of the resurrection that we just
read. You know, the awful one, where the women go back home and don’t tell
anyone what’s happened! But then after that you’ll see notes adding “the
shorter ending of Mark” – another verse – and “the longer ending of Mark” –
another several paragraphs of text. What’s going on here? How strange is that?
It reads like a choose-your-own-adventure. Which ending of Mark would you like?
What’s going on with the crazy gospel of Mark?
If
you look at the footnotes that are likely to be in your Bible for Mark 16, the
footnotes will tell you that the oldest copies of Mark’s gospel that we have
end the way that we heard the gospel today: that short, clipped “and everybody
went back home, afraid” ending. But some later manuscripts, copies of Mark’s
gospel that appear in the hundred years or two hundred years after that include
one of these longer endings. Most biblical scholars agree that they were
additions, not written by Mark. The motive is clear? Everyone thought Mark’s
ending was awful, awful enough that others tried to fix it by adding their own
ending.
And
that’s ok, I guess. Because to be clear, Jesus is still resurrected in the gospel of Mark – God’s messengers at the tomb
tell that to the women: “Jesus has been raised – Go, tell his disciples that
Jesus is going to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Jesus
is resurrected. It’s just that no one seems to know it. The women are too
stunned and afraid to really absorb what they’re hearing, and they just go back
home. The alternate endings of Mark just fix the part that we, the humans in
this story, seem to screw up at first. The other endings fix the failures of
Mark’s ending.
But
what if, this Easter morning, we sit with the failure for a little bit? During
Holy Week, we talked a bit here about letting ourselves stay in difficult
places, by Jesus’ side, even though they make us anxious, uncomfortable, and we
don’t know quite what to say. I think the ending of Mark’s Easter story is
another uncomfortable place, but if we can just stay here long enough, I think
there’s a purpose for our being here.
Lutheran
pastor Diane Roth writes, "In Mark’s Gospel, failure is a more relevant
word than triumph: the failure of the disciples, of the women, our failure, my
failure … Among other things, that’s what I come face to face with in Mark’s
story of the resurrection. The disciples fail to understand Jesus. The women
run away and say nothing to anyone. Jesus rises from the dead but no one sees
him. How is it possible that there is even a church around after 2,000 years,
with all of this failure? … But lately I’m thinking that failure is the point.
That Mark is the gospel of failure, our failure—and that resurrection grows
only out of this … The Gospel of Mark is the gospel of failure. It is the theme
that runs through the whole book, and it doesn’t resolve during those last
eight verses—it’s like a piece of music that ends on a discordant note. I
suppose this is why there are so many attempts to resolve it. Make your own
ending! Add verses! But the gospel of failure is the gospel of life. It is the
gospel of our lives, which, no matter how successful they are, always end in
death. It is left to God to resurrect us, to complete the story and resolve the
chord. It is left to God to overturn failure and create and re-create the
church, despite our failures. It is up to God to raise the dead, including us.
The women run away and say nothing to anyone. The disciples miss the point. The
church leaders set the wrong priorities. The people are petty and small. And
we’re here. Turning to the people, lifting high the cross. Listening once again
to the music of failure, the triumph of God."[1]
We
are here! Easter people, even after
failure. Resurrection people, even after the terrible ending of the gospel of
Mark! And we’re here because even though we forget it over and over,
resurrection isn’t something we do.
Resurrection is what God does in us.
I think we face failure again and again in life because we are trying so hard
to resurrected ourselves, to create
new life on our own steam, our own strength, our own gumption, and again and
again we come up short, we find we can’t quite do it, and we fail. But here is the truly good news of
our failure on this Easter morning: It is God who resurrects. We just have to
open ourselves to God at work in us. We just get invited to share the amazing
new of God’s work with others. And even when we screw that up, God of
resurrection keeps on working, telling us that what we thought was the ending
really wasn’t after all. Nadia Bolz-Webber says that our whole Christian faith is
“really about resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the
graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both
dramatic and small.”[2]
Whatever
grave you think you’re in, friends, whatever ending you think you’ve reached in
your life, your story, God promises resurrection to you, new life to you. Even
with a start to Easter morning like the one Mark gives us, one that seems like
a clear failure, where no one announces the good news, somehow, here we
sit two thousand years later, calling
ourselves Easter people, resurrection people, followers of Jesus who believe
that God has the power of life over death. Our very presence here is a
testament to God’s resurrection power. God is in the business of pulling us out
of our graves, pulling us out of death, out of isolation, out of destruction,
out of failure, and setting us down in life, in hope, in promise, in love, in
joy. The worst thing is never the last thing. We will choose the wrong endings.
We will turn away, again, from the God who loves us unconditionally. We will fail. But the God of resurrection
shows us a beginning beyond every ending.
The
tomb is empty. The women leave. They flee the site, seized by terror and
amazement. They’re afraid. They say nothing to anyone. That’s how it could have
happened…
But
… at some point … however long it took them, those women chose faith over fear,
responding to the irresistible resurrection that God was working in the world.
Look around, friends. Here we are, telling the resurrection story still, living
it still, thanks to those very women. God is
resurrecting us. God’s beginnings after our stumbling endings. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
[1]
Diane Roth, “April 1st 2018 Easter Sunday,” The Christian Century,
[2] Bolz-Weber, Nadia, https://www.facebook.com/nanjackwalter/posts/10215463073911520. I’m unsure where this quotation
originates.
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