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Fill in the Blank Mark 16:1-8 Note to the Reader: Like always, to get the most out reading a sermon, you need to first read the scripture on which the sermon is based. That is particularly the case this week. Following the reading of Mark 16:1-8, I then stopped and intentionally left a long, awkward silence to make everyone uncomfortable. That is the launching pad – scripturally and liturgically – for this sermon . . . If the silence you’ve just sat through makes you uncomfortable, that’s because it’s meant to. If you were squirming in your pew just now, wondering what was the problem with the story or with me as the storyteller, then – surprise! – that’s exactly how the author of Mark’s gospel wants you to feel. That’s exactly how the very first Christians encountered this gospel story that I just read to you. That awkward silence you just experienced is exactly how Mark wants you to feel. That silence is a troubling zinger that Mark is aiming at you across 2,000 years. It’s meant to shake you up and wonder, “what’s wrong?” and “what’s going on here?” – leaving you both confused and impatient and surprised and wanting more. Let me explain. The scripture I just read you is the original ending to the gospel of Mark. The earliest handwritten manuscripts we have of Mark’s gospel end at verse eight. The women are at the tomb and they get the news of Jesus’ resurrection – so far, so good. But then Mark pulls the rug out from under us by ending all sixteen chapters of his entire gospel with this concluding verse: “And they [the women] went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.” Later copies of Mark’s gospel fill in the rest of the story that we get in verses 9 through 20, but the earliest and oldest manuscripts leave us and the story stopped dead in our tracks right here with verse 8. With no faithful disciples responding to the good news. With no rosy, heart-warming resurrection encounters with Jesus. With no signs of any Easter faith leading up to the beginnings of the early church. Nothing. Mark just leaves everything hanging: the greatest story ever-told ending unresolved with the mother of all cliffhangers. Why Mark chose to do that is a mystery. For decades and decades, New Testament scholars have tried to account for this, and one of the most unique – and I think – satisfactory explanations comes from one of the preeminent Markan scholars of today Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert. In her book Sowing the Gospel, she argues that the cliff-hanger ending, which you heard and experienced, is actually the intended – even calculated – rhetorical culmination of Mark’s gospel. In other words, ending his gospel mid-story is exactly what Mark was aiming to do all along. You see, Mark, according to Tolbert, is not merely telling a story for amusement. He is telling The Story – and he is telling it to evangelize. For Mark, the central crux of the story of Jesus’ teachings and life is, according to Tolbert, the parable of the sower (Mark 4:3-20): Jesus as the faithful farmer sows the seed of the gospel: some seed is sown but the birds gobble it up – some never really hear and receive the good news; other seed falls on rocky ground – some do hear, but can’t endure the hardship of fully following God’s word; some seed falls amidst thorns – some initially do hear, but soon fall away distracted by the world’s demands and diversions – but, says Jesus in Mark’s gospel, some seed falls on good ground and it grows abundantly – those are the folks who hear the gospel and respond to it with all their heart and might. That, says Tolbert, is the response Mark the evangelist wants. The gospel of Mark, in the way it was originally presented, was read aloud – with the reader almost enacting the story as he read it to the earliest gatherings of believers and seekers who congregated for worship in the house-church settings that were the precursors of what was to become the institution we know today as the church. Tolbert contends that Mark fully intended his gospel to end at verse 8 abruptly to occasion in the listeners the exact same experience that you all just had: Namely, the disconcerting, questioning, awkward silence in which you were all wondering: Hey, what’s going on? Is that it? Where’s the rest? The story can’t end here! Give us more! C’mon now: tell us how this all turns out! The whole trajectory of Mark’s account – the entire rhetorical arc and persuasive force – argues Tolbert is to bring you, the listener, to the point you just experienced, where you are wondering and thinking, “Hey, you just can’t leave it like this! We need an end to the story.” To which Mark the evangelist across the centuries replies, “Exactly! Now, you finish the story. Let the ending be fulfilled in you. I’m not going to give you witnesses. I’m not going to put a tidy bow on all this. I’m not going to supply the ending. That part is up to you. In your hearing the entire story of Jesus – his calling, teachings, miracles, life and death and news of life beyond death –God the ever-faithful sower has planted within your hearts the good seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, if you are the good soil, you grow the ending. You be the witnesses. You live the ending. God has done what God intended to do. The end is already accomplished. But, the rest is up to you. The story is now in your hands. That is the decisive moment into which Mark through his gospel wants to place you. And now here you are. When you go to Blockbuster and rent movies, if you rent them on DVD, a new thing is for movie producers and distributors to include lots of extras. You can get the Director’s voice-over commentary, interviews with the actors, and so on. Hey, nowadays you can even get deleted scenes and alternative endings. Now, lots movies don’t just have one standard ending. You can select the ending you want. That’s all new and novel in the year 2003, right? No. No, you see, Hollywood is just now catching up with what Mark was doing 2,000 years ago – and what Mark is doing now. Want the standard ending to the Easter story that includes the time-honored cast of characters of Mary and Peter and Thomas? Nope, says Mark. Not going to give that to you. If you want the standard ending, you’ll have to go to Matthew, Luke, or John for that. No, says Mark, you are going to have to shoot and edit the final scene on your own. You are going to have to fill in the blank for yourself. In essence, Mark is inviting you to co-write the gospel with him. For you to sit in the editing room as a co-director for you to create your very own director’s cut of the movie, the gospel, the story of Jesus Christ. Mark has taken the story all the way through chapter sixteen verse eight, but it is up to you to create verse nine. So, what will you do? Since Easter is not just the animation of a single corpse, but rather the advent of a brand new world, how are you going to live in it? Are you going to blow off that radical, new truth and keep on living the same old way, according to the same old rules, forever mistakenly shackled to the falsehoods that are sucking the life out of you? Or are you going to discover the new way of living that is open to you right now in Jesus Christ? Are you going to let the seed of that new life begin to grow in you, come to fruition in you – in how you live and love and act and move? How is the story going to end – how is it going to begin in you? Let me tell you: that question – and the answers that have been lived in response to it – has changed the world. Will your lived answer to that question be liberation? Untold millions have escaped the tombs of abuse and addiction and hopelessness by living that answer and being saved by that answer. That story, that truth, that ending, that beginning has sustained them while they were in jail or de-tox or while they were building a new life beyond the specter of abuse. That story – that answer – has been lived in radical ways: enemies have been forgiven, “hopeless” causes have been undertaken and championed so that what seemed impossible has become reality. That story – that answer – that way and truth and life – has given billions and billions of people a fresh start, a new beginning, a new way of being human that has empowered them to confront and defeat all the disfiguring, death-dealing principalities and powers in this life: all the way from Jack Daniels to Jim Crow, from abuse to Apartheid, changing victims into survivors; turning revenge into reconciliation; transforming war into peace, hate into love, and perdition to salvation. That is the power that was unleashed that first Easter morning. You don’t need Mark or me to give you the ending. What you need to do is make your own ending by making Christ your own beginning. When you let Christ in your life and begin the hard, but life-giving work of living life God’s way, then – stand back – because the Holy Spirit is going to begin rewriting your life story. Your family script, your destiny, your character, the plotline of your very life is going to be reworked and enlarged and expanded to include God’s liberation, salvation, and resurrection. That is the good, good news this Easter and always. God’s story has room for you. God’s story includes you. Hey, God’s story is not fully told until you write it, tell it, live it in your life today. You, me, all of us, are embedded reporters in the ongoing, breaking story of the resurrection; of the continuing arrival and advance of God’s coming kingdom in our world. Now that you got what you need, go out and finish the story. Make your life a worthy writing of verse nine. Write your line. Fill in the blank. Create your own ending to the eternal beginning of grace that is ours to share in the ongoing Easter resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen. |
