HOW DOES THE STORY END?
Let us pray: O Lord our God, at Easter time we remember the great hope of eternal life which you have set before us, and we feel within our hearts the longings for goodness and for you. Grant that nothing may hinder the hope of eternal life from coming true, and the desire for goodness and for you from being realized. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I recently finished reading the book Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker. Our own Dave McInally will be teaching a Sunday school class on that book beginning next week. Tony Dungy, of course, is the recently retired coach of the Indianapolis Colts, who also spent a little time playing for that football team based out of Pittsburgh. (I’ve got to be careful how I say that because I know there are always at least a few Cleveland Browns fans in our midst.)
The book Quiet Strength is about more than Tony Dungy’s life as a football coach. It’s really about Tony Dungy’s walk with God. He experienced success – he won a Super Bowl with the Colts – and he experienced failure – he got fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yet Dungy also talks about the greatest tragedy he ever endured. Three days before Christmas in the year 2005, his oldest son, Jaimie, took his own life.
Dungy doesn’t really address the grief his family endured. He tries to put a positive spin on things. Tony Dungy actually spoke at his son’s funeral. He said, “The only way we can praise God at all times is to remember that God can provide joy in the midst of a sad occasion. Our challenge today is to find that joy.”
To that we want to say, “What a deep and devout faith that Tony Dungy must have!” Even in the face of his oldest son’s suicide, he is able to maintain a positive attitude. He is able to focus on the eternal joy his son is experiencing right now. And after all, isn’t that the way a Christian should look at death?
I want to tell you another story. Back when I was in Salem, Ohio, I was a part of the local ministerial association. One of the members of that ministerial association was the Captain of the Salvation Army, a wonderful man by the name of Tom Hinzman. At one point in time, Tom’s father passed away after a very brief illness. Tom was absolutely devastated.
Now Tom was a man of deep faith. He was a man who truly lived the faith he professed to believe. Yet when his father died, he was heartbroken. Those of us who were in the ministerial association with him were aware of what had happened, and most of us did our best to console him.
Shortly after his father died, as Tom sat at the table before one of our meetings began, he was approached by one of the local ministers. That minister had a great big smile on his face and he said to Tom, “How does it feel to know your father has achieved eternal victory?” Tom’s eyes filled with tears, he said, “Excuse me,” and he quickly left the room.
Tom was having a terrible time with his father’s death. Of course, he knew his father was in heaven, but he still had a lot of pain inside. Does that make him any less faithful than a man like Tony Dungy? I don’t think so. In spite of the glory of the resurrection, we still have to deal with the pain of being left behind. And in my mind, that’s okay. All of us deal with grief differently. We should never feel ashamed of how well or how hard we deal with it.
I think a preaching professor by the name of Fred Craddock has a wonderful take on this. In addressing the very passage I read from Mark a moment ago, he wrote, “For Mark, the resurrection served the cross; Easter did not eradicate – but vindicated – Good Friday.” Did you catch that last part? Easter did not eradicate – but vindicated – Good Friday. In other words, Easter vindicated Jesus’ death by raising him from the dead, but it did not eradicate the pain we feel when we lose a loved one. Like I said, all of us deal with grief differently. It hurts to lose a loved one and there is no shame in that.
I think that’s basically where the women were coming from in the passage we read from the gospel according to Mark. Jesus had been crucified the Friday before. As sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday was the Sabbath for them, they had to post-pone the embalming of Jesus’ body until Sunday morning.
Clearly, they were in great distress. As Garry Wills writes in his book, What Jesus Meant, “The first Christians were not expecting the resurrection.” In their minds, they did not have a resurrection to vindicate Good Friday. So they went to the tomb at dawn on Sunday morning to embalm the body of Jesus. Perhaps they were, in a way, practicing an age-old trick for dealing with traumatic experiences. They were trying to keep busy so they didn’t have time to think about it.
Here’s another interesting “take” on the women at the tomb. It was written by a woman named Kate Huey, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She notes that embalming the body of the deceased was considered “women’s work” in those days. She goes on to note that women always have to do what no one else wants to do! The women to whom I mentioned that statement last week all nodded their heads and said, “That’s true!” So the women went to the tomb to do what no one else wanted to do.
And what was their primary concern? Their primary concern was that great big stone that had been rolled in front of the tomb. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” they said. Jesus had spoken of how he would be raised from the dead, but these women were concerned about the stone in front of the tomb. It was a legitimate practical matter. As I said before, “The first Christians were not expecting the resurrection.” To accept the resurrection, they would need to have proof…convincing proof.
It reminds me of a wonderful story about the astronomer Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was always fascinated by the fact that educated adults – with the wonders of science all around them – could cling to beliefs based upon the unverifiable testimony of observers dead for 2000 years. He once had an exchange with the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, the current Director of Religion at the Chautauqua Institute. (By the way, you know what the Chautauqua Institute is, don’t you? Will Willimon, a frequent speaker at Chautauqua, once called it, “Disneyland for Intellectuals!”)
So Carl Sagan says to Joan Brown Campbell, “You’re so smart; why do you believe in God?” Campbell found this to be a surprising question from a man who accepted the existence of black holes, which no one had yet observed. She replied to Sagan, “You’re so smart; why don’t you believe in God?” Perhaps we could say they reached a stale-mate.
Jerry Adler wrote an article on Carl Sagan for Newsweek magazine shortly after his death. He says that Carl Sagan never had doubts about his agnosticism. As Sagan’s wife said in the article, “There was no deathbed conversion…no appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I – who had been inseparable for 20 years – were not saying goodbye forever.”
“Didn’t he want to believe?” she was asked. “Carl never wanted to believe,” she fiercely replied. “He wanted to know.”
She makes a good point. A lot of us don’t want to believe, we want to know. Perhaps the same could be said of the women who went to the tomb. Jesus had told them he would be raised from the dead, but they had no concept of a resurrection. They would need to have proof…convincing proof.
They were about to get it. When they arrived at the tomb, that stone they had been so worried about had already been rolled away. God has a way of removing obstacles for those who are doing his work, does he not?
Slipping inside the tomb, they encountered a young man dressed in a white robe. Matthew, Luke and John insinuate that it was angels who appeared, so perhaps we can leave it at that. He tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Then he instructs them to tell Jesus’ disciples of what they had seen. He says, “Go, tell his disciples – and Peter – that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Why the specific reference to Peter? Recall that it was Peter who had said he would never abandon Jesus. Yet when Jesus was arrested, Peter ran like the others. Then Peter denied Jesus three times in the courtyard of the high priest. No one could possibly need more assurance now than Peter.
How does the story end? Scholars tell us that the oldest manuscripts end with verse 8. Verses 9 through 20 were likely added later by someone else. Thus, the original ending of the gospel according to Mark was this: “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
That’s how the gospel of Mark originally ended: “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” About this blunt ending, Fred Craddock once remarked, “Is this any way to run a resurrection? Is this enough to persuade, to stir new life in the followers of Jesus?”
What a great statement! Is this any way to run a resurrection? Mark obviously wasn’t trained in the art of wrapping up a good story. You need a powerful conclusion. You need to wrap up loose ends. Either that, or you need to lead into a sequel, right? But Mark wraps up this story so poorly. Or does he?
Perhaps we are called to supply our own ending to the gospel of Mark. Although
Mark doesn’t say it, the women at the tomb must have told someone. After all, Jesus’ disciples were transformed. They moved from cowering in fear behind a locked door in Jerusalem to fearless and fierce followers and advocates and martyrs. Again quoting Garry Wills in What Jesus Meant, “Those unable to face the prospect of Jesus’ death were soon embracing with great fortitude and hope their own martyrdom.” Something happened to the disciples to transform them. It’s an ending Mark could not have predicted. Their discipleship reached the apex of the known world – the city of Rome – in a matter of a few short years. Can we write an ending to Mark as well? Can our discipleship transform our community? How does the story end? It ends in discipleship.
Earlier I talked about Carl Sagan. As his wife said of him, “He didn’t want to believe, he wanted to know.” Well, we know Christ is alive. We know Christ is alive because we see him in the tireless acts and the transformed lives of those who practice discipleship. Perhaps we don’t know what lies ahead, and perhaps we don’t know what heaven is going to be like. Yet I like the way William Sloane Coffin once put it in his book Credo. He said, “If we don’t know what is beyond the grave, we do know who is beyond the grave.” Ladies and gentlemen, I really think that’s enough for me. How about you? Amen.
