Mark 16
April 12, 2009
Patrick Preheim
Look Again
"Mackenzie Allen Philip’s youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare" (back cover paragraphs from The Shack). This is the trailer for the book The Shack—I read it last fall and very much enjoyed it. It struck me as profound because there is so much great sadness all around us: abducted children like Victoria Stafford, the missing aboriginal women mention in Friday’s walk of the cross downtown, our own failures, illnesses, or crippling accidents. The trauma of these experiences often keep us bound, closed off, stuck in a locked upper room. This condition of being sealed off is what Mack called his Great Sadness. Mack’s healing begins when he chooses to go to the Shack, when he chooses to go to the tomb.
Our resurrection text from Mark’s gospel invites us two places this Easter morning: to the tomb and to Galilee. Going to the tomb allows us to confront the fears, the pain, the anger and all that has kept us bound. At the tomb we recognize that God is Lord of all—the living, the dead, the suffering. At the tomb we recognize that the demonic forces which crucify and bury have limits. At the tomb we begin to reclaim life. Easter Sunday is not new life. It begins us on the road to new life. At the tomb we learn where to find the risen Christ. This is the Easter story according Mark 16.
"When Joseph rolls the stone against Jesus’ tomb, the discipleship narrative slams shut with the stupefying crunch of a prison door. The only lifeline we have..is Mark’s simple indication that the same three women who observed Jesus’ crucifixion (15:40) also "saw where Joseph put him" (15:47)....The fact that women, in the background throughout the entire story, suddenly emerge as the true disciples (15:41) is perhaps Mark’s most radical social reversal. [Where were the male disciples during the trial of Jesus, during the march to Calvary, during the death, or the morning after the Sabbath? Absent! Perhaps it is shame that keeps them away, perhaps fear, but they are missing]
Yet for the moment the actions [of the women] are quite conventional, even expected. Charitable guilds of Jerusalem women were known to be present after execution in order to assure proper burial. This is the scene presented in 16:1-4. The three women are attempting to salvage some dignity by re-burying Jesus according to custom. As Joseph bought a linen in which to wrap Jesus’ corpse, the women buy spices in order to properly anoint it...
Like so many scenes from the gospels, this one has been all too romanticized by the church. It would have been a risky act for these women to demonstrate solidarity with so notorious a political dissident. But it was hardly a triumphant one. This dawn brought them only the numb duty of last respects and that aching, un-consolable emptiness that comes from hope crushed. This seems merely the last, pitiless leg of Mark’s discipleship journey, ending at the cemetery of our dreams for a new world.
Cruelly, even the therapeutic ritual of weeping over Jesus’ corpse and mustering brave eulogies is denied. The entrance to the makeshift tomb is sealed shut by a boulder that "was very large" (16:4). They halt in their tracks, pulled up short. "Who will roll away this stone?" they cry to no one in particular...This stone blocking their way terminates, without explanation, the discipleship journey. What an abrupt and bitter closure to the story! But there is one more scene in Mark’s gospel, and upon it hinges the possibility of the Christian church.
Ched Myers, Say to this Mountain, pp. 205-206
The depressing narrative..of Jesus’ trial and execution, which culminated in Joseph’s sealing of the tomb with this stone, now suddenly begins to be reversed. "When they looked again, they saw that the stone had been rolled away (16:4). The verb "to see again" [to look up] was used by Mark in his stories of blind men [in two places] (8:25, 10:51f). It is now [used] here as the expression of "bifocal vision" that characterizes..faith. To the world of the Judean Temple-state and Roman colonialism, Jesus is just another imperial statistic. To those who "look again," the great stone of impediment has been removed.
But how? Neither by human muscle, nor technology, nor any Promethean scheme. The verb here expresses the perfect tense and the passive voice-- the divine passive [linguistic books call it, for it so often is used to describe divine action). This stone has been rolled away by an ulterior leverage, by a force from beyond the bounds of story and history with the power to regenerate both...By grace it has already been rolled away for us. We need only have eyes to see it....
"To see again" is Mark’s master metaphor for a faith that looks more deeply into reality in order to see what could be...In Mark’s Easter narrative, the weary old story of the world, in which the powers always win and the poor always lose, is radically revised. But we can "see" this only in "Galilee," the symbolic site of discipleship...We are promised that we will see Jesus again in Galilee—which is where the disciples were first called to follow! The story is circular! ... Jesus is risen! But where has he gone? He is neither entombed nor enthroned. Mark refuses to "show" him to us. If we wish to "see" Jesus, we too must journey to Galilee. Jesus has gone on ahead of the church. Only by responding to the invitation to discipleship can we join him where he already is: on the Way... [We will not find him embalmed in tomb, church or crypt. He is alive!-- out there; once more on the Way; meeting and healing people!
The narrative strategy of "they said nothing" has something in mind. The genius of this "incomplete" ending...is that it demands a response from its audience. Mark leaves us not with a neat resolution but with a terrible ultimatum. Who will tell this "good news"? For it is not only the women who "know"—we now know as well. If we wish the story of discipleship to continue, [if we wish to see Jesus again], we cannot remain mere spectators.
We too are invited to look again and see that a way has been opened up—a way that carries us toward life. A way was opened for the women to prepare the body of Jesus and to follow the risen one to Galilee. A way has been opened for us as well to bind the wounds of our world. In a place of death, a new beginning is offered. As in Peter’s case, our failed discipleship can be redeemed by grace. (Ched Myers, Say to this Mountain, pp. 206-208)
Indeed, within Mark’s narrative there are plenty of places for us to enter the story. Present this morning are the women. These are those who have dutifully donned their Easter attire. These are the ones who are here because someone in the family has insisted they come. Or these are the ones who have supported Jesus in this last year and feel the Messiah has let them down. We women folk come to the tomb this morning to do our duty; nothing more. We have no convictions that Jesus has been raised, that death is not the end, that God can bring new life from the tomb. And yet we have come to this place because going to church is just what we do on Easter Sunday. When the eyesight changes and resurrection becomes visible the women will flee in terror unsure what words can explain these happenings. Take as much time as you need to formulate your experience. Flight and terror is not the end of the women’s story. The presence of the church today is evidence that the women do get the word out and that the disciples do make it to Galilee. The shock of new life can take all words from a person. Sometimes it takes us awhile to give voice to the resurrection events of our world and lives.
This morning there are plenty of Peter types who are locked away in their homes. These are our neighbours and family members who are choosing a latte over Easter services. Shame, fear, ignorance, or anger have kept them from making the journey to the tomb or to church. These are the Mackenzie Philip’s of the world. These people are not aware that a different reality exists. They are waiting for some women types to begin sharing what they have seen and heard. The irony is that these people are potentially the future leaders of the church; people who will write stories like The Shack. The women, us, need to get out there and find language for the resurrection events we have seen. Peter and the disciples will simply wait behind locked doors until someone has courage enough to extend an invitation to the tomb or Galilee. And even then, it may take four years for a Peter or Philip to make it once more to Galilee.
Present this morning are the young men and women dressed in white. We are disciples who at one time lost our linens as we fled the garden naked. Now, however, we have been restored. Now our linen is white, the colour of faithful witnesses. These people are those who have failed, gone to the tomb, seen resurrection, and now give testimony to power of God to raise the dead. We speak powerfully from our experiences. So confident are we, in fact, that duty bound women trudging to the tomb run in terror at our message. The men and women dressed in white are not afraid of the tomb. We are not afraid of death. We know the power of God to overcome the demonic forces of our world. "If you want to see the risen Christ", we say, "head back to Galilee. You will see Jesus the risen Christ in the discipleship of the Way: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, proclaiming victory to the powers and principalities."
And present this morning is the divine force which moves large boulders, which empties tombs, which revives the dead, which restores the broken. Some of us are in a spiritual condition that we are able to "look again" and sense this divine presence; others of us are too demoralized or too absent to sense the divine passive.What we see or don’t see is not really that important for the Easter story. Resurrection happens whether we catch a glimpse of it or not. God is here. God has emptied the tomb. Some of us have seen evidence of this God and sit in the tomb with our white linens telling people to get back to Galilee as soon as possible. Some of us will leave here unable to give voice to the story. No matter, God will not let a tomb stop Christ. Jesus has been raised and continues ministry in Galilee on the Way.
I am certain that God reached out to Mackenzie Philips long before he finally accepted the overture. It takes some people a long time to finally leave their upper room, visit the tomb, and get back to Galilee: sometimes four years, sometimes ten, sometimes eternity. God is patient and will keep on inviting us to the tomb and Galilee. The perfect passive voice will keep speaking in our world, extending invitations to go to the tomb, encouraging us to and from Galilee. This is good news and it is Mark’s Easter story. Amen.