breaking from the tomb

In between Mark’s crucifixion narrative (15:25-39, see last post) and his resurrection narrative (16:1-8) is the burial of Jesus.  Chapter 15 ends with the notice that “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid” (15:47).  This is the perfect set-up for the events of chapter 16.
Seeing where the body was laid, these two women along with a third, Salome, “brought spices so that they might go and anoint him” (16:1).  Spices in hand, they head for the tomb.  The resurrection narrative in Mark centers around the tomb.  The women set out to go there (v. 2).  Later they enter there (v. 5).  Finally, they flee from the tomb (v. 8).  The tomb receives one extra mention, this time in the mouths of the women themselves rather than from the narrator.  As they approach they ask themselves, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb” (v. 3).  Presumably this question was occasioned because the stone was “very large” (v. 4).  Nevertheless, looking up, they find that the stone “had already been rolled back” (v. 4).  And so they are able to enter the tomb.

It is in the tomb that the central drama of the story takes place.  It is in the tomb that the women see the messenger of Jesus’ resurrection (v. 5), hear the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection (v. 6), and receive instructions of what to do next (v. 7).  All of this happens in the tomb.

But none of this were the women seeking in the tomb.  Though we must credit them—perhaps especially in comparison to the twelve disciples of Jesus—for looking on at the cross (15:40), we cannot say that their faith was complete.  The women, like the disciples, had not taken Jesus at his word.  Presumably they too, with the twelve, had heard him predict his death and resurrection.  Witnesses to Jesus’ authority in life, the women might have trusted, even now, that what Jesus said would be fulfilled in him would come to pass.  Yet they set out with spices “to anoint him”; they are not seeking a risen Lord or a living God in this moment.  They are seeking a corpse.  It is a dead man which they seek.  That is the most for which they can hope.  A body is what they have come seeking in this place.  For a dead man they have entered here.

It is precisely in that place, however, in the tomb of their hope which was not a hope, that they hear something which they did not expect.
 
“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him” (v. 6).

If the women’s best hope was hopelessness, their best faith an instinctual sense of duty, their present state a dulling numb, then it was not by their merit that they received the news spoken by the young man robed in white (v. 5).  By the mercy of God they hear, “He has been raised.”  They were hoping for a corpse; they received a revelation of the living God.

It is well-known that Mark, aside from the disputed endings to his gospel (16:9-20), narrates no resurrection appearances of Jesus to his followers.  Likewise it is customary in certain circles, perhaps for shock value, for preachers to point out that the women in Mark flee from the news in terror, saying nothing to anyone (v. 8).  Full stop.  End of story.  I’m not sure what all that emphasis is for; given the subsequent widespread belief in the resurrection, good logic suggests that he both appeared to the women (as the other gospels attest) and that they did overcome their fear and tell his disciples, from which the witness spread.  Yet if Mark’s focus on the women’s fear, not unrelated to the way in which Mark characterizes disciples generally in his gospel as dull and often disobedient, awakens our senses to the reality of God’s love and grace breaking through, then his ending is well-played indeed.

-Joe

fear and fears

Last week I reported on some of my method and content for teaching the Gospel of Matthew at our Bethany Bible School conference earlier this month. Now for Mark.

Mark's gospel is the one with which I have been the most familiar, having taken a course on it in seminary. And, if I had to choose one gospel with which to be most familiar, I would choose Mark, for knowing Mark allows one to know the basic structure of the Jesus-story; Mark's frame is the one which Matthew and Luke most likely built upon in giving us their own account of Jesus' life.

Even so, I needed to revisit Mark afresh to pump new life into my ability to teach it. This time around I particularly noticed Mark's narrative comments about the "sea" in Jesus' ministry. Jesus is always on or around the sea (of Galilee): teaching "beside the sea", from the boat while a great crowd listens to him from the land (3:7-9; 4:1); going across the sea to the "other side", where he delivered the man from Gerasa who had a "legion" of demons, and fed the five thousand in a "desert place" (5:1-21; 6:30-44); on the sea, preaching peace to the storm, and later, "walking on the sea", revealing himself as the presence of God to his disciples ("Do not fear--I AM") (6:50) (4:35-41; 6:47-52).

Why does it seem that Mark was so keen on emphasizing that the Jesus story took place on or around the sea? We might say simply that this is so because the Jesus story did take place beside the sea, and Mark was simply reporting the facts. But something more is going on. Each gospel writer did frame the Jesus story in his own way. We noted how Matthew emphasizes Jesus' teachings in five main sections, each encapsulated by a common narrative refrain. Luke chose to emphasize, even though the early part of Jesus' ministry also takes place in Galilee, that Jesus' ministry took place "on the way to Jerusalem" (from 9:51 onward). The word "Jerusalem" occurs 30 times in Luke, compared with only 10 and 12 respectively for Mark and Matthew. This is all to emphasize that Mark framed his own story about Jesus around the sea; that was the detail he particularly wanted to highlight about Jesus' ministry. So again we ask, why? And so I asked my students.

"What is the significance of the sea?"

"The sea is like the kingdom of God," said one man. "You go to the sea and it takes away everything. Everything [sin, impurity, etc.] gets washed away in the sea."

"The sea is like God," said one old woman.

"How?" I inquired.

"It is sort of scary."

The sea is scary as God is scary--this would be the old woman's logic. I think that many western Christians would deny such a statement with their words. At least I think they wouldn't come out with such a statement as innocently, unashamedly as this woman seemed to do so. Indeed, God for us is supposed to be gentle, comforting, a shepherd who carries us on his shoulders rather than one who keeps us in line with his staff. Scariness, or fear, is supposed to be the enemy of God who is love, whose "perfect love casts out fear" (1 Jn. 4:18).

If, however, I am honest with myself, God is still scary to me. I also experience the comforting God, the God who casts out my fear and leaves joy in its place. But I am not so mature as to have left behind the scary God. We might say that scary is not the right word, and it wouldn't be my first choice. Let us use instead "fear", which is a biblical word and which we might rationalize can mean something more along the lines of that which inspires awe. Yet even that awe is not without fright, for it is the awe of an experience of something so immense that it could utterly overcome, consume the one who stands in its presence. Not unlike a human being before the sea. The sea is big to us in a manner like God is big to us. The woman's point is well-made.

I also think this is Mark's point. The sea, in broad biblical perspective, is that untameable force which was tamed by God. The order of creation came about by God separating the waters, assigning them their place in order that dry land could appear, then produce, then sustain human life. The waters were there, the great, dark "deep", before God said "Let there be light" and began to make a world (Gen. 1). The waters indeed seem before all things, except the One who is not a thing. We might think that the sea is God, if God had not revealed himself, as he did to Job, as the one who said to the sea, " 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped' " (Job 38:11).

All this points us to a reality that something greater than the sea is with us, someone greater, in fact, than all powers and principalities of this world. If that is the case, we need not fear, as Jesus commanded his disciples in the midst of the storm on the sea; we need not fear, that is, the sea and all powers because "I AM", "God is with us" (Mk. 6:50).

But must we fear the One who is greater than the sea?

I think we must. I think, in fact, it is the only way to live joyfully, peacefully, lovingly, in a world which fears the world. The world is now betraying us, as we have betrayed it. Natural disasters increase, sweeping humans away, as our climate changes. We are told we are on the brink of chaos. We can no longer trust the world. Our misplaced trust is now exposed. Yet if God is our Fear (Gen. 31:42, 53), the fears of the world will not destroy us. If God is our Fear, we will not cling to our lives as if no other life exists. If scarcity increases, we will share what we have with others in faith that God will provide. We will "not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell" (Mt. 10:28). Jesus said that. And it is that fear which he meant to be our comfort.

-Joe