Resurrection Of The Lord
Preaching
Preaching Mark's Gospel
A Narrative Approach
We stand here at the climactic passage in Mark's Gospel. We should not be surprised to find that many of the stories from the earlier parts of the Gospel talk to this story in significant ways. There is much of narrative analogy here! This Easter tale begins with the women. These women have names! Many women have appeared in Mark's Gospel. Each one of them appears as a model of faithfulness: the woman with the flow of blood (5:24b-34); the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-30); the widow with her penny (12:41-44); and the woman who broke open the jar of ointment in order to anoint Jesus for burial (14:3-9). Models of faith these women are, but they have no names. The women who come to the tomb on Easter morning, however, do have names.
Mary Ann Tolbert finds these women to be very significant. They are good soil for the gospel. The impression left by these women is that they are a group far superior to the disciples. They are there at the tomb on this Sunday morning after all! Where are the disciples? "ƒ these women appear to represent the good earth, that fruitful minority of humanity whose faithfulness demonstrates affinity with the kingdom of God."1 We have high hopes for these women! Finally someone gets it right. We've had enough of the disciples, for goodness sake. But it shall not be so. Our hopes for these women rise throughout the Gospel until our hopes are dashed in the very last verse. The women fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, after all. They were afraid! "The seed has fallen on rocky ground once again, as fear, not faith, motivates their actions. Like the Twelve before them, the women too flee in silence."2 We'll have more to say about this strange ending of Mark in the material that follows. Or is there a "lost ending" of Mark somewhere that will rehabilitate these women and these men?
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome had bought and brought spices to anoint Jesus' body. The passion story of Jesus is surrounded by stories of women who anoint Jesus. (See also 14:3-9.) These tender stories of anointing surround the absolute godforsakenness of the story of Jesus' death.
The stone has been mysteriously rolled away from the tomb so that the women have easy access to Jesus' final resting place. They encounter there a kind of heavenly messenger who proclaims the incredible good news of Easter.
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. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.
(Mark 16:6-7)
The secret is out at last! At the end of the Parable of the Sower Jesus said: "For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light" (Mark 4:22). That which has been veiled in secrecy now comes to light. There will be no more calls for people to keep quiet about Jesus the Risen One. Now they can sow this good seed for all to hear. Now they know who he is. He could only be known through his dying and rising. Jesus had told them this consistently (8:31; 9:30-31; 10:32-34). The disciples totally failed to grasp the message Jesus proclaimed to them. Jesus is only finally revealed to them in his death! The disciples had not yet experienced this dying. How could they, therefore, see and hear, perceive and understand?
Mark's story is powerful at this point. Jesus is only known in the dying and the rising. Jesus is a Crucified Messiah. God raises this Son to new life. Resurrection confirms the cross as God's way in the world. This is a God present to all human crosses. And crosses we bear and will bear continually. But we bear our cross in hope. God is a God of the cross. God is a God who walks with us in our cross-marked lives. God is a God who ultimately lifts us from our cross to join God in Easter's new life.
The disciples are to meet Jesus in Galilee, "ƒ as he told you." Jesus told them this in Mark 14:28: "ƒ after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Jesus' promises are true! You can trust this Crucified Messiah! And you can go to work with this Crucified One. Galilee was the setting of the first 10 chapters of Mark's Gospel. Galilee was the land and the time of the Sower. The sowing must go on! (See Mark 13:10, 31.) This is Mark's version of a great commission. As disciples of the Crucified we are called upon to take up our cross (Mark 8:34-38) and go to Galilee and sow the word of God on every kind of human soil. The God who can raise Jesus from the rock-hewn tomb can also raise fruit from the rocky ground of the lives of the disciples and from the rocky ground of our hearts as well (Mark 4:5-6, 16-17). The God who raises the dead can enable us and all who hear the good news to bear fruit thirty, sixty and a hundredfold!
The commission to the disciples "to go to Galilee" is itself good news. We have followed Tolbert's lead in identifying the disciples as rocky ground kind of people. Three times in the boat stories they fail to grasp who Jesus is. Three times Jesus reveals to them that he must go to Jerusalem and die and be raised. He spoke to them of his cross. They continued to ask to share in his glory. Three times they fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times Peter denied his Lord. And yet it is just these people who are to go to Galilee to meet Jesus and to be on with the business of sowing the seed of the gospel. Surely there is hope for us all in this story!
The women again. At the tomb. The final words of Mark's story are about the fear of these women. And they were afraid! Throughout this study we have contrasted two responses to Jesus. People either fear or believe. The first passage to raise the issue of faith or fear as a response to Jesus is Mark 4:35-41, v. 40. (See chapter 14.) This theme is raised repeatedly throughout this Gospel. (See, for example, Mark 5:15, 33-34, 36.) The women at the tomb present us with the real possibility of a group of disciples who have faith. To find out in the last verse of the story that they, too, were afraid is a serious jolt to the reader. We had hoped so much that they would be different from the others. We had so hoped that in light of an empty tomb faith would be inevitable.
And what about this ending? You will find much material on this matter in any good Markan commentary. The issue in a narrative reading of the Gospel is really a question of how this ending functions in the story as a whole.
ƒ we need to ask, not what this ending means, but what it does ƒ It is intended to move its hearers to respond, to excite their emotions on behalf of Jesus and the gospel message ƒ If the women frustrate the hope of the authorial audience for individuals to prove faithful to the courageous example of Jesus and follow his way by going out and sowing the word abroad, is there anyone else available to fulfill that task? ƒ Of course there is: the audience itself ƒ Each individual who hears the word sown by the Gospel of Mark ƒ is given the opportunity „ as have all the characters in the story „ to respond in faith or fear ƒ In the end, Mark's Gospel purposely leaves each reader or hearer with the urgent and disturbing question: What type of earth am I? Will I go and tell? 3
Donald Juel puts the matter just a bit differently:
Mark's Gospel forbids precisely that closure. There is no stone at the mouth of the tomb. Jesus is out, on the loose, on the same side of the door as the women and the readers. The story cannot contain the promises ƒ The doors in Mark's Gospel are emphatically open. The curtain of the Temple is rent asunder ƒ and the stone is rolled back from the tomb ƒ Jesus is out of the tomb; God is no longer safely behind the curtain. 4
The first time I ever experienced the book of Mark as a complete narrated event was when I heard it told by David Rhoads. That was when I received insight into the so-called "lost ending" of Mark. It was absolutely clear to me that this Gospel story did not end in Mark 16:8, "and they were afraid." This Gospel story would only end in my heart! This Gospel story will only end in your heart as well. Herein lies a fundamental key for preaching this Easter story in Mark's key. The story should end in the hearts of all who hear us preach. Fear or faith? How shall it be with us?
Homiletical Directions
There are many directions possible for preaching on this climactic word from Mark. You are invited to follow any of the leads given above. The single possibility we shall suggest is that we follow these women! Story One might be the story of the failure of the disciples. This story begins in Mark 4:35-41. The disciples are in the boat with Jesus and a great storm arises. They cry out to Jesus to help them. Jesus helps! And he wonders why they were afraid. They do not believe. The next time they are in the boat with Jesus they again demonstrate their fear (Mark 6:45-52). Fear is not mentioned in the third boat scene, but again we see the disciples' total lack of understanding (Mark 8:13-21). We have just come through Holy Week and we have been reminded again, in a threefold way, of the lack of faith of the disciples. Jesus tells them to stay awake and they fall asleep (Mark 14:32-42). The important thing in telling stories of the disciples is to establish fear as their fundamental response to Jesus.
Story Two might walk back through the stories of some wonderful women in Mark's Gospel. We behold the faith of the woman with a flow of blood (Mark 5:33-34). Though the word "faith" is not used it is certainly implied in the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). Faith would appear to be the hallmark as well of the woman at Bethany who anointed Jesus beforehand for his burial (Mark 14:3-9). Disciples fear. Unnamed women believe! That's the flow of the story.
The faith of these unnamed women is remarkable. We are prepared for the best, therefore, when we meet the named women in the Easter story. This is Story Three. We anticipate the best from these women. Tell Mark 16 with emphasis on our hopes for these women. They are there. The disciples are not. Surely they will believe. But no. The story ends on a most unsettling note. They were afraid.
In conclusion to this sermon we should lift up again these possible responses to Jesus: fear or faith. We should point out that this ending of Mark's Gospel does something very interesting. If the disciples fear and the women fear, who is left to have faith? The answer, of course, is that we are! The Gospel of Mark ends in our hearts as we respond to the words of the heavenly messenger. The final words of this sermon could well be the words of the heavenly messenger now addressed to us. In the story they were addressed to the women and they responded in fear.
"Now, therefore, hear these words as words addressed to you today. Let them echo in your heart. How shall you respond to them? '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. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.' "
The sermon should end just there with its challenge to the human heart. It might be wise to repeat these exact words a second time. Now you have sown the word. Let there be a moment or two of silence for the words to sink in. Then lead your people in prayer that the Risen Christ might arise in our hearts empowering us to faith.
____________
1. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), p. 292.
2. Ibid., p. 295.
3. Ibid., pp. 295-299.
4. Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 120.
Mary Ann Tolbert finds these women to be very significant. They are good soil for the gospel. The impression left by these women is that they are a group far superior to the disciples. They are there at the tomb on this Sunday morning after all! Where are the disciples? "ƒ these women appear to represent the good earth, that fruitful minority of humanity whose faithfulness demonstrates affinity with the kingdom of God."1 We have high hopes for these women! Finally someone gets it right. We've had enough of the disciples, for goodness sake. But it shall not be so. Our hopes for these women rise throughout the Gospel until our hopes are dashed in the very last verse. The women fled from the tomb in terror and amazement, after all. They were afraid! "The seed has fallen on rocky ground once again, as fear, not faith, motivates their actions. Like the Twelve before them, the women too flee in silence."2 We'll have more to say about this strange ending of Mark in the material that follows. Or is there a "lost ending" of Mark somewhere that will rehabilitate these women and these men?
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome had bought and brought spices to anoint Jesus' body. The passion story of Jesus is surrounded by stories of women who anoint Jesus. (See also 14:3-9.) These tender stories of anointing surround the absolute godforsakenness of the story of Jesus' death.
The stone has been mysteriously rolled away from the tomb so that the women have easy access to Jesus' final resting place. They encounter there a kind of heavenly messenger who proclaims the incredible good news of Easter.
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. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.
(Mark 16:6-7)
The secret is out at last! At the end of the Parable of the Sower Jesus said: "For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light" (Mark 4:22). That which has been veiled in secrecy now comes to light. There will be no more calls for people to keep quiet about Jesus the Risen One. Now they can sow this good seed for all to hear. Now they know who he is. He could only be known through his dying and rising. Jesus had told them this consistently (8:31; 9:30-31; 10:32-34). The disciples totally failed to grasp the message Jesus proclaimed to them. Jesus is only finally revealed to them in his death! The disciples had not yet experienced this dying. How could they, therefore, see and hear, perceive and understand?
Mark's story is powerful at this point. Jesus is only known in the dying and the rising. Jesus is a Crucified Messiah. God raises this Son to new life. Resurrection confirms the cross as God's way in the world. This is a God present to all human crosses. And crosses we bear and will bear continually. But we bear our cross in hope. God is a God of the cross. God is a God who walks with us in our cross-marked lives. God is a God who ultimately lifts us from our cross to join God in Easter's new life.
The disciples are to meet Jesus in Galilee, "ƒ as he told you." Jesus told them this in Mark 14:28: "ƒ after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Jesus' promises are true! You can trust this Crucified Messiah! And you can go to work with this Crucified One. Galilee was the setting of the first 10 chapters of Mark's Gospel. Galilee was the land and the time of the Sower. The sowing must go on! (See Mark 13:10, 31.) This is Mark's version of a great commission. As disciples of the Crucified we are called upon to take up our cross (Mark 8:34-38) and go to Galilee and sow the word of God on every kind of human soil. The God who can raise Jesus from the rock-hewn tomb can also raise fruit from the rocky ground of the lives of the disciples and from the rocky ground of our hearts as well (Mark 4:5-6, 16-17). The God who raises the dead can enable us and all who hear the good news to bear fruit thirty, sixty and a hundredfold!
The commission to the disciples "to go to Galilee" is itself good news. We have followed Tolbert's lead in identifying the disciples as rocky ground kind of people. Three times in the boat stories they fail to grasp who Jesus is. Three times Jesus reveals to them that he must go to Jerusalem and die and be raised. He spoke to them of his cross. They continued to ask to share in his glory. Three times they fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times Peter denied his Lord. And yet it is just these people who are to go to Galilee to meet Jesus and to be on with the business of sowing the seed of the gospel. Surely there is hope for us all in this story!
The women again. At the tomb. The final words of Mark's story are about the fear of these women. And they were afraid! Throughout this study we have contrasted two responses to Jesus. People either fear or believe. The first passage to raise the issue of faith or fear as a response to Jesus is Mark 4:35-41, v. 40. (See chapter 14.) This theme is raised repeatedly throughout this Gospel. (See, for example, Mark 5:15, 33-34, 36.) The women at the tomb present us with the real possibility of a group of disciples who have faith. To find out in the last verse of the story that they, too, were afraid is a serious jolt to the reader. We had hoped so much that they would be different from the others. We had so hoped that in light of an empty tomb faith would be inevitable.
And what about this ending? You will find much material on this matter in any good Markan commentary. The issue in a narrative reading of the Gospel is really a question of how this ending functions in the story as a whole.
ƒ we need to ask, not what this ending means, but what it does ƒ It is intended to move its hearers to respond, to excite their emotions on behalf of Jesus and the gospel message ƒ If the women frustrate the hope of the authorial audience for individuals to prove faithful to the courageous example of Jesus and follow his way by going out and sowing the word abroad, is there anyone else available to fulfill that task? ƒ Of course there is: the audience itself ƒ Each individual who hears the word sown by the Gospel of Mark ƒ is given the opportunity „ as have all the characters in the story „ to respond in faith or fear ƒ In the end, Mark's Gospel purposely leaves each reader or hearer with the urgent and disturbing question: What type of earth am I? Will I go and tell? 3
Donald Juel puts the matter just a bit differently:
Mark's Gospel forbids precisely that closure. There is no stone at the mouth of the tomb. Jesus is out, on the loose, on the same side of the door as the women and the readers. The story cannot contain the promises ƒ The doors in Mark's Gospel are emphatically open. The curtain of the Temple is rent asunder ƒ and the stone is rolled back from the tomb ƒ Jesus is out of the tomb; God is no longer safely behind the curtain. 4
The first time I ever experienced the book of Mark as a complete narrated event was when I heard it told by David Rhoads. That was when I received insight into the so-called "lost ending" of Mark. It was absolutely clear to me that this Gospel story did not end in Mark 16:8, "and they were afraid." This Gospel story would only end in my heart! This Gospel story will only end in your heart as well. Herein lies a fundamental key for preaching this Easter story in Mark's key. The story should end in the hearts of all who hear us preach. Fear or faith? How shall it be with us?
Homiletical Directions
There are many directions possible for preaching on this climactic word from Mark. You are invited to follow any of the leads given above. The single possibility we shall suggest is that we follow these women! Story One might be the story of the failure of the disciples. This story begins in Mark 4:35-41. The disciples are in the boat with Jesus and a great storm arises. They cry out to Jesus to help them. Jesus helps! And he wonders why they were afraid. They do not believe. The next time they are in the boat with Jesus they again demonstrate their fear (Mark 6:45-52). Fear is not mentioned in the third boat scene, but again we see the disciples' total lack of understanding (Mark 8:13-21). We have just come through Holy Week and we have been reminded again, in a threefold way, of the lack of faith of the disciples. Jesus tells them to stay awake and they fall asleep (Mark 14:32-42). The important thing in telling stories of the disciples is to establish fear as their fundamental response to Jesus.
Story Two might walk back through the stories of some wonderful women in Mark's Gospel. We behold the faith of the woman with a flow of blood (Mark 5:33-34). Though the word "faith" is not used it is certainly implied in the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). Faith would appear to be the hallmark as well of the woman at Bethany who anointed Jesus beforehand for his burial (Mark 14:3-9). Disciples fear. Unnamed women believe! That's the flow of the story.
The faith of these unnamed women is remarkable. We are prepared for the best, therefore, when we meet the named women in the Easter story. This is Story Three. We anticipate the best from these women. Tell Mark 16 with emphasis on our hopes for these women. They are there. The disciples are not. Surely they will believe. But no. The story ends on a most unsettling note. They were afraid.
In conclusion to this sermon we should lift up again these possible responses to Jesus: fear or faith. We should point out that this ending of Mark's Gospel does something very interesting. If the disciples fear and the women fear, who is left to have faith? The answer, of course, is that we are! The Gospel of Mark ends in our hearts as we respond to the words of the heavenly messenger. The final words of this sermon could well be the words of the heavenly messenger now addressed to us. In the story they were addressed to the women and they responded in fear.
"Now, therefore, hear these words as words addressed to you today. Let them echo in your heart. How shall you respond to them? '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. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.' "
The sermon should end just there with its challenge to the human heart. It might be wise to repeat these exact words a second time. Now you have sown the word. Let there be a moment or two of silence for the words to sink in. Then lead your people in prayer that the Risen Christ might arise in our hearts empowering us to faith.
____________
1. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), p. 292.
2. Ibid., p. 295.
3. Ibid., pp. 295-299.
4. Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 120.
