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Wallingford Presbyterian Church October 15, 2006 |
Rev. Ken Sunoo |
Back on Easter, we looked at this passage that was our first reading today, from Mark 16, which is the resurrection account according to the Gospel of Mark. We noted at the time that the ending of Mark is abrupt and strange. Our reading ends at v.8, which in our pew Bibles contains a footnote (footnote s): “Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8.” Most scholars believe this is the original, most ancient end of this Gospel.
It’s a bit uncomfortable to have Mark’s Gospel end as it does. That’s probably why the longer ending to Mark was added on – it helps to wrap up the story. The key to discovering some resolution to Mark’s Gospel lies in remembering that “Mark, to put it mildly, lacks confidence in human ability to fathom what God is up to in the world.”(Long) Tom Long says, “Mark is not about human potential. Mark is about the action of God. Mark is not about getting a committee together of well-meaning people to improve society. It is about a battle between the holy and the demonic for control over humanity…Mark is not about a delicate and domesticated gospel that invites us to figure out some ways to work the kingdom into our Palm Pilots. It is about a kingdom that arrives like a storm, a break-in, a revolution, and places upon us all the urgent task of finding ourselves in a new reality. Mark is not about promising human prospects, it is about a promising God, a God who makes and keeps promises even on the tattered edge of human failing.”[1]
Well, if that’s what Mark is like, maybe its not so odd that he ended his Gospel the way he did. Mark is not going to say “Amen” on the last page and let us breathe a sigh of relief before driving home to our same old lives. Instead, Mark is going to leave us dangling and uncertain, asking ourselves: “Now what?”
Let’s pay closer attention to Mark’s ending. Long says, “Easter does not end the Gospel of Mark; Easter ends the world as we knew it. Mark’s Gospel does have an ending, but it is God’s ending, not ours. Mark’s ending can be seen, but only in the Easter light, only by those whose blindness has been healed by the risen Christ.” (Tom Long, JP2003, 12).
Here’s the Easter promise spoken outside the tomb: “Go to Galilee and you will see him.” Commentators have pointed out that going to Galilee means, of course, to go back to the beginning of Mark, to go back to the words “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God” (1:14); in short, going to Galilee means re-reading the Gospel. As the gospel ends we’re told simply - Read it again. Follow the story of Jesus again as he moves from Galilee to the cross. If we do, the promise is that our eyes will be opened and we’ll see the risen Christ.
Barbara Brown Taylor says, “No one can go to Galilee for you. If you want to meet Jesus, you will have to go see for yourself.” (JP, Easter 2006, 46).
So we’re invited to go back to the beginning, to “go to Galilee” and relive the entire gospel story ourselves so that we can see Jesus. And that’s precisely what we’re going to be doing this Fall. This is the first in a series of sermons that I’ll be preaching on the Gospel of Mark.
Now to be fair, I’ll be taking “soundings” from Mark this Fall. In other words, we won’t necessarily be going through this text in order, starting in C. 1 and ending in C. 16. Instead, we’ll be jumping around this gospel a little bit. So I strongly encourage all of you to read through Mark on your own. It won’t take very long – I’ve made it easy for you by assigning the shortest gospel in the Bible (only 16 chapters).
Today, I want to give a general introduction to Mark.
Mark is the only New Testament book that calls itself a gospel (see footnote a: good news = gospel). It’s “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). More than any other Gospel, Mark emphasizes the miracles, healings, and exorcisms of Jesus (Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark, Interpretation, 20). There’s also a huge emphasis on proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is now at hand.
Church tradition states that Mark was the 2nd Gospel, after Matthew. That’s the order we have in our Bibles – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. However, most scholars today believe that Mark was actually the 1st Gospel written, and that Matthew and Luke drew upon Mark as they wrote their gospels.
Who wrote the gospel of Mark? We get a strange clue in C. 14:50-51, which tells about Jesus being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemene: “All of them deserted [Jesus] and fled. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.”
Many believe that this is a hidden autograph of Mark, the author of this gospel. According to the notes in my Oxford Annotated Bible: “The young man’s identity is not disclosed. Perhaps he was sleeping in the house where Jesus ate the Last Supper and rose hastily from bed to follow Jesus to Gethsemane. If the house was that of Mary, the mother of John Mark (where the disciples met at a later date; Acts 12:12), it is possible that the young man was the Evangelist himself.” If that’s so, then there are certain things we know about Mark. First, he was young, since Peter refers to him as “my son Mark” in 1 Peter 5:13. Second, he was a disciple of Peter. And third, some believe that the Gospel of Mark was an example of Peter’s preaching.
As Frederick Buechner says, “I always get the feeling as I read the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark that he is in a terrible rush, that he can’t wait to reach the place where he feels the Gospel really begins.” (Buechner, Secrets in the Dark, 155). Notice, Mark says nothing about how Jesus was born. The book doesn’t begin with an angel appearing before Mary. There are no shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, no wise men from the east following a star to Bethlehem, no manger for the baby Jesus. Mark races through the first 14 verses until he comes to the adult Jesus coming to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. That sense of breathlessly rushing through events is true throughout this book. Mark’s favorite word that he uses over and over is “Immediately.”
That’s the book we’re going to be studying. It’s a book that is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. It’s a book that touches the lives of those who read it in a profound way.
In 1978, a British Shakespearian actor, Alec McCowen, came to New York and put on a one man show called The Gospel of Mark – he ended up winning some awards for his performance. He stood on a stage by himself and recited the Gospel of Mark without any comment whatsoever from the King James version. And that was his show. It was a very big success on Broadway. Since that time, several actors have done similar things around the US (Bruce Kuhn – Luke). He simply stood and narrated the Gospel of Mark, and he did it brilliantly.
One reviewer wrote the following about Alec McCowen’s performance: “Mark is treated as reporter, storyteller and playwright, with each role providing sustenance for the others. As Mr. McCowen informs us, Mark's Gospel is ‘meant to be a first-hand account of Jesus' life.’ He tells the story as if we are its first listeners - sans embellishments and theatrical devices. The Gospel, of course, speaks for itself, and Mr. McCowen becomes its ideal conduit. Wearing a sports jacket and turtleneck shirt, he stands in a plain light on an unadorned stage. He places a pocket St. Mark's Gospel on a table and, with a glance above, wryly observes, ‘Just in case’ and, without faltering, immerses himself and the audience in the fabulous story.
The show was such a success that The New Yorker magazine did a personality profile of Mr. McCowen. The interviewer at one point asked, “Alec, it looks like you’re so impressed with this account. Are you yourself a Christian?”
His answer was intriguing: “I don’t know if I’m a Christian. I would be proud if people thought I was.” Then he made one more statement that was really marvelous. He said, “I would be flattered if people thought I was a Christian. I’ll tell you one thing – I’m an actor, and an actor knows how to read scripts. And you begin to develop a kind of honing device to tell false scripts from true scripts. And I’ve done the Gospel of Mark now for about 2 years, and I’ll tell you one thing as an actor: the story is true! I know, because I’m an actor and I can spot a false story. There’s not a false line in the book of Mark.” (quoted from sermon by Earl Palmer, UPC, 12/29/91)
I’m grateful to hear that. That’s the book that we’re going to be studying this fall, and there’s not a false line in it. So pick up the book of Mark with a cup of coffee this week and see for yourself the Jesus Christ Mark invites us to meet.
Buechner notes that Jesus says at the very beginning of Mark, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” [Repent literally meaning to turn around] Buechner concludes: “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.” (Buechner, Secrets in the Dark, 161).