Grave Marker - An Easter Meditation

I’m having a Markan Easter. Both terms probably require some explanation.

“Markan” as in Mark’s resurrection narrative. “Easter” as in yes, I know, we did the lillies in church and new clothes and eggs nearly two weeks ago but, if one uses the liturgical calendar, it is still Easter for another five weeks, clean through the end of May as we go smokin’ toward Pentecost then set sail across the wide green sea of Ordinary.

But why Markan? Well, it’s Year B in the lectionary, which means it is the turn of Peter’s nephew to step forward from the jazz quartet known as The Four Evangelists and solo on the basic themes of empty tomb and angels. His riff drew the spotlight on Resurrection Sunday, the gospel reading in the principle service. But it’s more than that and I’m not sure I can explain.

Mark originally ended his gospel at verse eight of the sixteenth chapter. I know that’s a debated conclusion and I’m no textual critic but I’m sufficiently comfortable to work from it. This means that in place of a big finish - the trumpet blare of Matthew’s Great Commission, say, or Luke’s soaring brass as Jesus ascends, we get a haunting flute melody that fails to resolve. “They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

The real problem here is that all of this happens before we see the risen Jesus. We never see him, not in Mark’s original telling. “He is going ahead of you,” the angel whispers, teases, warns: he’s out there somewhere so keep a weather-eye open. “Go tell his disciples and Peter.” The one you betrayed is alive, and he’s looking for you; a guy could take that a couple of different ways.

That’s the kind of Easter I’m having. I know Christ is risen. I know it not only because I’ve read the story but because we who are the church are reading the story, together, once again and for about the two-thousandth time. And more than arguments about the tonnage of tombstones and the fighting capabilities of Roman commandos, I find truth in the story because, when I get inside and live it, it works; it’s a “livable’ story, if you will.

I know Christi is risen, I just don’t - for the moment, at least - know where. The story tells me clearly, and experience confirms, where he’s not - not in that tomb, not more gave-fodder fed back to the topsoil to keep the earth’s crust from collapsing, not dead. I’m very sure where he’s not. But a negative assertion still leaves an awful lot of slack in the line. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee.” Well, that narrows it down considerably; we can at least rule out Waxahachie. “There you will see Him,” sometime; and that’s if the women get over their case of the vapors and deliver the message.

This was one of those years, in other words, when I confess by faith Christ’s resurrection and his presence in his church and the world. But I confess that I haven’t seen him, haven’t heard him. He’s out there somewhere, but I’m not somewhere - I’m right here. I did my Easter stuff: went to Holy Week services at my church, read the Triduum offices from the Book of Common Prayer, changed the draperies in the seminary chapel from purple to red to gold, went to church on Resurrection Sunday. Christ is risen, and I didn’t do any of this to make that true; I did it to recognize the truth already there. But let’s face it: I was being dutiful, not passionate.

It is tempting, at such times, to do what the early church evidently did when, probably at various times, they nudged and adjusted Mark’s ending into a more acceptable shape. There’s no problem with the last eleven verses - they don’t contain anything heretical, nothing that challenges core doctrine, nothing, in fact, that we can’t find done or said by Jesus elsewhere in the other Gospels. In fact, that’s probably the idea. These editors weren’t heretics, not Gnostics looking to reshape Jesus into some kind of Olympian avatar. They cut their stones from good quarries, solid Christian granite. Those last sections are a sort of pastiche, a cut-and-paste that gives us Mary Magdalene and Emmaus and enough lurid teaching to keep the snake handlers in venom and fangs. They are all true words of Jesus, true experiences with Jesus.

But they aren’t, most likely, Mark’s experience, nor that of his community.

As I say, that’s what I’m tempted to do myself. I know the ingredients. I’ve had Easter seasons where Jesus showed up in my heart or mind or sweat glands or digestive tract or tear ducts. I could manage it - go to a church Easter pageant or watch Mel Gibson’s movie, maybe re-read The Shack, get a good friction and frisson going. And it would all be legitimate enough; people do experience Jesus that way.

People, but not me; not this Easter, anyway.

I love Mark for having the guts to write only what the Holy Spirit inspired, to leave room for those Easters that he perhaps knew would come in the long years ahead (could he have had any idea how many?) when, for reasons having as much to do with our workload as with our spirits, Jesus wouldn’t be all that easy to spot at Easter. I don’t know; this show has over a month left in the run and the Lord might manifest his presence before closing day, might, for all I know, literally show up for the big Show Down itself. (Even so, Lord Jesus, come!) Meanwhile, I’ll go on, because Christi is risen. He’s out there somewhere - maybe just outside my door and I’ll walk headlong into him as I leave to answer a colleague’s summons.

This entry was posted on April 23, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.