Jack Hardaway
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Beginnings and endings. They draw us in and send us forth.
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” That is how Mark’s Gospel begins the proclamation. An allusion to the creation story in Genesis, a Genesis moment, a creation moment. We are drawn in to the world starting over. Hope.
The proclamation ends today, with a very different message, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The end. Disappointment and dismay.
We are sent forth in disarray, with a cliff hanger.
Mark’s Gospel isn’t interested in satisfying his audience.
Mark doesn’t try out alternate endings with a test audience.
Mark wants us wide awake, wide open, tongue tide and traumatized, looking for Jesus up ahead somewhere, running away from the gaping maw of the empty tomb, and a disturbing stranger with strange tidings.
Beginnings and endings.
The disciples in Mark, both the men and women, get it wrong all the way through the story, they babble when told to be silent, and today they are silent when they are sent out to proclaim.
And that is what we are left with.
What happens next? Something happens. What?
The message to go back to Galilee and meet Jesus back where it all started, it takes us back to the beginning of the Gospel, to “The beginning of the good news..”
The ending sends us to the beginning.
Begin again with the holy fear and terror of the tomb being empty, where the dead are not dead.
We cling to death, Jesus shatters that captivity.
We write the next chapter in our own lives.
Disciples, not of the tomb and the minions of death, but rather disciples of the Resurrection, running ahead to Galilee, meeting Jesus there in the ministry of good news, healing for the broken, liberation for the captives.
Endings and beginnings. They send us forth and draw us in.
“He has been raised. He is not here.”
Out there. Find him out there.