Mark 16:1-8
Easter Vigil - Years A, B, C
Easter Day - Year
B
Heads down, deep into their particular worry, the women proceed toward their work of caring for the dead body. What lay before them was a closed tomb. How to open it was their problem.
Here is a sample of the outcome usually expected. It is important to click on this link and read it (and perhaps even the "Return to:...." at its immediate end) before continuing to the rest of the comment here. [LINKS NO LONGER AVAILABLE - so use your imagination]
Here the women do go in and do find something scarier.
If all you had was Mark's version, instead of the conflation in your head of several stories, would you be scared enough to try to put an ending on it - to have it make sense so you can wrap it neatly up? Isn't Easter at least as messy as Good Friday?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html
How like Mark, who hurries us along from baptism to preaching and healing to crucifixion, to drop us into a non-ending that obviously goes on.
If you read Mark in one sitting (quite easy to do) there is a momentum that is built up that pushes us, along with the scared women, to reflect on what we are going to do with our relationship to Jesus.
What grieving to we finally need to do to be able to pass on a message of new life? What denial do we need to overcome to finally pass on a message of new life? What ego strength do we need to develop to finally pass on a message of new life?
The women obviously came to resolve those or whatever their issues were because we are remembering the story. May you and I encourage one another to finally resolve our issues that we might boldly be willing to live, regardless of the consequences.
Hurrah for surprise endings. They involve us and don't just leave us with a story to look at. They cause us to question where we are between the end of the story and is resolution in the lives of the characters and our current situation and its resolution. Surprise endings hurry us on and give us permission to be surprising ourselves.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html
Did the women run away, end of story? Did Mary Magdalene run on telling the story? Did Mark or John get this detail accurately? Both, you say, then what can't you excuse?
Do the shorter and longer additions to Mark make his gospel more palatable?
Is an unrecognizable Jesus attributable to an internal state on the part of Mary and Cleopas or an external state of Jesus?
If our imaginations have not been captured along the way with Jesus life, these questions are but interesting speculations. If we have followed the story and connected it to our lives with an increasing hope and actual investment of life, resurrection becomes a viable conclusion to reach. But it is not the details that prove anything. They merely complete the suspension of our disbelief - the unchangableness of our past and present can be moved on to a new day in a new way.
May you bless Easter by beginning a new 8th day of creation after a night of resting in peace.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
In John, Mary M. is all over getting to the bottom of Jesus' disappearance, like a dog on a bone. She goes after friend Peter. When that doesn't avail, it's look into herself. Then it is just hang around, almost Columbo-like, checking out who else is around. So intent is she that when she finally finds the culprit, wascally wabbit, she falls back on, "What's up, Doc?"
In Mark, Mary M. can hardly wait to get out.
John's rough-and-tumble Mary seems closer to the image I have in my head and rings truer to my heart. But I must admit I have a certain appreciation for Mark's consistent presentation of the disciples as those who don't get it. Glad to have the women join us guys in finally running away, even if it is long after we had cut-and-run.
As we draw nigh to Easter, may we recognize it ain't over 'til its over. This is true of both death and resurrection. Some of us get caught with a tropism toward one or the other, others just go on their merry way. Whether we are focused on the half-empty of death, the half-full of resurrection, or the full-inertia of other fish to fry, it is helpful to know the other stories. We will eventually get to all the possibilities.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html
No earthquake in Mark. "When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back."
As you look back at your own life-journey (not always "spiritual") can you identify those times when your eye had been downcast, but, when you did, accidentally or hopefully, look up, it was obvious the dragon's maw no longer awaited you?
These are important markers, individually and communally, when we are then able to enter the tomb we so feared or were resigned to.
As in Mark, we may find even these subsequent experiences to be as frightening in their reality as they had been in their expectation. We may yet run afraid, away. But always there is a remembrance of a stone having rolled away and we can regroup to move beyond a next fear.
The ending of Mark is a marker for us in this process. Just how many endings there are to the resurrectional story, no one will ever know. They don't end with the recorded accretion of endings in Mark. We are still adding new endings to this old story. One way or another, fear never has the last word.
What we know as the original ending of Mark begs for completion in our lives. We have hurried (then and then and then) onward through this story that had no beginning and has no end. We have run right up to and past the last word of "afraid" and found ourselves hanging over an existential abyss - How'd we get here? What are we going to do now? Will this be the last word?
Mark's masterpiece has a masterpiece of an ending that tosses the salvation of G*D and Creation right back to us. Are you going to run forever, away, or stand over your nothing left and trust again, build again, live again?
- - -
so a new heaven and new earth
are about to be created
will this creation be a partnership
or a wholly-owned subsidiary
if without remembrance
will it long endure
without labor's seeming vanity
where resurrection's blessing
as came death so comes life
through you and me and us
choose this day
a last fruit - a first
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Mary, Mary, and Salome, now representing the discipleship narrative once held by James, John, and Peter, were practical to wait until Sunday dawn to go to a tomb. Tombs are dark enough in daylight and to do so after dark would add difficulty to difficulty. They were not practical in their uncertainty about being able to get in when they got there. Where was Martha who would have organized this expedition so they would know they could enter when they arrived?
Well, it turned out the spirit of Martha had been on duty after all – the door was open and they walked right in.
I suppose they might have known that things were already falling apart in their orderly world when the stone had been moved. It doesn't begin to sink in, though, until they enter to find another transfigured figure who transfixed them with words unimagined – "Jesus ain't here, he's on the way to Galilee. Tell those behind you that Jesus has gone on ahead of you (sort of a John the Baptizer reprise)."
Well, what now? Our question about the stone sure had a response we weren't looking for. Now there too many more questions suddenly swirling within. We can't even talk to one another yet.
When practical and caring women go quiet, look out – gestation is taking place and birth will come in its own time.
What questions are taking root in you? What has surprised you into silence that it might become you? [Note: remember to read the phrase, "become you" in several ways.] Eventually you will "go ahead" too, so enjoy the growth going on now and the going ahead will be more joyous.
= = = = = = =
In today's WUMFSA reading of Say to This Mountain: Mark's Story of Discipleship by Ched Myers, Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, OFM, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor we hear:
". . . as the reader buckles under the weight of this ignominious end, Mark tells a curious story.
"In a parenthetical comment, we learn about a "young man" who flees with the other disciples (14:51). This naked flight symbolizes the shame of the discipleship community, leaving behind a "linen cloth." The garment will reappear as the burial wrap of Jesus (see 15:46), and the young man will reappear in Jesus' empty tomb, fully clothed in white robes (see 16:5). We shall see that this transformation of clothing, as in Jesus' transfiguration (9:3ff), represents both a promise and challenge to the reader."
How are you tying various parts of this story together?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
Spices brought late anticipate a stink. But brought, nonetheless. For it is an anointing — an acknowledgment that we also name him Beloved. A baptism of spice, not water.
Spices were brought late and later questions arise, “Who will roll away the stone?”
When looked back on, this question was the easiest problem. The stone that wasn’t there — a mystery. A youngster dressed in the brightness of day, just sitting — a mystery. Don’t be afraid — a mystery. Not dead but raised — a mystery.
And we are caught between a rock and a hard place — Tell; Say Nothing. And we stand between — again and again and again.
Again and again and again — a question comes, “How will I deal with a stone that isn’t there?” Tell or Terror? Aye, there be a question worth wrestling with.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/mark-161-8.html