University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Easter Sunday              April 12, 2009

            Nine years ago next month the British composer Colin Matthews premiered his “completion” of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets, having added a piece for the ninth planet and naming it “Pluto, The Renewer.” When Holst composed the original score in 1916, Pluto had not yet been discovered, and so Matthews’ composition was meant not so much to finish the work, but to update the suite and to round out the eight movements that represented the other planets of the solar system.  Little did Matthews know at the time that just six years later the International Astronomical Union would officially demote Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet,” making Holst's original work once again the more accurate representation of the solar system, and rendering his attempt to “finish” the composition… well, superfluous. Either that, or he was going to have to write forty-five more compositions, one for each of the other “dwarf planets” identified in the IAU report.

            Of course, Matthews was not the first composer to attempt to complete a musical work.  There have been other well-known musical compositions that were never completed – left unfinished either because the composer ran out of inspiration or because he or she died before writing the conclusion.  One thinks of failed attempts to finish Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, more commonly called The Unfinished Symphony. There have been multiple attempts to finish J.S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue and Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10, each of the attempts interesting, but none of them completely satisfying because, well, they weren’t the real deal. I was talking with Tom Brown about those compositions Friday, and he said that, in his own experience, the most memorable performances of unfinished works have been those in which the orchestra or solo performer simply stopped playing where the composer stopped writing.  Such endings were rather jarring, he said, but they always had the ring of authenticity to them.

            Tom described precisely the way I feel about the original ending of Mark’s Gospel.  Scholars are convinced that Mark ended his gospel, for whatever reason, right where we stopped reading a moment ago, and the remaining eleven verses are but unsatisfactory later attempts to give the Gospel a more polished ending.  There is no question that verse 8 seems unfinished:  A young man in a white robe has just told the women that Jesus is not in the tomb, that he has been raised, and that he has gone before them to Galilee – back to their hometowns and their ordinary lives – and there they will see him.  He tells them to go and spread the news to the others.  But in Mark’s ending, the women run away, for fear and amazement has seized them, and they say nothing to anyone, because they are afraid. It is a jarring end to the story.

In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the late Donald Juel tells the story of one of his students who had memorized the whole of Mark in order to do a dramatic, Broadway-style reading before a live audience. After careful study, the student had decided to go with the scholarly consensus regarding the ending. At his first performance, however, after he spoke that ambiguous last verse, he stood there awkwardly, shifting from one foot to the other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure, waiting for a proper ending. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “Amen!” and made his exit. The relieved audience applauded loudly and appreciatively. Upon reflection, though, the student realized that by providing the audience a satisfying conclusion, his “Amen!” had actually betrayed the dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when he reached the final verse he simply paused for a half beat and left the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were obvious,” said Juel, “and as people exited . . . the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the non-ending.”[1]

“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.”  Of course, that non-ending is not the last word.  We know it’s not the way the Easter story ends… in the end.  If it had truly ended there, we wouldn’t be here surrounded by lilies on this bright Easter morning.  But I wonder if perhaps that was not Mark’s intention… that others would finish the story he left unfinished.  Back in the very first verse of his Gospel, Mark says that what he is presenting is “the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (1:1) Quite possibly, verse 8 of chapter 16 is the end of that beginning… and the rest of the story was yet to be told.  It would be up to the disciples, and in the long run up to us, to decide how the story ends (even if we know that ultimately, the author of this great love story is God).

            Remember that Mark’s Gospel was written not for the first disciples, nor for us, but for the church that Mark knew around 70 A.D., when telling the good news meant risking one’s life and it wasn’t clear at all how the Christian story might end.  Says Chris Chakoian, “in the midst of war and rumors of war, they could not know how their life or death would play out, how their fidelity or betrayal would play out, how the future or dissolution of the Christian community would play out… any more than we know for ourselves.”

Which is why the ending of Mark is not an ending at all: it is “the beginning of the good news,” the beginning of the Lord’s appearances, the beginning of the kerygma, the beginning of hope that will not die – not because of our faithfulness, the strongest of which fails in the end – but because of the power of God that cannot be domesticated or buried or fled or contained.  We know [that is true] from the epilogue – the epilogue … of our own presence here.[2]

            I learned initially from studying Spanish, and later from Greek and Latin, that many other languages have something known as an imperfect tense.  A present tense we understand.  What other languages call the aorist we know as past tense.  But English lacks an imperfect tense to describe action that has begun and is continuing.  And that is a shame, because the Easter liturgy is truly written in imperfect tense -- call it “Easter imperfect” if you will – for it tells the ongoing story of how the message of the empty tomb is being lived out in the lives of those who believe. That is the tense in which we live in these days, and part of our task is to help finish the story.

            We resist that unfinished quality of Easter in our lives, longing (as is natural) for completion and closure.  I think of the people with whom I have had conversations in recent months, and the glimpses I got of such Easter imperfect in them.  A young couple I married here a decade-or-so ago who have been plodding desperately through his chemotherapy searching for a cure, but who have been battered by a compounding progression of bad news.  Another young couple, soon to be married, anguishing over the tension they are experiencing as one of them now discerns a call to serve in a profession that was not previously part of either of their plans.  A middle-aged man, whose expertise as a scientist has always been valued and wanted, suddenly adrift and full of anxiety in a treacherous economy, after a force reduction in his workplace.  A young confirmand, eager and anxious all at the same time about the step she was getting ready to take and where it might lead her if she takes her vows seriously.  In countless ways on countless days, people speak to me a kind of Easter imperfect, voicing their hope in God's good news, but struggling with its unfinished quality . . . and all the questions that remain.

One question that keeps coming back to me is this: How do we live into the unfinished ending – the unfinished Easter of Mark?  My friend Chris Chakoian says it's important to realize that the Easter story is a story of calling – open-ended and ongoing.  It is the call that came first to the women at the empty tomb, scaring them half to death.  It is a call that comes also to us, even all these years later… to go and tell that the tomb is empty, that the power of death has been broken, and that he is going before us into Galilee… that is, back where we live, back where we go to school, back where we make a living.  He is there.  Go and tell.  Says Chris Chakoian:

We don’t have any more control over [this call] than the women who first heard it and weren’t sure they wanted to deal with it either.  If we’d really rather identify with the courageous and loyal pillars of faith, it’s really too bad, because these are the best Mark has to offer.

And maybe there’s grace in being called [along] with those who fail… and maybe it doesn’t even matter.  Because there is work to be done, and this ongoing, incomplete call hangs in the air, awaiting a response from anyone who hears.  And we, of course, are the ones who hear it now.[3]

What do we hear?  That death no longer contains him.  That life has had the final word.  That the power of God that cannot be domesticated or buried or fled or contained. That he goes before us, and if we seek him, he will meet us there.  In light of that good news, our job, says Brian Blount, is to finish the story.  The idea sounds outrageous, I know… that we could dare to finish this story.  But Blount is right in saying that it is part of God’s pattern to enlist human agents to enact the divine cause.  He says: 

God breaks in at [Jesus’] baptism, but then solicits Jesus to act.  God breaks through at the transfiguration, speaks to the disciples, but steps away and waits for them to respond.  God … whispers a word of instruction to the three women, [knowing all the while] that they’ll be too frightened to deliver it.  At the end, and beyond the end, when Jesus goes off searching for human representation in Galilee, God establishes yet again the desire to make and use human disciples.  [God keeps looking for people who are] willing and able to overcome their fear of this good news and thereby finish the story… Jesus started.  That is why Mark writes this Jesus story in the first place; to let would-be disciples know that God is searching for them, to finish it.[4]

That you and I are here today, celebrating Christ's resurrection and hearing this story from Mark, is testimony to the faithfulness of God on the one hand, and to the faithful efforts of Christians on the other – of men and women who've responded to God's call in all the centuries since that day the stone was rolled back and Christ left his tomb for Galilee, in search of human help.  We are here because of all those who have gone before us, seeking in their time and their place to finish the story Jesus started . . . not by bringing it to closure, but by remaining open to God's call in their lives, and following Jesus where he led them to go. 

And that is how we finish Mark's story, too – by our willingness to meet Christ in the Galilees of our own lives and continue the ministry he began … standing boldly in the face of death, speaking good news to the poor, feeding the hungry, binding up the brokenhearted, breaking down the dividing walls of hostility … doing all those things we learned from this One who still goes before us and who calls us still… this One whom death could not constrain.  

The Lord is risen.

He is risen indeed.

That’s the good news of this day.  It's more unsettling than satisfying in some ways… more challenging than cheerful.  But that's how Mark meant it to be.  He meant it to unsettle us so that we would get up and go – despite our fears, despite our reservations.  It’s not the end of the story, you see.  It is, in fact, our story’s beginning.  The Christ is still searching for others to help compose the ending.  We won't finish the story, I reckon… not completely. But the ending we will write, if our faith allows, may just have the ring of authenticity.  By God’s grace, it just may.