“BEGGING FOR BOGART”
Scripture Lesson: Mark 16: 1-8
Dr. Matthew S. Brown
Humphrey Bogart has just
convinced the love of his life to leave him behind. With a “Here’s looking at you, kid” and a
smile he bids her adieu. Ingrid Bergman boards the plane, and Bogart walks down
the fog-laced
Great
Ending. The credits roll and you feel patriotic,
sentimental, ennobled, and hopeful all at once.
Even if the popcorn was a bit burnt you can’t help but have a good taste
in your mouth.
Great
Endings. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan find one another in
the park. Michael Douglas skewers a
political villain and then strides in to deliver the State of the
There is resolution. There is completion (and no, that’s not a
reference to Tom Cruise and Renee Zellwegger) There is closure. Questions are sorted out, disentangled,
unraveled, answered.
O, we know how artful and
creative it can be to leave the audience dazed and full of questions, wrestling
with mysteries wrapped in riddles inside enigmas, to leave us asking, “Well,
did she or didn’t she?” But many of us
say, “Stop trying to impress the Academy and tell me if they caught the killer.
And so it is that Mark’s gospel
leaves us with knots in our stomachs, our minds muddled, our
fears unassuaged. “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.”
That’s what scholars believe to be the actual ending to Mark’s
gospel. In fact, Fred Craddock suggests
that the original Greek has the gospel ending mid-sentence, “...they said
nothing to anyone, for they were afraid and...”
Imagine John Kennedy saying “Ask not what your country can do for
you. Ask,
what...” “OK, what?”
Is that any way to end the
story? In Mark, we have no great
commissions to disciples on the mountaintop; no grilled fish breakfasts down by
the seaside; no show and tells for doubting Thomas; no
hiking trips to Emmaus; no tearful reunions with Mary Magdelene. No, in Mark, grieving women see a tomb empty
except for a juvenile stranger who is certainly not Jesus. They hear news of a resurrection, but they
see no Jesus; they hear no Jesus, and we are left begging for a Bogart
ending.
The words of the linen-clad
stranger sound hopeful but the women are stuck in a “This is not what I
expected” form of shock, a “what do we do now?” posture. Looking like first time visitors ascending
from the subway in
There may be hope but they’re
not singing any Hallelujah choruses, yet.”
It is an awkward ending, an
ending so unsatisfactory to some early believers that they decided to fill in
the blank, adding verses and appearances that were not part of the
original. There has also been
supposition that part of the original manuscript was torn away leaving us with
something like those irritating copies the Xerox spits out that are missing half
a column (My office is directly beside the copy machine and I’ve heard your
cries of lament!).
Matthew gives us a sense of
completion and a clear mandate with the Great Commission. In Luke, the risen Jesus even sits down with
the disciples to teach, giving an unambiguous explanation of the events that
have transpired, and then Luke even describes for us Christ’s ascension into
heaven. In John, the risen Christ
surprises the disciples with his appearance and wishes them peace but Mark
doesn’t do that. We are left awkwardly
wondering whether we have missed something.
Do you remember American
Bandstand? You know, “It’s got a good
beat and it’s easy to dance to,” and all that stuff. Dick Clark would bring on the latest one hit
wonders like Looking Glass and 10cc for “live,” lip-synced performances as the
youth gyrated to the beat around, above, and behind them. But, do you remember how the songs usually
ended? Not with a crescendoing, guitar
riffing, piano banging, bass thumping, drum thundering drive toward that final
explosive chord where the guitarist leaps into the air and the drummer hits
everything he can put a limb in contact with.
No, on Bandstand, the
prerecorded songs would just sort of fade out with the musicians and dancers
awkwardly slowing to a stop, just standing there as if to say, “Well, I can’t
fake that!”
Where’s the finish,
Mark? In this Gospel, there’s no moment
of “Ta Da!” And yet, there is something
to be said for reading and appreciating Mark as it is. I love the way Patrick Wilson describes
Mark’s ending. “[Mark] refuses to tie
the loose ends of the gospel into a tidy bow of fleeting consolations... What Mark’s ending lacks in romance it makes
up for in sheer realism.
Isn’t this the world we live
in? No enchanted world of thinly
fabricated happily-ever-afters, but a world in which we hold tightly to the
promise and fearfully tread our way through a tangle of doubts and amazements.”
Like those women long ago, we
have heard the good news that Jesus has risen.
Like those women long ago, we, today and tomorrow, must struggle with
the question of whether those words hold weight.
One of the most meaningful
moments in the church year is when the worship leader stands to say, “The Lord
is risen,” and the congregation jubilantly responds,
“He is risen indeed.” It is that
affirmation, that belief that brings meaning and purpose to everything
else. And yet, I cannot stand and raise
that affirmation, sing that promise without acknowledging that we came into
this place bearing more than lovely Easter lilies. We also came in with our questions, with our
doubts, with our unresolved guilt, with our often complex and confusing life
stories.
We come into this place
vainly hiding the wounds that life in this world has given us - wounds from the
outside and wounds self-inflicted.
We may come into this place
with that world-beating bearing of confidence (You know that’s a common pose
down here in
“Jesus Christ is risen today!” I sing
it and I mean it. But, yes, there are
those days when we’re also echoing Frank Sinatra who sang, “Bewitched,
bothered, and bewildered.” Our
questions, our fears, our doubts, though, are not the enemies of faith. Rather, actually they are a part of faith.
There is a grand difference
between faith and religious certitude.
Faith is believing in that which you cannot see
and may not understand. Religious
certitude is a false arrogance that is responsible for so much that plagues
God’s good earth today. There is a whole
lot being said and done in this land and around the globe supposedly in the
name of God that has nothing to do with God and faith. Long ago Pascal correctly observed that
“Human beings never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious
conviction.”
Life without faith is a
tragedy. Life without doubt is an
illusion. And so, there we are with Mary
and Mary and Salome climbing out of the tomb, not fully comprehending all that
has transpired, trying to compute what has just been said, walking in the
general direction we’ve been told to go, but not sure what to think or say
along the way.
Their experience is our
experience. We may be begging for more
of a Bogart ending, but think for a moment about what you’re doing when you
come out of a movie that ended with unresolved questions. You’re asking the other people in the car,
“Hey, what was it she said to the man in the shadows?” “What do you think was the significance of
the rose petals?”
You see, the conversation
continues. You’re lying awake in bed
that night thinking through that plot again.
Your appreciation and understanding grow as you continue to reflect and
discuss.
Well, what do you think Mark
is inviting us to do? Go back, read
through the story from the beginning.
Indeed, Mark starts his gospel with these words, “The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ.” What we
thought was an unsatisfactory ending is just a part of the beginning of the
story that continues even as we engage it here in the childhood of the 21st
Century.
Our questions can lead us
right back into the story. Can’t you see
these women trying to look back and remember what Jesus had said that might
make some sense out of their confusion.
In the face of today’s doubts
and fears, Mark is inviting us to the same exercise. What was it that Jesus said which could offer
some clarity for our confusion. Look!
In chapter eight Jesus describes what is to transpire. And hey, look! He says the same thing in chapter 9. And, well I’ll be, he says it again in
chapter ten. He would be arrested, he
would be killed, he would rise again.
Do you see what Mark is
doing? With this ending, he is inviting
us to go back to the beginning time and again, to mine the meaning that
continues to reveal itself in new and surprising ways. And as we participate in the journey, we hold
onto the same promise given to the women at the tomb. “He is going before you.”
Did you see the movie The
Fugitive? Federal
Marshall Tommy Lee Jones chasing surgeon/fugitive Harrison Ford through the
And so it is with us and our
Easter faith. There are still questions
and confusion to be experienced on this side of the cross. But as we step and stumble forward we too,
carry with us the promise that Christ is going before us, and as we follow we
know he is near in the sacred signs and kingdom clues and close encounters the
risen Christ grants us all along the journey.
Will there be questions and
doubts that come with us out of the empty tomb?
Surely.
But William Sloane Coffin, who I quoted to you last week and who in
death joined the communion of the saints this week, framed the matter of faith
well when he quoted German poet Maria Rilke.
“Love the questions and live into the answers.” (Coffin, Letters to a
Young Doubter)
The young man in the tomb
said much the same, not with a “Ta. Da!”, but with a promise: “He is going before you.”
The ending of Mark’s gospel
is a beginning for us. So, singing the
songs of Easter, let’s gather up our questions and join the journey, living
into the answers through the power of the risen Christ. Amen.
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