Fearful Hope
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 20, 2003
Mark 16:1-8
I. INTRODUCTION
What are you afraid of? What is it that frightens you?
As I was working on this sermon yesterday, one cable channel had a run of monster bug movies: movies where mutant insects ravage a small town, or take on human form. These movies always seem to come to an end in some kind of dark tunnel underground. These movies often have Randy Quaid in them. Is that the kind of thing that frightens you?
Or is it the really big stuff? When I was growing up, the thing I feared the most was nuclear war. Back then, we believed it was not so much a question of if but when. As a kid I often had nightmares about bombs dropping and cities burning. And they even made a scary made-for-TV movie called The Day After that showed us what it would be like. As if our imaginations weren’t scary enough. It was a scary time to be alive.
Although, I guess we’re living in another scary time, aren’t we? Terrorism, anthrax, SARS, regional warfare in the Middle East. Have I left anything out? The world is a frightening place. There is much reason to be afraid.
II. THE TEXT
The world has almost always been a scary place. No less so in the First Century.
A. Mark’s Curious Ending
One of my favorite things about the Gospel of Mark is its strangeness. It’s not written in a particularly good style. Not like Luke is. It’s written in something like ‘street Greek’—not literary at all. In fact, you can’t always tell because the English always cleans it up, but Mark’s original will often say things like: “So they came to the house and he says…” Much as though Mark is not writing Scripture but telling anecdotes. ‘Did you hear the one about Jesus? Man it’s great. So, Jesus is in Capernaum, and Peter says…’
But perhaps one of the most curious things about the Gospel of Mark is that it lacks a proper ending. Most scholars agree that the original ending of Mark was what we heard read a few minutes ago.
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.(Mark 16:8)
The last part is even a fragment in Greek: efobounto gar, “for they were afraid….” It breaks abruptly in mid-sentence. So abrupt that a few people have endeavored to write a more satisfying ending for Mark. If you look in your Bibles you’ll see them there: the shorter ending of Mark and the longer ending of Mark (that’s the one with snake-handling in it). But most scholars believe that Mark ended just as we read it tonight: “for they were afraid.” What kind of ending was that? Was Mark nuts? Who writes a story that ends with people running away in fear?
B. Mark’s Community
There has been much speculation about Mark’s ending. Most seem to think that Mark ends his Gospel that way because it speaks to his audience, to the people reading and hearing his gospel. We’re not sure where they were: traditionally in Rome, perhaps Syria. But it seems clear that Mark’s community was made up of Christians living in fear, persecuted and feeling a sense of loss. The Gospel of Mark is written so that the reader or the listener will be able to identify with it. They will identify with the clueless disciples. Identify with the crowds. And most importantly identify with the suffering Christ.
And so Mark authors for them a gospel that speaks to their experience, their experience of persecution and fear.
III. FEAR
We can understand that can’t we? For we certainly live in a culture of fear. In fact, sometimes it seems that fear is our number one commodity.
I don’t know how many of you have had a chance to see Bowling for Columbine. In it, Michael Moore seeks to understand why America has so many handgun deaths compared to the rest of the world. He looks at the usual answer that people give: that America has a particularly bloody and violent history and for that reason, violence and murder are part of our ‘national character’ so to speak. But, he asks: are we really that much more violent than the Germans, who in World War II killed 12 million people? Or than the British who ruled the largest Empire in history and oppressed millions on the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere? Or the French, who were brutal in their administration of North Africa? The idea that we are more violent seems not to be quite true, and yet, Germany, Britain, and France have handgun deaths numbering in the low hundreds 100-350 per year. We have over 11,000 gun deaths.
So it must be the guns, right? But he looks at Canada—a country of 18 million people and 13 million households, with 7 million guns. Truly a gun loving people. They have about 68 gun murders a year. Upon investigating in Canada he discovers something that as an American he finds very disconcerting: it appears that a large number of Canadians, even city dwellers, do not lock their doors. There is even an amusing scene in the film where he walks right through the front door of a number of Canadian homes, to the bewilderment of the residents, but not much more. He is even confused by this: “Thank you for not shooting me,” he says to one perplexed, but otherwise affable Canadian. When he asks Canadians about locking their doors, he says, “Aren’t you afraid?” And they respond: “Afraid of what?”
Moore points out that we live in a culture of fear in this country, and we are sold a steady diet of fear in our media and entertainment. How many times have you been watching prime time television when a teaser for the 11 o’clock news comes on and says something like: “A common everyday household appliance that you probably never even think about can kill you. Details at 11.” Or have you noticed that so many of our products are sold to us by making us afraid of the thing that the product remedies? Bad breath. Baldness. Adult incontinence. Or God forbid: off-white teeth.
And then we’re given “non-specific terror alerts” in which we’re told to “be on the lookout for suspicious activity” but we don’t know what we’re looking for exactly. It’s as though the attorney general is shouting “look out!” and when we ask “for what?” he says “We’re not sure.” It certainly has a lot of us on edge. And it seems that more and more we are a people who live in fear.
IV. RESURRECTION
It’s for people like us that Mark wrote his Good News of Jesus Christ and of his resurrection from the dead. But what does that Resurrection have to say to us about our fear?
A. Resurrection and Expectation
Strange as it may seem, the idea of “life after death” is something we almost take for granted. But it wasn’t always the case. The ancient Israelites did not believe in life after death. They believed that death was the end—and let us not kid ourselves, it is a very real end. But they did not believe that the person lived on in any meaningful way after death. If anything, the person was a shadow of their former self, not even able to make remembrance of God from the grave.
But a recognition that this was not a world of perfect justice led to a longing for some kind of reckoning, some way for God to bring wholeness and justice to those who had suffered during this life. And the Jews began to look forward to the Resurrection of the dead as vindication and restoration of this life.
B. Resurrection and Fear
Jesus’ resurrection, then, was confirmation and vindication of the hopes of Israel. It was proof to the disciples that death would not hold sway forever. That is the Good News: that God had sent his Son, who lived and died as one of us, and was raised from the dead, as we will one day be.
The women who visited the tomb that Sunday nearly 2000 years ago were frightened by what they encountered. They “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
The only witnesses to the empty tomb in Mark’s gospel run fearful from the scene. It sounds like something we might do. And yet, we all know that’s not the end of the story. We know that in spite of the fearfulness of the women at the tomb and the disciples at the cross, the message of Christ’s resurrection transformed the world. God can bring faith our of our weakness and failure and even our fear. In spite of our weaknesses and our fear of proclaiming the Gospel, God is powerful enough to work miracles among us and heal us.
We will not always respond in courage. Whether we are like Peter, denying Christ three times, or like the disciples, fleeing from the crucifixion, or like the women fleeing the empty tomb, we will often be overwhelmed by our fear. And yet, God is not deterred by our fear. God raises his Son from the dead in spite of Peter’s denial, in spite of the disciples’ abandonment, and in spite of the reaction of the women at the tomb. God confronts our fear and accomplishes his purposes right through it.
St. Paul understood something of this power, for his encounter with the risen Christ was so powerful as to overcome his fear and lead him to a ministry that was fearless. Listen to some of his words from the Letter to the Romans:
Rom. 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“Perfect love casts out fear” says the first letter of John. What Mark reminds us is that God’s love, grace, and power plow right through our fear. There is no amount of fear that can overpower God’s purposes.
God’s love overcomes our fear of relationship, with him and each other. God’s mercy overcomes our fear of injustice. God’s light overcomes our fear of darkness. And God’s grace overcomes our fear of death by confirming for us the promise of the Resurrection. Through Christ, the grave has lost all its power.
So we might wonder why we’re holding on to all the fear that we do. What does it get us in the end? Might we not better say along with the Psalmist “The Lord is for me, I will not be afraid. What can a human being do to me?” (Psalm 118:6,Heb 13:6)
V. CONCLUSION
Christ has burst his three day prison. Christ suffered a terrible death and conquered death for our sakes. God raised Christ to new and eternal life, and through him, has made that gift available to all of us. Our deaths are no longer the end for us. The fear that we live our lives in, that causes us to deny Christ, that causes us to flee from the crucifixion and the empty tomb—that fear has been blown apart with the glory of the resurrection.
Through Christ we have been given the promise that we, too, shall rise again to new life. “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” “And all flesh shall see it together.”
Given that, what are we afraid of?
