Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
When An Ending Is A Beginning
By Bishop Paul Marshall
[Diocesan Life, May '97]
I love and hate films that do not actually end. Casablanca is
a good example. Problems are resolved, and a few of the characters
come to know themselves in a new way. As the story ends, however,
the main characters are going off to face an uncertain future.
As we view the film, we are left to guess or imagine what will
come next. It is impossible to know for sure, and many good arguments
can arise . Was it, for example, "the beginning of a beautiful
friendship?"
Mark's Easter gospel seems to be written in just the same way.
After a ministry of teaching and healing, Jesus is revealed as
Son of God on the cross, dies, and is hastily buried. He is left
in the tomb over the Sabbath, but before dawn on Sunday, women
come to the tomb to finish his anointing and burial.
It occurs to them to worry that there is a stone on the tomb,
but to their shock it isn't there. To their greater shock, there
is no body in the tomb, and a messenger from God tells them that
Jesus has risen and will meet the disciples in Galilee. Then, Mark's
entire gospel concludes: "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."
I'd feel terror and amazement, too, if my best friend had been
murdered by the state and I were told he's alive. In fact, those
words, terror and amazement, are rather polite and restrained.
No, the feelings are not the surprise in that passage; the surprise
is that Mark deliberately stops his gospel in the middle of a sentence: "They
said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of..."
Our translations usually smooth that off for us, but it is as
I've described, and the reader is left hanging in the air, wondering
what will come next.
And so, of course, Mark's readers knew he was not so much writing
an ending as he was describing a begin-ning. This is a curious
but unmistakable extension of the opening of the book, "The beginning
of the gospel." What would happen next in the Easter story is up
to his readers.
About a year ago Ronald Scates, wrote an article, Why they
Come, Why They Stay (Reformed Worship, March 1996), in which
he reports: A survey of 26 mainline congregations in the USA
revealed that the number one reason visitors return and eventually
become members is the congregation acts like it really believes
Jesus is alive through a collective effervescence that pervades
everything that is done.
I prefer gimmicks they require so much less of us. I have asked
the diocese to think about what gets people in the doors. Scates
reminds me that technique may be well and good, but after they
are in, it is not our technique but our faith that matters most
if our mission is to be successful. For mission to succeed we need,
as individuals and as parishes, to live that effervescence that
comes from following a living Lord, an exalted servant.
That, in fact, is why I have a nearly total lack of interest in
arguments about whether the tomb was empty or not. I believe it
was, but even if I didn't, the "proof" of the resurrection from
Easter Monday on is not reconstructing a past that cannot be reconstructed
but the present-day encounter Christians have with the person and
power of the risen Christ. That is what Mark's gospel is trying
to get me to see in its unfinished story.
I began with the movies, so let me end with in a similar way,
perhaps up half a notch. One of the most beautifully staged operas
I've ever seen was the premiere of the new production, some years
ago at the Met, of Puccini's Turandot.
What's interesting about the opera for our purposes, however,
is another premiere. For the fact is that Puccini never finished
it. When he died in 1924, the opera was reverently finished by
friends from his notes.
At the premiere at La Scala in 1926, Turandot was conducted
by Arturo Toscannini, who, when he came to the last passage Puccini
had written, actually stopped an entire Italian opera, put his
baton down, and turned to the audience. Through tears, he said: "This
is where the master ends." Then he raised the baton, and said: "This
is where the friends continue." He went on to what has to have
been one of the greatest premieres in musical history.
You know where I am going with this, of course. Easter is a springboard
into God's future. Jesus is going on ahead of us. We have the master's
notes. In fact, we have the risen master with us. May we, his friends
in our jobs, homes, and even in our churches continue the story.
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