I still remember how upset I felt in 2005 as I sat in a theater watching the end of “Revenge of the Sith”, the third Star Wars movie (or sixth, depending how you count).
As the movie ends, everyone you’ve invested in is dying, or has turned to evil. The “good guys” are scattered; hope is thin. Everything has fallen apart, and the movie ends in a cloud of foreshadowing and questions.
I hated it. I’ve never watched the movie again.
It’s a terrible way to end a story, if you ask me.
And it’s the way Mark ends his gospel: The women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
The “good guys” are scattered: these women have come to the tomb as the straggling remnant of the fans and friends of Jesus, because everyone else has already dropped away.
Hope is gone at the beginning of the scene: Jesus is dead. And by the end of the scene hope is fragile and utterly strange. He has been raised, but what on earth does that mean? Are we about to see a ghost?
Everything has fallen apart. The cloud of foreshadowing in Mark’s story is an optimistic one, and the questions are full of potential, but everything we counted on is changed, and the last word, the fade to black, is a racing, frightened silence.
I do not like cliffhangers in my stories.
There’s enough uncertainty in everyday life, thanks.
I want resolution.
I want an ending that wraps things up.
I’m not the only one.
It didn’t take long after Mark put down his pen (or stylus or quill or whatever) before other folks came along and added more, trying to resolve his story: the women did tell Peter and the others; Jesus later appeared to some of his followers, and gave them a new mission.
Others wrote more because the suspense Mark leaves us with is unbearable, and we know what has to have happened, right?
But maybe that’s exactly why Mark leaves this story unresolved.
Because we do know what happened.
This story isn’t a cliff-hanger after all.
It’s a prequel.
A story that comes before the story we know, to renew our investment in that familiar narrative; to build up the excitement of the truth we know well.
Mark knows that you and I are here – like the very first community that read his words – because we do know what happened after. We know about the impossible renewal that comes from Jesus’ resurrection, the powerful mission to spread good news.
The truth that God has transformed the world by offering the gift of eternal life through the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is known and familiar; so familiar we sometimes stop paying attention. Or it seems theoretical; not practical and immediate in our daily lives.
So Mark tells us a story. Gets us invested in Jesus.
And then – he vanishes from the tomb, in a wave of foreshadowing, leaving an awe-inspiring message inviting us to follow him to Galilee, where who knows what will happen….
and Mark stops, right in the middle of the suspense, the anxious, world-shattering wonder.
So we’re hooked in again, reaching for resolution, fired up to look and seek and wonder and explore.
Because the story isn’t over.
It’s still unfolding, still being told, still happening.
You and I (here), today, are part of the same original story.
The story of God’s salvation of all humanity.
The story for which Mark gives us a prequel.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the story.
We don’t know where the women went when they fled from the tomb in silent fear and wonder.
Don’t know who they eventually told.
We don’t know how the community of disciples actually re-gathers, or what steps led from that moment of shocking revelation and absence at the tomb to the reunion of Peter and the others with the living Jesus.
We don’t know what happens when we leave here today. We don’t know how we get from here – this bright, cool churchyard – to a full and crowded church building, or even if that’s the future God has planned for us.
We don’t know how our community of disciples re-gathers; we don’t know how Jesus is going to surprise us, or what new mission God’s going to give us.
But we know all that must happen.
We don’t know who gets their vaccine when, what happens with the virus variants, what happens with schools and workplaces.
We don’t know what expectations we still have to let go, what losses and what discoveries and what joys will come next. We don’t know who we’ll invite to worship with us, or grow with us, as things change in the next year and decade.
We don’t know how any of that gets done. But we know it will.
While we don’t know what happens next, we do know how the story ends, where the story is going.
It ends with the complete reconciliation of the world with God; the end of all injustice and evil. It’s going always toward the fullness of abundant life.
And when we know where the story is going, how it ends, there’s a thrill in the uncertainty, a gift in the unknown in front of us.
That’s why many of us love movies: We know, mostly, that the good guys will win; that it will all work out. But we don’t know how it can possibly happen; we don’t know what challenges our heroes will face, or which decision is the right one, until it’s through. The uncertainty is the adventure, the joy.
That’s why I read mystery novels – I know that at the end, truth will be revealed and justice will be done; but I have no idea how. The revelations I can’t predict are the whole point.
This knowledge of the end is how we commit ourselves to the future in our everyday lives, too.
We know that the child will one day be an adult, but we have no idea what wrong decisions or brilliant discoveries we’ll make in parenting or teaching or grandparenting - or in our own growing up.
You know you’ll eventually get home from this trip, but not who’s going to offer help, or what compromises you’ll need to make, when the flight gets canceled.
We know we’ll finish that degree, or the kitchen renovation, but have no idea how we’ll navigate the requirements of learning, or what’s lurking in the plumbing behind the walls.
We know there’s a future where the Covid pandemic isn’t the primary shaper of our collective lives.
We don’t know exactly how we’ll get from here to there; we still have discoveries to make about what matters next.
We don’t know whether the next thing to shape our lives will be climate change or world peace, hoverboards or a hurricane.
We don’t know whether the story that we’ll eventually tell about these days will be remembered by others centuries from now – like the story that the women at the tomb eventually told – and we don’t know what future generations will make of it. (I’m sure Mary and Mary and Salome wouldn’t have predicted the trumpets in the churchyard or colored eggs and chocolate bunnies!)
We do know that the story still goes on, and we know where it’s going, how it ends.
Because we know that this story is God’s.
Jesus’s story.
Mary’s story, and Mary’s and Salome’s.
Peter’s, and the other disciples.
Yours and mine.
These stories, our stories, are God’s story.
A story that isn’t over, though the ending is already written.
It’s written in lives of love and change and wonder, miracle and ordinary. It’s the story of the resurrection of the world along with Jesus, and the journey that ends in the fullness of eternal and abundant life.
Alleluia!
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