Sermon: Dot Dot Dot

Text: Mark 16:1-8

Date: April 16, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            I have a little assignment for you before I sermonize.  Grab a pencil or a pen—there are some mini-pencils in the pews if you don’t have one with you—and write this down on your worship bulletin or grocery list (anything but a hymnal): write an ellipsis, your name, and another ellipsis.

            Don’t know what an ellipsis is?  I didn’t either until two days ago.  Ellipsis is the fancy name for the punctuation mark that is three dots in a row, like three periods in a row.  So the assignment is: …your name…  I’ll give you a minute. 

            We’ll come back to that.

            Did you ever have the frustrating experience of buying a book at a rummage sale or reading a story in a magazine at the doctor’s office in which you discover when you eagerly turn the pages to find out what happens that the ending is missing?  This is especially maddening if the story you were reading was a real page turner or cliff hanger, the kind where all the mysteries are revealed and the problems solved in the last page or two.  There you are with this torn page, this raggedy gap, wondering forever whodunit, or did they finally kiss?

            Some of the readers of the gospel of Mark through the centuries have thought that the scenario I just described was exactly what had happened to Mark’s gospel.  The oldest manuscripts end right where we ended our reading.  “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.”   Period.   There are two more endings appended, adding to chapter 16 verses 9-20; but there is almost universal agreement that these were added much later to the original text.

            You can probably see why that left early readers turning the page, or more accurately, examining the bottom of the scroll for signs of a tear in the papyrus.  The last word of the gospel of Jesus Christ couldn’t possibly be “afraid”—could it?  Something must be missing. 

            Our Seasons of the Spirit Bible study curriculum summarized some of the theories that have been put forth over the years about why the original gospel ends so abruptly.  Perhaps the author was interrupted, or died, and never got a chance to finish the gospel.  Maybe the Gospel of Mark did originally continue beyond verse 8, but the ending was accidentally destroyed.  The scroll could have been damaged or the last part accidentally torn off.  This did happen sometimes to old scrolls.  It’s possible that the original ending was deliberately destroyed because it conflicted with the gospels of Luke and Matthew, and someone early on thought that no one would believe the story of the resurrection if the gospels didn’t all say the same thing.    (Of course, the gospels don’t all say the same thing anyway, so that theory doesn’t hold much water.)

            Other theories: The author didn’t have any firsthand information about what happened next, and wrote only the facts known.  Or the author meant to say that the women went quickly to Galilee, saying nothing to anyone on the way there.  Or perhaps Mark meant that their first response was fear, and that it was later when they spoke out about what happened.  Maybe the writer of Mark assumed that everyone knew what happened, and that more elaboration was not needed.

            At any rate, the scribes of the second century and later couldn’t stand it and added some other stuff.  Verses 9-20 draw in stories of post-resurrection appearances that echo the endings of the other three gospels—Christ encounters a weeping Mary Magdalene as in the gospel of John, appears on the road to two disciples, as in the story of the road to Emmaus in Luke, and meets the eleven disciples and gives them a commission, as in the gospel of Matthew.  An even shorter ending, probably written decades later, sums the gospel story up like this: “And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter.  And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”  It’s elegant, but even in English it doesn’t sound like Mark’s voice.

            All the theories and tacked on endings aside, what if Mark really did intend for the gospel to end right where it does in verse 8—with fear and silence?  Several contemporary commentators suggest this is entirely fitting for Mark’s gospel.  It fits with a consistent portrait of the disciples as Mark paints them.  With the exception of the disciples’ decisive move to immediately follow Jesus when he calls them away from their fishing nets and other occupations, the disciples look pretty slow and thick through the rest of the gospel.  One could almost put a universal caption under stories involving the disciples that reads, “Uhhh, we don’t get it.” 

            There is an article linked at textweek.com by Mennonite biblical scholar Tim Geddert suggesting that Mark is wrapping up his realistic portrayal of the disciples with both challenge and hope.   He recalls in Mark 3:14 why Jesus was appointing disciples in the first place: “to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message…”  Geddert points out that the disciples predictably fail at these two things.  He noticed something I’ve never noticed, that the failure can be broken down along gender lines as Mark tells the end of the gospel story.  The men disciples fail on the first part—to be with him.  They all run away and hide before the crucifixion.  The women disciples fail on the second part—to proclaim the message.  The women stay with him through the crucifixion and burial, but at the crucial moment when they are tasked with telling the good news of the resurrection, they stay silent. 

            But both the men and the women have been offered a fresh start.  Even before the men abandon Jesus, he makes a promise to meet them in Galilee.  Mark 14:27-28 says, “And Jesus said to them, ‘You will all become deserters, for it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.’”  The promise is repeated to the women, even before they let terror shut them up. The strange young man in the tomb tells them Christ has been raised and says, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  Geddert writes,

    The men failed to stay with Jesus on the road to the cross. The women failed to proclaim the message of the resurrection…Mark tells two stories, allowing the male and female disciples (respectively) to represent two ways people can fall short of their calling. Everyone misses the mark, and everyone is invited to start over in the power of the resurrected Jesus. That is Mark’s message.

Everyone misses the mark, and everyone is invited to start over in the power of the resurrected Jesus.  Everyone can go back to the beginning, symbolized by locating the resurrection reunion in Galilee, and start afresh, empowered by the spirit of the resurrected Christ.  Now there’s some gospel, there’s some good news!

            We don’t know from the original author’s hand what happened when those first disciples met up with the Resurrected One in Galilee.  There’s a sort of implied ellipsis at the end of the gospel of Mark.  An implied dot-dot-dot.  In punctuation, an ellipsis is used when you are leaving something out, when you are omitting a word or a phrase in something you are quoting because you don’t need it to make your point.  Or you use an ellipsis if you want to indicate that a sentence is trailing off into an indefinite ending.  Like this: “He asked her to marry him.  She answered, ‘Well….’

            “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid…”  We who hear the story would prefer a more defined ending, something without that dot-dot-dot.  We can certainly understand and appreciate why later scribes provided it.  But, as Geddert points out, a story with a tidy, happy ending, is a different kind of story.  It’s something you can put down with a sigh of relief and say, “Wow, great story,” and walk away from.  This story ending in an ellipsis, trailing away into silence, keeps us engaged.  We have questions: Did the men gather up their courage and go to the reunion in Galilee?   Did the women go to meet Christ as well, and begin to tell the marvelous news?  We assume they did, because here we are, 2000 years later, gathering as millions of others are to celebrate the resurrection. 

            But what happened to those long ago disciples is not the essential question.  The ellipsis at the end of Mark’s gospel ultimately puts the focus not on those men and women carrying on Christ’s ministry, but on the men and women who claim Christ today.  Mark doesn’t allow you to put the book down, satisfied with the ending.  The ellipsis, the dot-dot-dot leads to you and to me.  As Geddert writes,

This is a different kind of book. You cannot put it down, even if you want to. Whether this book has a good or a bad ending depends on you. For you are still writing it! Mark’s narrative ends with 16:8, but his story goes on. Mark’s Gospel is “The beginning of the good news” (1:1). Our story is its continuation.

            The story of creation, and the story of redemption in which Christ plays a pivotal role—these are remarkably open-ended stories.  The resurrection of Christ was an incredibly creative move by God, in which what looked like Jesus taking a face-meeting-the-pavement flat-footed neck-breaking fall turned into a somersault at the last possible second.  Have you ever seen a clown or an acrobat do that—turn a splat into a TA-DAH!  Not only did God accomplish this grace-full act in Jesus Christ, God offered the cowering disciples a chance to get in on the act, offering Jesus’ followers the chance to live a fearless, resurrected life empowered by Christ’s ongoing vitality. 

            Pretty risky move on God’s part, given the track record of the disciples.  But it really leaves the door open for God’s ongoing creativity, doesn’t it?  William James once wrote, “Suppose the world’s author put the case to you before creation, saying, ‘I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditioned merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own level best.  I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world.  Its safety, you see, is unwarranted.  It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through.  It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done.  Will you join the procession?  Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?’” 

            To carry on with William James’ theme, suppose the world’s author put the case to us before the resurrection, saying, “I am going to start a movement not certain to succeed.  I am going to reveal a path of human life that knows both the inevitability and the ultimate powerlessness of death.  I am going to bring to light a way of human life that is totally fulfilled in self-giving love in a world that teaches nothing but selfishness and greed.  I am going to show the way to overcome fear in a terrified world.  It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win over the world.  I offer you the chance of taking part in such a movement.  Will you walk on the Way?...”

            We might think that the success of the Jesus movement is assured, surrounded as we are by millions and millions of other Christians.  But the truth is that Christ’s resurrected spirit is never more than one generation away from running into a dead end in the human story.  Each successive generation of followers must take up the challenge of discipleship, walking with Christ and proclaiming the good news of fearless love abroad in the world.  Each generation of humans must choose to set out on Christ’s way if the liberation set into motion on Easter would continue to ripple through the creation.   

            Where the gospel story trails into silence…we write our names into the story…and introduce the resurrected Christ to our children and our children’s children…Christ has promised to meet us, and meet each believer who seeks to embody that irrepressible life in theirs.

            Listen to this poem by the Sufi mystic Hafiz:

My Beloved said:

“My name is not complete without yours.”

I thought:

How could a human’s worth ever be such?

And God, knowing all our thoughts—and all our

thoughts are innocent steps on the path—

then addressed my

heart,

God revealed

a sublime truth to the world,

when He

sang,

“I am made whole by your life.  Each soul,

each soul completes

me.

            Dot-dot-dot your name dot-dot dot.  The good news is not complete without you.

Geddert, Tim “Beginning Again” http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1352

Hafiz  “Each Soul Completes Me” Love Poems from God: Twelve Voices from the East and West  Daniel Ladinsky, ed.  New York: Penguin Compass, 2002, p. 179