9/14/2023 0 Comments Jesus said peace be still![]() ![]() The ending of Mark′s gospel threatens to careen out of control (just like the storm in today′s reading), with the body of the executed Messiah nowhere to be found, and the women who had sought to embalm the corpse instead running away in fear from the angel who haunts the open and empty tomb. The story Mark tells us about Jesus is open-ended, unpredictable, dangerous, shadowed by betrayal, very much like a calm sea erupting in sudden storm. But there′s no predicting how we will respond to the script Mark offers us. It′s the story where the little guy is the good guy, and the good guy always wins. Giant-killing-young David slaying burly Goliath with a single shot from his sling-well, that′s something we can get. ![]() The ending is so abrupt that within one generation of its first telling people started adding awkward epilogues of Jesus-sightings, stories designed to diminish the combination of fear and awe that those women felt when all they expected was news of death but instead were confronted with the fact of resurrection. His story is peppered with exorcisms and miraculous cures its plot careens mercilessly toward Jesus′ execution in Jerusalem, and then shunts to an abrupt halt, as the women flee in terror from the empty tomb. His two favorite words are “again” and “immediately,” words that drive the story breathlessly forward, episode by episode. Mark’s narrative is brief, curt, rough-hewn. Mark by comparison occupies a completely different thought-world than the sophisticated writer of the great succession narrative in Samuel and Kings. ![]() In the next several weeks, you will also hear Mark′s Gospel read aloud, almost in its entirety. By the time we get to the tragic story of David and the death of Absalom, you will get the sense that Game of Thrones has somehow morphed into a version of Wolf Hall.īut the great succession narrative-Saul to David to Solomon-is not the only story you will hear in this summer season. It′s a story of increasing complexity, full of dramatic irony and acute psychological insight. It′s a rare opportunity to hear one of the great epics of ancient storytelling. Y ou will be hearing about the aftermath of this story all through the summer. It feels almost like an episode from Game of Thrones. We don′t often hear the David and Goliath story in church, especially as we just did, in such lavish and entertaining detail. A sermon preached on Pentecost IV (June 21, 2015) atĬhrist Church Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan ![]()
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