Running Scared

It looks as strange as it sounds.  “Greek to me” would be an appropriate comment, for that’s what it is: the ending of the Gospel of Mark in one of its oldest variants, known to scholars as Codex Sinaiticus, from ca. A.D. 350. Three women, two named Mary, come to anoint the body of their crucified teacher in observance of Jewish burial custom. The sun’s first rays shed but an indistinct light on the pathway retracing their steps to the place of the Skull where Jesus breathed his last. Situated near one of the busiest of Jerusalem gates, it rarely failed to draw the attention of the thousands who shuffled by on their Passover pilgrimage to this holiest of all cities.  Roman justice was hard for friend or foe to ignore.

With spices in hand they lowered their heads, not wanting to look upon the two who were yet hanging on their crosses, their audible gasps a reminder of the price exacted by Rome on any who dared challenge its authority. But as they approached the tomb in which Jesus had so hastily been laid, something seemed wrong, unexpectedly wrong. The stone sealing the tomb had been moved. And the body they had come to anoint was gone. An unrecognizable, enigmatic figure, conveyed a message that they found both troubling and inexplicable. “He is not here, but has risen. Go and tell his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee.” We can only imagine what sense they might have made of this. All we are told is that they fled, in fear.  Mark’s abrupt ending seems to leave them, and us, hanging.

The other gospels build upon and amplify this memory, adding several more details to the story of resurrection that Christians hold dear. What we make of them says as much about our faith as it does about the intent of the witness left by our spiritual forbearers. For their recollections confuse as much as they confirm: reports of witnesses encountering the risen Jesus in disguise, or as a corporeal body they can touch, and as an apparition that materializes before them and then vanishes from their sight. Yet through the “mystery” of these testimonies, his dispirited followers grew in their certainty that the iron fist of Rome had failed to still his voice or conquer his spirit. 

What really happened? What did it mean? What does it mean for us today? The proliferation of theological judgments and ecclesiastical forms by which the Church is known today bears witness to the breadth and divergence of beliefs and doctrines that have evolved within the Body of Christ. And while I am not alone in lamenting this state of division and brokenness among those professing to be joined in spirit and in truth, I guess it doesn’t really surprise me that much.  For it is how we of the Christian faith have always been. The Easter gospel makes that clear. Belief often precedes sight, and proof lies in the heart as much as in the senses.

Those first witnesses to the unthinkable were scared, running scared. In Mark the women flee from the tomb in fear. What had become of their friend, their teacher? What sense could they make of what they had, and hadn’t seen? In Matthew the women run to tell the others now in hiding. In Luke and John two disciples, including Peter, run to the tomb to see for themselves what they have been told. And in several reports that don’t easily line up, they hit the road, traveling to Bethany, Emmaus, to Galilee and back again. But why were they running, and why were they afraid?

To the degree the disciples were viewed as confederates of the Galileean messiah, they posed a threat to both their Roman overlords and to those Jewish surrogates who helped them enforce the Pax Romana. That helps us understand why they fled the scene at Jesus’ arrest, took the 5th when confronted, and went underground. That is why it was the women who ventured out to visit the tomb, the women whose witness yet stands at the heart of the Christian resurrection message. Not until Pentecost, some 50 days later, did the men feel safe enough to step out in public, assuming leadership roles that would carry most of them to their deaths through those first decades of Christianity’s growth.

Running scared--how different that is from our modern Easter experience. We need not run, except on those occasions when we oversleep and fear not getting a seat in churches that fill up this one day of the year. We harbor no fear from religious zealots wanting to silence our voices or from some state-sponsored religious crackdowns to prevent our gathering. There is little for which we Christians need to be afraid in America today, unless it is the social ostracism we may feel when secular opinion labels us as irrelevant in our religiosity. 

Yet I wonder what we have lost, or what we miss, in experiencing none of that first Easter dread, that first Easter urgency that jumps off the pages of gospel memory.  Yet if Christ is, indeed, risen, do we not really have more to fear than we usually realize? Should we not fear…

     …the disconnect between the faith we profess and the faith we actually live?

     …the weakness of our will and flesh when virtue and integrity are put to the test;

     …the limits of our grace and forgiveness when pride and ego overwhelm us? 

Or has Christianity become so safe, so easy, so comfortable that we can now live out our days without fear that any of our words, or our actions, or our associations will identify us as different or distinguish us from anyone else, no matter their character or commitments?

For the past 24 hours, Christians across the globe have joined their hearts and voices in shouting “Alleluia, He Is Risen”, their sanctuaries perfumed by lilies and their faces animated by joyful smiles. Yet on this very day I have found myself more drawn to those first disciples who were on the run, running for their lives, running scared. It was upon them that the magnitude of what they believed God was revealing in Jesus—his words, his deeds, and now his death—began to come into focus. The long-held promise of Emmanuel—so dear to prophetic yearning—had become real for them in a life-changing, history-shaking way. For on this day, perhaps for the first time, they understood that God had, in fact, been with them, in Jesus. 

The lyrics of Gerard Moultrie, so beautifully set to music by Gustav Holst, capture in a few lines what I sense Mark has left us to ponder:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our Lord to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

The two paintings featured in this BLOG are by James Tissot (1836-1902) among whose more than 400 biblical illustrations are many that graced the family Bible my parents added to our home when I was a child.