ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ

One of the architectural glories of the University Church is the West Window by the Victorian designer, Charles Kempe. It was dedicated in memory of one of my predecessors as Vicar of the University Church, a man called John William Burgon. Everyone remembers St John Henry Newman from the nineteenth century. Burgon was a rather more obscure character. He was a great controversialist, and was once described as ‘an old-fashioned high churchman, famous for his support of a long series of lost causes’. His picture still hangs in the vestry, where he glowers down at the clergy. Below his portrait is the title ‘The Orthodox Vicar of St Mary’s’.

In the course of the nineteenth century, Burgon had become a passionate critic of the Revised Version of the Bible, which had replaced the King James Version. One of the areas of controversy related to the end of Mark’s gospel. Revisiting the many ancient Greek manuscripts that had come to light since 1611, the compilers of the Revised Version noticed that some of the earliest manuscripts of the gospel appeared to finish at the end of verse 8, whereas later manuscripts (te ones used by the compilers of the King James Version) added another 12 verses. Burgon claimed that these last twelve verses of Mark were part of the original gospel, and he wasn’t going to have a bunch of scholars with their new-fangled ideas messing about with his Bible. But he was no mean scholar himself. He recognised that within the manuscript tradition there was some confusion – some manuscripts offered a longer ending, others a shorter ending, and he tried to argue that these 12 verses were part of the original narrative. He was troubled by the idea that without these verses, the gospel seems to trail off almost in mid sentence: ‘they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.’

If the gospel ends here, then this ending raises all sorts of intriguing questions. We have a tantalising description of the empty tomb, but there are no accounts of encounters with the risen Lord. So did Mark intend to finish his gospel with these words? Or did he intend to include at least one account of a resurrection appearance of Jesus? Do we speculate with a former Warden of Keble that ‘just as St Mark reached the words “for they were afraid”, a heavy hand descended on his shoulder, and a gruff official voice pronounced the fateful words; “Here, what’s all this? You’d better come with me to the praetorium”, and so the saint’s literary career came to an abrupt conclusion’? Or do we speculate with some textual critics that Mark’s gospel accidentally lost its last leaf before it was multiplied by transcription?

‘They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’. The final verse in Mark’s gospel is perhaps the most puzzling, in what is I think the most puzzling and mysterious of the gospels. The final irony of the gospel is that although in the course of the gospel Jesus commended men and women to say nothing about the truth of his identity, and even though, more often than not, they disobeyed. Now that the time has at last come to report what has happened, the women are silent.

One of the characteristics of Mark’s gospel is that it is full of allusions and references to the Old Testament. One commentator notes that the phrase ‘for they were afraid’, is strikingly similar to a phrase that we find in Genesis chapter 18 verse 15, where one of the two angels announces to Abraham that Sarah will bear a son. Sarah laughs in disbelief. When the angel asks her why, she denies it ‘for she was afraid’. In the Greek, it’s the same phrase. As the commentator says: ‘Here, as in our passage in Mark, there is a divine promise of life springing out of deadness, a promise that human incredulity, which is linked with fear, finds impossible to accept.’ These words alert us to the sheer fragility of apostolic testimony, that the story of the empty tomb relies on their witness, their willingness to share the story of the resurrection. Is this something that we can trust in? Something that we can believe in?

Mark’s gospel begins with the proclamation of the gospel and the invitation to ‘believe the good news’. Mark has emphasised again and again the ‘fallibility’ of his followers. Their confusion and ignorance have been apparent from the beginning. The initial stages of Jesus’ ministry show that ‘demonic forces’ are being overthrown. Brendan Byrne suggests that the ‘demonic’ is essentially about control: the control of human life by forces, frequently transpersonal and socioeconomic, that stunt human growth and freedom, alienating individuals from each other and from their own true humanity. And yet, through a series of parables and paradoxes, Mark prepares us for the story of the passion. The heart of Mark’s theology is a revelation of the God who reaches into the deepest recesses of human darkness to draw human beings to repentance and fullness of life. And the passion narrative that we have heard in the course of this week speaks of betrayal and treachery, of deception and denial, of hatred and violence. And we learn that the dynamics of these dysfunctional relationships lead inexorably to the crucifixion of an innocent victim and his death.

But the resurrection teaches us that God has the power to re-create a relationship of trust and love, even on the far side of the most difficult human experiences, the most challenging realities - failure, suffering, abandonment, betrayal, injustice, even death itself. And Mark does not offer us a glimpse of the risen Lord. He sends the disciples ‘back to Galilee’, to go back to the point where his story began, in order that the way of discipleship may be woven ever more deeply into the pattern of lives.

‘They said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.’

Mark’s gospel helps us to see that the story of Christ’s death and resurrection brings to light our deepest fears - our fear of failure, our fear of abandonment, our fear of betrayal, our fear of injustice, our fear of death itself. And the disciples in this story are the ones who fail, who abandon Jesus, who betray him, who collude with injustice, and who in those final moments at Jesus’ death, run away, so that the only person left is a Roman Centurion, a Gentile, who says, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’.

But at every step in this story, there has been a nonparticipant observer who has been with Jesus in every scene. That person is the reader – in other words, us. ‘The narrator has permitted the reader to be ‘with Jesus’ the whole time, from beginning to end. The reader heard the voice of God declaring Jesus to be his Son, when no one else heard; the reader was present with Jesus in the wilderness, tested by Satan, when no one else was there. When family rejected him, the reader persisted. When religious leaders, crowds, and disciples misunderstood and abandoned Jesus, the reader stood by him. When the inner circle went to sleep in Gethsemane, oblivious to Jesus’ plea to watch with him one hour, the reader stayed awake and heard Jesus’ anguished prayer. When the disciples fled and were absent at the cross, the reader was present. When Jesus cried out to God in abandonment, the reader was still there. Now, the readers stand at the brink of the incomplete narrative in which all have failed, and, with terrible restraint, the narrator breaks off the story and leaves the readers, who may have thought the story was about somebody else, with a decision to make….’ (Boring 2006: 449).