Binge-watching the Gospel

What kept you going in 2020? Was it “The Crown?” Or “The Queen’s Gambit?” Or was it “Bridgerton” or maybe “Call the Midwife?” For me, I’m embarrassed to admit that I became totally obsessed with the TV series, “Outlander.” I got so caught up in watching the adventures of Claire and Jaime that I paid for an extra streaming channel just so I could watch the latest season. After I went through all the films, I bought the rest of the books on Audible so that I could find out the end of the story. After that, I wandered the house in a daze, wondering how I would survive without another installment. The “binge watching” of shows became a common survival tactic during the Pandemic. And once we started watching, who could resist? The action always ends on a suspenseful note that pushes us to download “just one more episode.”

Over two thousand years ago, the author of Mark’s Gospel understood something about cliff-hanger conclusions, as well. Matthew, Luke, and John give us smooth and happy endings to the crucifixion story: In these three Gospels, Jesus himself appears to the women in the garden. He commissions the disciples. He serves them breakfast on the beach. He ascends in glory into heaven. But the original ending to Mark’s Gospel (the ending that we heard today) leaves us with loose ends. We get an empty tomb and women who flee in “terror and amazement,” too afraid to speak of what they have seen and heard. In Mark, the horror of Jesus’ death so completely fills the hearts and minds of the women that they can’t fathom resurrection. They don’t remember that Jesus told them that he would rise again. They don’t remember his teaching or his power. They are simply afraid—and they run. Just like you and me. We are left wondering what will happen. Will they tell the other disciples? What will they say?

This jagged, suspenseful ending to Mark makes me want to holler at the Bible just like I do at my TV set when it’s time for bed. “Noooo ….We can’t stop here!” Easter isn’t supposed to end with fear and disbelief! I want the happy Easter ending! I don’t want to be stuck with fear and human failure! Somebody fix this, please! Tie up these loose ends!”

And throughout Christian history, that’s exactly what scholars and scribes have tried to do. In our Bible, Mark’s Gospel has not just one, but two, extra conclusions that ancient scholars tacked on to the original cliff-hanger ending. More recent scholars offer all kinds of speculation as to why Mark might have left us with fear and silence: Maybe Mark was arrested as he was writing the final lines, they wonder. Maybe the surviving manuscripts were torn? Maybe the complete ending got lost? But all of us binge-watching Netflix users know the real reason why Mark ends with the women fleeing in fear: It’s because the author wants us to rush back into the story, thirsty for more, searching for what’s going to happen next.

Without a Netflix button to push or another episode to watch, we are forced by Mark’s unfinished ending to return to the story the only way we know how: by turning back to the beginning and reading it again … and again … and again. Mark wants us to read it until Jesus’ story becomes our story, until we begin to see our lives through its lens. He wants me to see myself in Galilee, back at home with the risen Jesus. Galilee is “home.” It’s my everyday reality. My neighborhood. My parish. My family. Jesus wants me to add the frightened women and the clueless disciples to my daily life, just like I added those characters from “Outlander.” Jesus wants me to incorporate the morning news about fires and floods and shootings with the stories of Jesus’ miracles and compassionate healings. He wants me to mix today’s news along with Jesus’ death on a cross and his empty tomb. He wants my world to echo with the mysterious words, “He has been raised.”

 Mark wants me to stop and ponder my world, unable fully to separate my story from God’s victory. He wants me to stop and wonder: “Wait, is this latest ugliness that I see around me all that there is? Or is God creating beauty underneath it somewhere?” “Wait, do I have to solve this problem by myself? Or is this situation in God’s loving hands?” “Wait, am I really alone here in my suffering? Or is Jesus with me?” That moment of hesitation is often all that it takes to open my life to God's transforming Spirit.

The resurrection isn’t some theological doctrine that we can chart out on a piece of paper. It’s not something that happened in order to teach us some lesson about God, or even about humankind. It is an ongoing reality, a way of life. Rowan Williams call it “the recreating of a relationship of trust and love on the far side [of death and suffering.]”[1] Today’s Gospel invites us to do more than “celebrate Easter.” It invites us to live Easter, with Jesus at our side.

Today, Jesus is alive, surrounding us with his presence here in our Galilee, waiting for us to decide whether we are going to proclaim him, not just with our words, but in our lives. The Story that we’re invited to enter is more scandalous than anything that Hollywood screenwriters can dig up. It’s more alluring than any mere human drama. It’s full of the sadness that we know so well. But it’s also full of the strange divine light that warms and intrigues us. The Easter Story dangles before us the biggest cliff-hanger ever: What is the role that I’ll be called to play? And the best yet ….? There's no need to fight the urge to push “start” just one more time.

“He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

Go! The next season belongs to you! I can’t wait!

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[1] Rowan Williams, Choose Life (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 205.

Hosanna: Lord have Mercy

At what moment does the joy turn into sorrow? In what instant does the certainty disintegrate into chaos? One minute we run into the store to buy ice cream; the next minute we try to outrun a spray of bullets. One moment we are holding our loved one in our arms, and the next moment he or she is gone. One minute we are celebrating the relief of our second vaccine; then, before we know it, we are lamenting ten senseless deaths. One moment, we are holding joy like an ornament of glistening glass; the next moment, we are cutting our feet on its broken shards. One moment, the crowds are hailing Jesus as their Savior, and the next moment they are shouting, “Crucify him!” One minute we are waving our palms, praising God’s Glory; and the next minute, we hang our heads and cry, “Lord, have mercy.” One moment we are taking bread from Jesus’ hands, and the next moment we are betraying him for thirty pieces of silver. Palm Sunday, like no other time in our liturgical year, opens to us the infinitesimal space between joy and sorrow, between jubilation and loss. It pulls us into the same strange space into which we are pulled by our own lives.

Why do we, who know that Jesus will once again be victorious on Easter Sunday, need to act out every year the ups and downs of Palm Sunday?  Because in our lives, it’s impossible to practice tragedy before it rips us in two. There is no dress rehearsal for disaster. We can’t practice our own deaths or the deaths of loved ones. To try is merely to miss out on living. But Jesus’ suffering and victory—his death as well as his resurrection—have been given to us. They are ours, just as, in Christ, our sufferings are now God’s. Just as Paul assures the Philippians in today’s epistle: we now share the “mind of Christ.” When we follow him, year after year, to his death and resurrection in Jerusalem, we can learn the treacherous road from joy to sorrow and back again. We can practice being poured out--emptied and then exalted—along Christ’s Way of Love. This practice can anchor us in hope.

Several years ago, I looked up the meaning of the word “Hosanna” so that I could tell the young children in Junior Choir what on earth they were singing. I was surprised to learn that it’s an Aramaic expression that once meant, “Lord, save us!” Even by Jesus’ day, though, it took on a second layer of meaning. It also meant, “Lord, we praise you!”

“Hosanna,” we cry, in our despair and loss. “Hosanna,” we shout, when we are victorious.

“Hosanna,” we cry, when all other words have melted into tears. “Hosanna,” we cry, when God’s strength surrounds us.

In one sustaining breath, Hosanna spans the unfathomable gap between joy and sorrow. In Christ, joy and sorrow are both part of the same song, our cry to the God who never leaves us. We who sorrow so deeply this week, we are invited to practice walking behind a Lord who will turn mourning into dancing, who will remove sackcloth and clothe us with joy. Hosanna, blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord! Save us, and help us, O God.