Further thoughts on prophecy and Jeremiah Wright

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The discussion with Daniel C. in the comments on the previous post started me thinking. The biblical prophets laid their lives on the line time after time after time because when the kings and other powerful people of their land were unrighteous, they confronted the wicked with the righteous anger of God, to their face, in the sharpest possible terms. One of the reasons I disparaged (in my old Presbyweb piece) the claims of Presbyterian liberals to be speaking prophetically is that there was no risk involved—they were merely aligning themselves with one group of powerful people against another in an interparty dispute, saying things which had been said many times before.

The same surely cannot be said of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Any government which would turn biochemical weapons against a group of its own citizens and plan atrocities to justify policy decisions—for such and no less is what he has alleged—would never allow anyone who exposed its activities to live, at least without divine intervention. These are the sorts of things, if true, that one might expect God to reveal to one of his prophets. If the Rev. Dr. Wright’s accusations are in fact prophetic revelations from God, then they’re justified. If not, then he’s a false prophet. Given that we know how AIDS entered this country, courtesy of Randy Shilts (who bears particular responsibility for publicizing the story of Gaëtan Dugas, the French-Canadian flight attendant who was one of those who brought the virus here from Africa), I’d say that test doesn’t look too good for Sen. Obama’s pastor.

At first blush, he would seem to look better on the test of boldness; certainly he pulls no punches in his language. Where he fails, however, is in his location. Jonah went (under protest, of course) to Nineveh; Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos and many others went into the court of the king. True prophets, when they have a condemnation to announce, do so in the presence of the one whom they are condemning, setting aside all earthly safety, trusting God to get them out. (Or not, as the case may be; tradition has it that Manasseh had Isaiah sawed in half inside a hollow log.) Put another way, true prophets speak to “us.” The Rev. Dr. Wright, by contrast, denounced “them.” He failed the test.

There’s a deeper significance to this as well: denouncing “them” tells “us” that “we” are free to believe what we want to believe, both about ourselves and about “them”—and that’s not something God’s prophets do. Judgment begins in the house of God, and so that’s where his prophets begin: by challenging and rebuking us. Before they let us pronounce the judgment of God on our enemies, they call us to pronounce it on ourselves—to fall to our knees in repentance for our sin and to rise in humble awareness of our fallenness, and our desperate need for grace. In so doing, they bring us to a place where we would be just as happy to see the repentance of our enemies as their obliteration.

The problem with self-anointed prophets is they don’t stand in that place, because they don’t have that humility. As I wrote in 2005, to folks like that,

the rest of the world divides into two camps: the righteous (those who agree with me) and the unrighteous (those who don’t), which leaves only the question, “What fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial?” There in a nutshell is the state of things . . . for too many folks, the presence of people who disagree with us, instead of serving as an opportunity for learning and self-correction, merely hardens us in our own positions, because “we” are light and “they” are darkness. This wouldn’t be a problem for someone whose life and beliefs were already 100% in accordance with the will of God, but that isn’t any of us; we all have areas where we need to grow, and beliefs (sometimes cherished ones) which are simply wrong, and we can’t afford to set those in stone. . . . [We] need to set aside this self-aggrandizing nonsense that we’re speaking “prophetically,” which sets us above those with whom we disagree, and learn instead to approach them in a spirit of humility and grace. Our motives and vision just aren’t pure enough to justify doing things any other way.

Speaking prophetically

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Three summers ago, in a burst of irritation at a few of my colleagues in the Presbytery of Denver, I wrote a Viewpoint article in Presbyweb titled, “Speaking Prophetically.” (If you’re not a subscriber to Presbyweb, you can also find the piece here.) At the time, I had had it up to my (receding) hairline with liberals claiming the “prophetic” mantle for what was, essentially, leftist boilerplate with a garnish of Christianese, and I felt the need to fire back. I wasn’t exactly stunned to find that no one changed their ways in response to my objection, but at least it made me feel better.Still, people haven’t changed their ways, and it does continue to irritate. The whole flap over the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., though, takes the whole thing to a new and truly egregious level. More than a few writers have attempted to defend and excuse the Rev. Dr. Wright by calling him “prophetic,” and situating him in a supposed prophetic tradition in line with the likes of Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diana Butler Bass, in her post on Jim Wallis’ “God’s Politics” group blog, is typical:

Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining “ease in Zion” while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression. . . .As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright’s “radical” sermons today, I do not hear the words of a “dangerous” preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.

There are two problems with that—what we might call the historical and the theological problem. The historical problem is that the equation Jeremiah Wright = Frederick Douglass presumes another equation: 2008 America = 1858 America. It presumes that our country hasn’t changed at all in 150 years. And that just isn’t true. We are, no question, still an imperfect country—but on matters of skin color, however far we have yet to go, we’ve come a long way.The theological problem here is what concerns me more, however, because Dr. Bass’ idea of the gospel is really screwy at this point. When the Rev. Dr. Wright declaims, “God damn America! That’s in the Bible!” he’s right as Dr. Bass is right to point us to the fact, as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus also notes, that “Biblical prophets called down the judgment of God on their people,” and often in harsher terms than those used at Trinity UCC. But there is a profound, a deep and profound, difference between what he was saying and authentic biblical prophetic language. As Fr. Neuhaus continues,

They invoked such judgment in order to call the people to repentance. They spoke so harshly because they had such a high and loving estimate of a divine election betrayed. The Reverend Wright—in starkest contrast to, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr., whose death we mark next week—was not calling for America to live up to its high promise. He was pronouncing God’s judgment on a nation whose original and actual sins of racism are beyond compassion, repentance, or forgiveness. He apparently relishes the prospect of America’s damnation.

That is the key point that every other commentator I’ve seen has missed; that’s the point at which the Rev. Dr. Wright’s message unequivocally ceases to be gospel, indeed ceases to be in any real sense Christian, and becomes something else altogether—something very, very ugly. There was a discussion on The Thinklings a while back about the imprecatory psalms, where David and the other psalmists similarly aim harsh, violent language at their enemies; these are psalms not often read in most churches. As one of the commenters pointed out, however (probably Alan), there’s an interesting feature to most of these psalms: when David prays that God would destroy his enemies, he prays that God would do so either by slaughtering them or by bringing them to repentance. It’s that either/or that brings this sort of bitter prayer within the compass of a Jewish/Christian understanding of God. Without it, it’s nothing more than a pagan cry for vengeance.In light of that, I pray that someone who has pull with the Rev. Dr. Wright—perhaps Sen. Obama, who I can’t help thinking should have done this years ago—will draw him aside and call his attention to a couple passages from the Book he was supposed to be preaching from all these years:You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.—Matthew 5:38-48 (ESV)Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.—Ephesians 6:10-12 (ESV)

Bumper-sticker philosophy

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Driving in to church this evening for the Wednesday night stuff, I ended up behind a car (briefly) with a bumper sticker that read, “Question everything.” I thought, “Really? Everything? Does that include questioning questioning everything? Why question everything? Question it how? On what grounds? And if you question everything, what sort of answer should you expect to get?”

I was of course partly being snarky (to myself); but I do wonder, does that person really mean it? What would they think if you started questioning science? “Are you sure the theory behind the internal-combustion engine in your car is sound? Why should you trust that gravity will hold your tires on the road? Can you be certain that turning the wheel actually makes the car turn? On a different note, why do you believe in the theory of evolution? Is there really the evidence to support it? Can you be sure that the people who support it aren’t doing so from ulterior motives?” And so on, and so forth . . .

Then too, I saw recently, I don’t remember where, that someone (Richard Dawkins?) had propounded a set of “Ten Commandments for Atheists.” Leaving quite aside the question of why atheists would support having commandments in the first place, one of them was, “Question everything”; and yet, I know they don’t mean that, because on the evidence, they certainly don’t believe one should be commanded to question atheism. At least, Dr. Dawkins and his ilk tend to respond pretty sharply to those who do.

The truth of the matter is, no one ever means anything like “Question everything”; even René Descartes, who came the closest, didn’t get that far (nor, I think, did he want to). Most people, when they say “Question everything,” really mean something like this: “Let me question everything you believe that I don’t want to believe in, and let what I want to believe right alone.” Saying that would be far more honest; somehow, though, it doesn’t have quite the same ring.

OK, so maybe I’m a sucker

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and maybe at heart I’m still the ten-year-old who thought The Lord of the Rings was the best thing he’d ever read (there still isn’t much that tops it) and that nobody was cooler than his Dad, except maybe for the people his Dad admired; and certainly, once a Navy brat, always a Navy brat, and there’s no denying the effect growing up Navy has had on who I am. Whatever you want to make of it, this gets me every time:

I’ve said before that I have long had reservations about John McCain politically; based on the candidates’ positions, he was no more than my third choice in this race. I also have to say, though, that about John McCain the person, though he’s far from perfect, I admire him tremendously. Certainly Barack Obama has proven he can inspire people with his rhetorical gifts (much missed in recent American politics) and the vision he paints (though time will tell what his association with the Rev. Dr. Wright and his race speech has done to the potency of that vision); but I believe Sen. McCain is equally capable of inspiring our country with the ideals he upholds—and the way he has lived out those ideals in the service of his country—and the power of his expression. Maybe a few policy disagreements are a small price to pay for that.

Are we really this easy to play?

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Check this out—my thanks to Jared for posting this.

Jared’s right, that’s freaky; it’s also a little scary to think that we can be manipulated that easily. I like to believe I can think for myself—but this makes me wonder what influences are shaping my thought processes without my being aware of them. (And everyone else’s, for that matter.)

Pray for Zimbabwe; please, pray for Zimbabwe

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One of the deep joys of my years in Colorado was the time I spent as a member of the Partnership Committee of the Partnership of Zimbabwe and Denver Presbyteries. The Presbytery of Denver had ended up involved in ministry in Zimbabwe through the work of a couple in one of its churches, and decided in consequence to establish and build a presbytery-to-presbytery relationship with the Presbytery of Zimbabwe, which is part of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa (UPCSA). I was never able to travel to Zimbabwe (though I would have been offered the chance if we hadn’t been leaving), which I regret, but I did have opportunities to meet a few of our partners on their visits to Colorado, and there are a couple whom I consider dearly-loved friends.

Which is why my heart breaks, and has been breaking, for the country of Zimbabwe. I could give you a long list of links about what Robert Mugabe has done to his nation over the last eight years—he was a good leader before that, as long as people kept voting for him, but once the voters began to tire of him, he turned on them; whether he rules well or ill, all that matters to him is keeping power—but I think Peter Godwin summed up the story well enough in the Los Angeles Times, at least for starters. Godwin, who dubbed Mugabe “Zimbabwe’s Ahab,” knows whereof he speaks, as a native Zimbabwean; he’s written several books, including the memoirs Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, and still laments what was lost.

The presidential election is this Saturday, and there are those who have hope that maybe this time, the opposition and the international community will prevail, and the election will bring about the end of the Mugabe government. Please pray that it is so, and with a minimum of bloodshed. Please pray for the peace of Zimbabwe.

Revelation 7 multiculturalism

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One of the more interestingly problematic characters in contemporary SF is John Ringo. As the blogger over at Aliens in This World put it, “John Ringo is an odd bird, even by comparison to the normal oddness of science fiction writers. Ringo can write really really good, bad, and creepily-unwholesome-I-need-a-shower books. Often inside the same cover.” That captures it quite well, I think—particularly the way Ringo so often juxtaposes things I really appreciate with things I really don’t. He has in some ways a very perceptive eye, but a deeply flawed worldview underlying it, which makes him one of the few people I’ve run across (along with Ann Coulter) who can articulate conservative conclusions in such a way as to make me react like a liberal. This all is probably why the only books of Ringo’s I really like are the Prince Roger/Empire of Man series he’s co-writing with David Weber. (IMHO, they fill in each other’s weaknesses quite nicely.)As I say, though, he does have a good eye, and little tolerance for nonsense (he’d use a much more pungent word there, of course, having a rather rough tongue), virtues which are often promiscuously on display in his work—along with his pronounced animus against received pieties of any kind. That animus can color and distort his perception, but at times, it can also inform and strengthen it; when it does, the attacks he unleashes can be devastating.One good example comes from the fifth chapter of his latest project, a novel titled The Last Centurion, in which he takes a swing at multiculturalism. The novel is set in the future, but the examples on which he draws are from this decade, including this one:

Group in one of the most pre-Plague diverse neighborhoods in the U.S. wanted to build a play-area for their kids in the local park. They’d established a “multicultural neighborhood committee” of “the entire rainbow.” . . . There were, indeed, little brown brothers and yellow and black. But . . . Sikhs and Moslems can barely bring themselves to spit on each other much less work side by side singing “Kumbaya.” . . .The Hindus were willing to contribute some suggestions and a little money, but the other Hindus would have to do the work. What other Hindus? Oh, those people. And they would have to hand the money to the kumbaya guys both because handing it to the other Hindus would be defiling and because, of course, it would just disappear. . . .When they actually got to work, finally, there were some little black brothers helping. Then a different group of little black brothers turned out and sat on the sidelines shouting suggestions until the first group left. Then the “help” left as well. Christian animists might soil their hands for a community project but not if they’re getting [flak] from Islamics.

Now, maybe that sounds unfair to you; but if so, check out this piece (among others) by Theodore Dalrymple, based on his extensive experience working as a doctor in one of Britain’s immigrant slums. I won’t cite any of his stories—you can read them yourself; be warned, they aren’t pleasant—but I can tell you the conclusion to which they’ve led him:

Not all cultural values are compatible or can be reconciled by the enunciation of platitudes. The idea that we can all rub along together, without the law having to discriminate in favor of one set of cultural values rather than another, is worse than merely false: it makes no sense whatever.

The problem here is the unexamined assumption that “the intolerance against which [multiculturalism] is supposedly the sovereign remedy is a characteristic only of the host society,” and thus that if those of us who belong to the dominant culture would just set aside our idea of our own superiority, then all the problems would go away. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. For one thing, this rests on the essentially racist assumption that all “those people who are different from us” are really all alike and thus all on the same side; but it ain’t necessarily so. To be sure, this assumption isn’t only made by white folks. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assumed that Hispanic immigrants would ally themselves with American blacks, and thus supported loosening immigration laws; Jesse Jackson assumed the same, which is why he proclaimed the “Rainbow Coalition.” As Stephen Malanga writes, though, it hasn’t worked out that way.More seriously, it isn’t only Western culture that is plagued by intolerance, hatred, violence, and other forms of human evil; other cultures have their own problems, too. As Dalrymple writes, “many aspects of the cultures which they are trying to preserve are incompatible not only with the mores of a liberal democracy but with its juridical and philosophical foundations. No amount of hand-wringing or euphemism can alter this fact.” Nor will any number of appeals to the better angels of our nature; human sin is a cross-cultural reality.Does this mean multiculturalism is hopeless? No, but it means it cannot be accomplished politically. If the divisions between people, and between groups of people, are to be healed, there must be another way; and by the grace of God, there is. It’s the way incarnated in the ministry of the Church of All Nations, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Minneapolis which is founded and pastored by the Rev. Jin S. Kim. It’s the way that says that our divisions cannot be erased by human effort, but only by the work of the Spirit of God—and that we as Christians have to be committed to giving ourselves to that work. We can’t make it happen, but we need to do our part to be open to God making it happen. This is the vision God has given us to live toward:“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders
and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne
and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”—Revelation 7:9-12 (ESV)

Untameable Christ, irreducible Easter

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There was a remarkable little essay in Slate last week on “Why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas”; I think the author, James Martin, overstates his case somewhat, since there are commercial traditions around the holiday (Easter baskets full of candy, Easter eggs and the kits they sell to dye them, all courtesy of the Easter bunny), but his point holds: Easter is still primarily a Christian holiday, not a “consumerist nightmare,” as he describes Christmas. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but there’s good reason for that—neither the crucifixion nor the Resurrection are commercial-friendly:

Despite the awesome theological implications (Christians believe that the infant lying in the manger is the son of God), the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum. How pleasant it is in mid-December to open a Christmas card with a pretty picture of Mary and Joseph gazing beatifically at their son, with the shepherds and the angels beaming in delight. The Christmas story, with its friendly resonances of marriage, family, babies, animals, angels, and—thanks to the wise men—gifts, is eminently marketable to popular culture. . . . The Easter story is relentlessly disconcerting and, in a way, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. No matter how much you try to water down its particulars, Easter retains some of the shock it had for those who first participated in the events during the first century. The man who spent the final three years of his life preaching a message of love and forgiveness (and, along the way, healing the sick and raising the dead) is betrayed by one of his closest friends, turned over to the representatives of a brutal occupying power, and is tortured, mocked, and executed in the manner that Rome reserved for the worst of its criminals. . . .Even the resurrection, the joyful end of the Easter story, resists domestication as it resists banalization. Unlike Christmas, it also resists a noncommittal response. . . . It’s hard for a non-Christian believer to say, “Yes, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead.” That’s not something you can believe without some serious ramifications: If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, this has profound implications for your spiritual and religious life—really, for your whole life. If you believe the story, then you believe that Jesus is God, or at least God’s son. What he says about the world and the way we live in that world then has a real claim on you. Easter is an event that demands a “yes” or a “no.” There is no “whatever.” . . . What does the world do with a person who has been raised from the dead? Christians have been meditating on that for two millenniums. [sic] But despite the eggs, the baskets, and the bunnies, one thing we haven’t been able to do is to tame that person, tame his message, and, moreover, tame what happened to him in Jerusalem all those years ago.

Amen.

Hymn for Easter

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Alleluia, Alleluia!Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts to heaven and voices raise:
Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise;
He who on the cross a victim for the world’s salvation bled—
Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, now is risen from the dead.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Death at last has met defeat:
See the ancient powers of evil in confusion and retreat;
Once he died, and once was buried: now he lives forever more,
Jesus Christ, the world’s Redeemer, whom we worship and adore.

Christ is risen, we are risen! Set your hearts on things above;
There in all the Father’s glory lives and reigns our King of love;
Hear the word of peace he brings us, see his wounded hands and side!
Now let every wrong be ended, every sin be crucified.

Alleluia, alleluia! Glory be to God on high:
Alleluia to the Savior who has gained the victory;
Alleluia to the Spirit, fount of love and sanctity!
Alleluia, alleluia to the Triune Majesty!Words: Christopher Wordsworth; vv. 2-3 alt. Jubilate Hymns
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, adapt. Edward Hodges
HYMN TO JOY, 8.7.8.7.D

Still Rolls the Stone

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(Psalm 117; Mark 16:1-8, Romans 6:1-11)

I saw a quote a while back from an older pastor, his spirit clearly broken, who had come to believe that funerals were the only worthwhile thing he did. He said, “The first couple I married is now divorced; the first person I led to Christ has left the church. But the first person I buried is still dead.” My first thought when I read that was, “How sad!” That’s someone who’s lost faith. There’s no resurrection there, no Easter hope, only the wisdom of the modern world: people die, and they stay dead, and that’s it. That’s why you see cars with the bumper sticker, “The one who dies with the most toys wins”—because what’s to play for except to make life as fun as you can while it lasts? That’s why you see T-shirts that say, “No one gets out of here alive,” or, “Life is a terminal condition.” For many people, the future fact of death overshadows the present fact of life, and anything that can be done to stave it off or deny its approach is worth doing.

However people choose to deal with death, most agree that it’s one of only two certain things in life: when someone’s dead, they’re dead, and that’s it. The great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton has one of his characters, a Prussian general, say this to explain why he had ordered the execution of a poet: “Highness, . . . he would be deified, but he would be dead. Whatever he means to do, he would never do it. Whatever he is doing, he would do no more. Death is the fact of all facts; and I am rather fond of facts.” And because it is the fact of all facts, the fact which can silence all other facts, it’s the fact to which tyrants and brutes have always resorted in order to keep the upper hand. If someone becomes too much of a problem, you can always kill them; and then whatever they are doing, they will do no more.

And so the Pharisees saw the crowds following Jesus, then looked at each other and said, “This isn’t doing any good—see, the whole world has gone after him.” But they had one more hammer to use; and a few days later, they and the chief priests had manipulated the Roman who ruled Israel into sentencing Jesus to death. Whatever Jesus meant to do, he would not do it; what he was doing, he would do no more. Death was the fact of all facts; and they were very fond of facts.

Along with that fact came a few more. Jesus was buried in a rich man’s tomb; the stone used to close that tomb was a giant disc, a great stone wheel, perhaps six feet across and a foot or two thick. Once the body was inside, the stone was rolled down into a slot in front of the door that held it firmly in place against the rock wall of the tomb. You can imagine the horrible grinding noise that must have made, a sound like the death of all hopes; you can imagine how that sound must have echoed in the ears of Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and the others gathered there, and how they must have felt it in their very souls, as if the stone were rolling within them, crushing their hearts.

Still, there was nothing to do but go on, somehow; and as Jesus’ burial had been hurried, his body had not been properly anointed, so that needed to be done. That was something they could still do for Jesus, small as it was. And so after sundown brought the Sabbath to an end, they went out and bought the spices, and early the next morning, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome went down to the tomb. They left home while it was still dark, so they could be sure to arrive at the tomb at first light. As they walked, they fretted about the stone; after all, it weighed thousands of pounds, and would have to be rolled uphill to get it out of the way, and it all seemed too much for them to do. Plus there were those Roman soldiers set around the mouth of the tomb, who might be willing to help, or—not . . . you never could tell with Romans.

When they got there, though, they found the stone already rolled away, and no one there except an angel sitting in the tomb. Mark doesn’t use the word “angel,” but that’s what he means; you can tell from the clothes that shone white in the dark tomb, and from the women’s reaction: they were terrified. We have this Victorian image of angels in the back of our minds, of pretty young men and women in soft focus with beautiful golden wings and gentle expressions on their faces, but real angels aren’t like that. God’s angels live in his presence, they’re saturated in his glory and his holiness, and when they show up undisguised, they radiate that glory; it’s as if a small sun suddenly started burning right here in this sanctuary. Their presence is stunning, blinding, awe-inspiring, overpowering . . . terrifying. God is not safe, he isn’t tame, he isn’t comfortable, and neither are his servants. That’s why the first thing angels always say is, “Don’t be afraid.”

If the angel’s appearance is staggering, however, that’s nothing compared to his message. He tells them, “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He’s been raised; he isn’t here. Look, there’s the place where they laid him. 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.” And how do the women respond? They run. They’re beside themselves with some crazy combination of fear, and joy, and disbelief, and awe; this is just too big, too much, too far beyond their experience for them to handle. Their emotions overwhelm them, and they run; they don’t know what else to do.

And here, Mark stops, creating incredible heartburn for generations of Christians, including the writer of the extended ending you have there in your Bibles. He doesn’t give us a resurrection appearance, he doesn’t show the women telling the disciples Jesus had risen, he doesn’t give us any of that; instead, he leaves us with the women running away in fear, saying nothing at all. Mark knows that they did in fact tell the disciples, that the word did get out; why doesn’t he tell that story, too? Why stop here?

It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems to me that this ending does something important: it drops the whole question in our laps. The other gospels end with Jesus appearing to his disciples and teaching them, and those accounts are important; but in wrapping up the story, bringing it to a conclusion, they allow us to stay outside it, if we choose. When Mark leaves us hanging, with no resolution, with the command to go tell the others still unfulfilled, it pulls us in and leaves us to finish the story. We don’t know, from Mark, what the women make of what has just happened to them, or what they’re going to do with it; as we wrestle with that fact, it brings us smack up against the question of what we make of it, what we’re going to do with it.

Which, for our lives, is the question that matters. I’ve known people who believed intellectually that the stone was rolled away and Jesus rose from the dead—they considered it to be the only historically plausible conclusion—but it didn’t matter to them; they saw it as just another odd historical fact that had nothing at all to do with their lives. And that’s not the Resurrection the Scriptures proclaim. Yes, they teach the Resurrection as an historical fact—Jesus physically died, then physically came back to life, got up, left the tomb, and went on about his work—but not only as an historical fact. It’s not just that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, but that the stone is still rolling; it’s not just that one man who was God came back from the dead, but that because he rose from the dead, so we, too, have risen from the dead and will rise from the dead.

The question is, do you believe that? Do you believe that this is your resurrection? Do you believe that in Jesus, you have risen from spiritual death to new life in Christ? Paul tells us that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death . . . so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” In other words, our old selves, enslaved to sin, under the power of death, died on the cross, and in Christ we have been given new life—his life—the life which triumphed over sin and broke the power of death. We are free from sin, free to live for God, free to be the people we were meant to be. Do you believe that? Do you live like your chains have been broken?

And do you believe that in Jesus, death is not the end? Do you know in your gut that just as you have risen from the dead spiritually, so you will rise from the dead physically? Yes, in this broken creation, on this marred earth, death is still a reality, and people who die do usually stay dead—yesterday when we buried my wife’s grandmother, it was something like the sixth funeral in her extended family in the last six months, and they’re all definitely still dead—but that’s not the end of the story, because Jesus Christ has shattered the power of death. As Paul says, “If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.” Death is only temporary. Funerals are only temporary. When Jesus returns, all his faithful ones who have died will be raised from the dead just as he was raised—in resurrection bodies, perfected bodies, free from sin and all its effects, free from the power of death, free from all the things that go wrong—and we will live with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth. “See,” Revelation 21 declares, “the home of God is among human beings. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

What matters is that we understand, not just that there was a resurrection in a tomb outside Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago, but that there is a resurrection for us. Yes, in this world, we suffer death, and pain, and grief, and loss, but there’s a new world coming; if you are in Christ, then you have the promise of God that pain doesn’t have the last word, sin doesn’t have the last word, grief doesn’t have the last word, loss doesn’t have the last word, even death itself doesn’t have the last word, because there is a resurrection. If your hopes have failed and your plans gone awry, there is a resurrection. If you’re grieving the death of someone you love, there is a resurrection. If you’re suffering, if you’re in pain, there is a resurrection. If you’re worn down and beaten down by guilt for something you’ve done, there is a resurrection. If you’re alone and lonely, there is a resurrection. If those you love have hurt you and let you down, there is a resurrection. Whatever this world has done to you, whatever is wrong in your life, take heart, for there is a resurrection. In Jesus’ death, we died; in his resurrection, we are risen; in his kingdom, we will live forever with him and with each other.