“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ” (Mark 1.1).
As Easter season comes to its close, we stand at the edge of another, this one long that’ll stretch from until December. The summer sun will hang long in the sky for broiling, humid months while we hope for enough rain to keep the grass and trees green, tamp down the dust. Eventually, fall will come and the days will, again, cool; though, it’ll likely take it longer than it used to before it feels like summer is over. And we’re wondering what might come in these months ahead of us: good things, bad things.
That’s the thing about endings and beginnings: they carry possibilities and hopes as well as dangers and fears. What lies ahead is uncertain, and that’s sometimes exciting and other times exhausting. It’s like waking on the morning of a trip: we may have the time of our lives, or the plane might be delayed, the reservations lost, and our luggage landing in a different city.
All season we have explored the Gospel according to Mark’s abrupt ending. It’s an ending that differs from the three other accounts in that there are no post-Resurrection appearances, nor does Jesus speak with anyone. The story fades to conclusion as we stare at an empty and silent tomb.
The mark of a really good story is that its beginning foreshadows its ending. We find that here. From the outset, the author gives us a clear sense of where we’re headed and where we’ll end up. Because, this is a beginning.
Read those words above that stand at verse one, chapter one again. This isn’t a full, complete account. There’s no declaration that this is the definitive narrative of the Good News. It’s a beginning. And not only these first verses or the first chapter, but the whole thing. All of it, all sixteen chapters is meant as a beginning, a start to something new. Something about which no one can know or predict the ending.
In light of these words, is it any wonder it would end the way it does? If it is only the beginning, how else could it close? Why would you expect anything except unresolved questions and a sense that this story isn’t really over.
And it stands before us here, as one season closes and the season after Pentecost stands ready to begin. It’s a moment when we still have things we don’t understand, when there is silence from someone we really need to speak, when we can’t tell if the horizon promises only rain or a storm. It’s the moment we find ourselves standing there, with the stone rolled back and the place Jesus is supposed to be is empty.
It’s when we have to decide whether to run away, or continue on.
Holy One, as a new season approaches, help us live as though anything is possible, and to move toward it, startled maybe but unafraid.