{"id":568,"date":"2012-08-19T11:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T16:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=568"},"modified":"2019-11-26T12:51:22","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T17:51:22","slug":"the-apocalyptic-cross-in-marks-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/08\/19\/the-apocalyptic-cross-in-marks-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apocalyptic Cross in Mark’s Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark 15:33-41<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Today is the next to last sermon in a series of sermons called \u201cApocalypse Then.\u201d\u00a0 You have been listening patiently for about a month and a half to sermons about the meaning of the apocalypse and apocalyptic texts.\u00a0 So today with this next to last sermon I can say definitively:\u00a0 \u201cthe end is near!\u201d<\/p>\n

Apocalypse then has been a series of sermons devoted to understanding what apocalyptic texts meant in their own day as a prelude to hearing what they might mean to us today.\u00a0 A series like this is needed because we live in a culture fascinated by the more lurid and spectacular features of apocalypses:\u00a0 the four horsemen of Revelation, rapture texts and being left behind, or the cosmic conflagration of Armageddon.\u00a0 What we have been uncovering here is that apocalypses have influenced a lot of New Testament literature:\u00a0 including Paul\u2019s letters and the gospels.\u00a0 In fact, to speak of Jesus as resurrected from the dead is already an apocalyptic claim.\u00a0 Over the last weeks, the series of sermons has helped us see past this spectacular facade to see how apocalyptic has affected the way we speak of good news.<\/p>\n

Last week I made the case that we need to think carefully not just about what apocalypses portray, but about what apocalypses do.\u00a0 Apocalypse comes from a Greek word meaning to reveal, to unveil.\u00a0 The proper focus of apocalypses, and of related apocalyptic writings, is to reveal something about God and God\u2019s purposes.\u00a0 In fact, what they reveal about God is usually disclosed as a way of gaining a transcendent perspective on some present difficulty or anomaly.\u00a0 It can be tempting to read the more spectacular features of apocalyptic writings and fixate on their more vivid characteristics:\u00a0 seven seals, the end of the world, or beasts with mysteriously numbered names.\u00a0 We miss the point spectacularly, however, when we do not get at the purposes of apocalyptic writings.\u00a0 That purpose goes deep:\u00a0 apocalypses do what they say, they reveal<\/em>\u2014and they reveal God amidst difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n

So today, with this sermon, we turn not to an apocalypse, but a writing profoundly influenced by apocalyptic way of thinking:\u00a0 Mark\u2019s gospel and the death of Jesus in chapter 15.\u00a0 I intend to recount the death of Jesus and highlight its apocalyptic character.\u00a0 Now this may seem counterintuitive.\u00a0 We usually associate the death of Jesus on the cross with Lent.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 death is about my<\/em> personal sin, my<\/em> guilt, and Jesus\u2019 heroic, sacrificial endurance of pain and torture for my<\/em> sake.\u00a0 For as long as we can remember, this Lenten orientation to Jesus\u2019 death has always been personal and had no trace of this cosmic end of the world stuff.\u00a0 The cross is Lent, and Jesus\u2019 death for me; but apocalypses\u2014well, they are something quite different.<\/p>\n

But as soon as we start looking closely at our text, Mark 15:33-41, Jesus\u2019 death does not really conform to expectations.\u00a0 And this is just as true today, as it was in the ancient world.\u00a0 In fact, Yale Prof. Adela Yarbro Collins helps us by comparing Jesus\u2019 death here to other kinds of death in the Greco-Roman world and in the religious orbit of early Judaism as well as the Christianity that emerged out of it.<\/p>\n

Prof. Collins points out that the Greco-Roman world placed much stock on stories of the noble death.\u00a0 The classic example is the death of Socrates.\u00a0 We may recall that the great philosopher ran afoul of the leaders of the city of Athens.\u00a0 Socrates was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth of the city.\u00a0 As a philosopher, Socrates intends to lead a consequential life.\u00a0 He had questioned openly the assumptions of his fellow citizens and invited them to open dialogue about the truth they claim to know.\u00a0 But having alienated them in the pursuit of that truth, he willingly accepts the verdict they give:\u00a0 Socrates should die.\u00a0 In a surprising scene where he rejects the option of exile, Socrates willingly drinks the hemlock that kills him\u2014and he does so in a way that freely and openly welcomes death in the presence of his students.\u00a0 The philosopher\u2019s death, accepted freely and willingly, becomes a type of \u201cnoble death\u201d in the ancient world.<\/p>\n

While not identical, there is an interesting parallel in early Judaism and emerging Christianity.\u00a0 In the centuries before Christ, there is the story of the Jewish Maccabees, who resist the Hellenizing tendencies of their context.\u00a0 When a certain Greek ruler named Antiochus Epiphanes demands that Jews give up certain Jewish dietary practices, the Maccabees become known for their resistance.\u00a0 One of the books of the Maccabees recalls the resistance of a mother and her seven sons, who are threatened with torture and loss of life if they fail to relinquish their ancient ways.\u00a0 The stories are graphic for their portrayal of torture, but what makes them remarkable is the nearly joyful way in which the successive members of this family hold to their faith in the face of the most awful treatment at the hands of their Greek overlords.\u00a0 Their martyrdom, their strong and joyful witness becomes a religious model for dealing with suffering and death.\u00a0 In death, they are virtuous examples.<\/p>\n

These summaries from Prof. Collins are helpful.\u00a0 They help us see ways in which people deal with death in the literature of the time.\u00a0 But the story of Jesus is so different.\u00a0 Mark does not recount Jesus\u2019 death as something like a Greek philosopher\u2019s noble death.\u00a0 In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus resolved to follow the Father\u2019s will\u2014a noble thing to be sure.\u00a0 Yet Jesus also prays in the Garden darkness that this cup pass from him.\u00a0 The night before his death, Jesus still hopes and prays for a different outcome than death\u2014it is in his eyes decisively unwelcome.\u00a0 As for Jesus\u2019 death itself, it is not the same as some serene philosopher\u2019s death either.\u00a0 Jesus cries out twice on the cross, the second time a wordless shout that marks his death.\u00a0 Jesus dies not with his disciples close by, but alone–the only ones of his supporters are women who are afraid even to stand close by (15:40).\u00a0 Whatever Jesus\u2019 death is in Mark 15, it is not the noble death of the philosopher.<\/p>\n

What may be more surprising is that Jesus\u2019 death in Mark is also not the same as the virtuous example of the martyr\u2019s death.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 death is not described like those of the Maccabean martyrs, or even the later Christian martyrs, who march to their deaths before the empire\u2019s torturers and executioners in confident faith for all to see.\u00a0 Again Jesus\u2019 death is marked by cries and shouts.\u00a0 The first cry is not a confession of faith, but a cry of abandonment to God:\u00a0 \u201cMy God, My God,\u201d Jesus cries,\u201d why have you forsaken me?\u201d\u00a0 Jesus dies not with words of trusting faith, but with desperate cries of being Godforsaken.\u00a0 Mark even underscores the point with his mention of the timing:\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 death on the cross is a relatively brief one.\u00a0 While crucifixion was a public, tortuous, slow asphyxiation on the cross, Jesus\u2019 death did not last for days as some victims\u2019 did.\u00a0 He dies surprisingly quickly.\u00a0 While Jesus did resolve to go through death in obedience to God\u2019s will, the mode of his death was not like the martyrs\u2019 virtuous examples.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Why would Mark describe Jesus\u2019 death in this way?\u00a0 Why would Mark portray Jesus death not as noble, but ignoble, scandalous?\u00a0 What is going on here at the cross?\u00a0 It is not the noble death of a philosopher.\u00a0 It is not the virtuous example of the martyr.\u00a0 Just what is Jesus\u2019 death about?<\/p>\n

In Mark, the cross is an apocalyptic moment.\u00a0 It is an occasion of apocalyptic revelation.\u00a0 We have seen how it works.\u00a0 Last week we looked at Jesus\u2019 baptism at the beginning of his gospel in Mark.\u00a0 In that text, Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan only to see the heavens ripped open; a heavenly dove, a cosmic symbol of God\u2019s brooding over the waters of creation; and a heavenly voice address Jesus:\u00a0 \u201cYou are my son, the beloved, in you I am well pleased\u201d (Mark 1:11).\u00a0 A heavenly tear, a cosmic symbol of creation, and a voice announcing God\u2019s Son made for an apocalyptic theophany in Mark 1.\u00a0 Now here, at the foot of the cross Mark describes the scene of Jesus death\u2014here the temple veil is ripped from top to bottom, the voice of the centurion acclaims Jesus as God\u2019s Son, and a cosmic symbol is given.\u00a0 As Jesus dies on the cross, from noon until 3, the whole world is cast in apocalyptic darkness.<\/p>\n

Mark wants us to understand.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 cross is no heroic death, no virtuous example of death; it is the apocalyptic turning of the ages\u2014an apocalyptic revelation of God.\u00a0 As Jesus dies on the cross, it is accompanied with a cosmic sign from the prophet Amos:<\/p>\n

On that day, says the Lord God,<\/em>
\n I will make the sun go down at\u00a0noon,<\/em>
\n and darken the earth in broad\u00a0daylight. <\/em>
\n I will turn your feasts into mourning,<\/em>
\n and all your songs into lamentation;\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

I will make it like the mourning for an only son,<\/em>
\n and the end of it like a bitter\u00a0day. (Amos 8:9-10a, c)<\/em><\/p>\n

In a cosmic, apocalyptic sign the world goes dark in the shadow of the cross.\u00a0 God\u2019s judgment appears, yes, but also creation\u2019s morning\u2014for an only son.\u00a0 This death of Jesus is not about nobility or virtue. \u00a0It is a paradoxical sign of the turning of the ages that reveals the depth of divine love precisely in human weakness.<\/p>\n

How did theologian Douglas John Hall put it?\u00a0 Again, I paraphrase:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God\u2019s revealing is simultaneously an unveiling and a veiling.\u00a0 God conceals Godself under the opposite of what both religion and reason imagine God to be, namely the Almighty, the majestic transcendent, the absolutely other\u2026. God\u2019s otherness\u2026is not to be found in God\u2019s absolute distance from us but in God\u2019s willed and costly proximity<\/strong> to us.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s gospel does not explain Jesus\u2019 death\u2014Mark is too concise and taciturn for that–but reveals God through Jesus\u2019 death in a strange apocalyptic theophany like Amos\u2019 Day of the Lord.\u00a0 It may be hard to wrap our heads around, but in this God-forsaken, tragic, ignoble death, a painfully human and fragile death\u2014God is there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Princeton\u2019s Clifton Black in his commentary on this text cites Nathan Glasser\u2019s Schocken Passover Haggadah<\/em>, where Glatzer describes these words found on a cellar\u2019s walls in Cologne, where Jews hid from Nazis<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.<\/em><\/p>\n

I believe in love even when feeling it not.<\/em><\/p>\n

I believe in God even when He is silent.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to Mark, Black says, \u201cso also did Jesus believe at the moment of his death.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 death is revealed, therefore, as of the \u201cold age.\u201d\u00a0 For three hours, darkness reigns on earth at noon.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 death is judgment, it is cosmic mourning, it is the final rage of creation gone awry.<\/p>\n

Then, when Jesus dies, the darkness has already receded.\u00a0 The temple veil rips as a sign of the boundary-breaking God\u2019s changed relationship with humanity.\u00a0 The centurion, the Roman centurion of all people, confesses faith.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s apocalyptic portrayal of the cross looks like this:\u00a0 whatever signs of newness, of God\u2019s intention to renew the world, emerge from the deep shadows of the incalculable revelation of the cross.<\/p>\n

That also means we need to put some of our traditional theologizing aside here.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s portrayal is not about satisfying an angry wrathful God.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s story is not about moral examples to be followed.\u00a0 It is not necessarily even about paying a ransom to the devil.\u00a0 Mark\u2019s recounting of the story is just too compact and lacking in sensationalism for any of that.\u00a0 Instead Jesus\u2019 death is the turning of the ages\u2014a revelation of God where God should not be: in the midst of death doing a new thing.<\/p>\n

The notion is counterintuitive, but a profound one at the heart of Christianity\u2019s cruciform faith.\u00a0 Theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it this way:\u00a0 \u201conly grief permits newness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s gospel of an apocalyptic cross is therefore not just an orientation to a past, but a costly opening to a future, a new age, that draws us in our lives forward even in death\u2019s deepest shadows.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his life in his Winter years, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was asked which of the many buildings he designed was his favorite.\u00a0 He said:\u00a0 \u201cthe next one.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may not seem like much, but a vision of the dawning new age empowers even in the midst of the deathly hold of the old order.\u00a0 It is a promise you can hold on to, even in all the darkness of the cross.<\/p>\n

In his book on the Christian funeral, Emory\u2019s Tom Long recalls an interesting practice of resistance among slaves in the 19th century.\u00a0 Long writes:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the time of slavery in the southern United States, slave owners were known to take Bibles away from slave preachers, fearful that the biblical message was stirring up insurrection.\u00a0 There are moving accounts of these preachers standing beside open graves and leading funerals, reciting Scripture from memory while holding open folded hands as if they were cradling a Bible.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It seems all we have is a promise and open hands.\u00a0 Yet I suspect Jesus would understand.\u00a0 When he cries out on the cross, he laments before God his being abandoned:\u00a0 \u201cMy God, My God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d\u00a0 The words he uses are the familiar words of Psalm 22.\u00a0 In that moment, we see Jesus sharing in the most radical, Godforsaken state of what it means to be a human being in the face of injustice, abandonment, and death.\u00a0 Yet as Adela Yarbro Collins points out, absolute despair is a retreat in silence.\u00a0Jesus shouts, yes, but he shouts to God.\u00a0 Jesus cries out, yes, but he cries out to God.\u00a0 Jesus speaks words of Godforsaken-ness on the cross, yes, but he speaks them to God.<\/p>\n

In doing so, his lament itself is a form of holding on to the promise.\u00a0 His complaint to God makes no sense unless he holds up the promise to God and asks:\u00a0 is it still good?\u00a0 Is it?\u00a0 The cry, the shout, the Godforsakenness all belong there\u2014because lament is the flipside of a life lived according to promise.<\/p>\n

In his book Meditations of the Heart<\/em>, BU\u2019s Howard Thurman expanded this idea even further to include human encounter with death as a whole.\u00a0 Thurman writes:<\/p>\n

…the glorious thing about man\u2019s encounter with death is that fact that what a man discovers about the meaning of life as he lives it, need not undergo any change as he meets death.\u00a0 It is a final tribute to the character of an individual\u2019s living if he can die \u201cunshriven\u201d but full-blown as he lived.\u00a0 Such a man goes down to his grave with a shout<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At Jesus\u2019 death, at his apocalyptic<\/em> death things are revealed as they really are.\u00a0 It is not about nobility or virtue.\u00a0 It is about the turning of the ages, the strange mysterious place that speaks from death and yet bears witness–shouting witness–to the promise.\u00a0 It is a strange, shadowy place\u2026of God\u2019s new creation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

~Rev. Dr. David Schasa Jacobsen<\/em><\/p>\n

Professor of Homiletics, Boston University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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