The End is Near

The End is Near

Mark 10:32-34

April 10, 2020 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

I am an avid reader, and if you are friends with me on GoodReads, you might notice that I put away a lot of pages in any given year. For me, two of the best feelings in the world are starting a new book and finishing one I’ve been working on for a while. There is a lot of satisfaction in reading that last paragraph, though I will admit that sometimes, when I know I’m near the end, I flip over to the last page to get some idea of how it might end. If someone else spoils it for me, I’m not very happy with them, but if I spoil it for myself, that’s a different story.

Friends, we are near the end of the story; the end is near, as they say, and every year the temptation is to jump to the real ending. We want to skip over this day and go straight to Easter because it just feels better. Good Friday is hard in any year, even moreso this year when we can’t walk through it together in person. But on any year, Good Friday is about death and darkness and what seems like a brutal ending. It seems like everything Jesus did to behave badly according to the religious and political leaders of the day has now come back to bite him. His behavior and his outspokenness have gotten him in the ultimate trouble. On this day, Jesus dies, and it seems like it’s the end. In fact, people often believe it is. Dr. Tim Tennent, president of Asbury Seminary, tells about taking The Jesus Film to India. Now, in India, movies are a big deal, but initially The Jesus Film, the popular evangelistic movie, had trouble catching on there, and do you know why? Because in every popular Indian movie, there is a big dance scene. It’s a cliche because it’s the truth. Jesus’ life story, however, doesn’t include dancing, so in order to capture the attention of the Indian audience, they added a dance scene. Anyway, Dr. Tennent tells about watching the movie with a large audience, and they listened to Jesus teach, they watched him heal people—yes, they loved the dance scene—and they paid close attention when he was crucified. And when he died, the crowd began to get up and leave. I mean, the film was called The Jesus Film and now Jesus was dead. What more could there be to the story? It was too bad that he had failed, but obviously the story was over (cf. Moore, Supernatural Video Series, Session 1).

That’s sort of how the disciples and the friends of Jesus must have felt at the end of this day. When the sun had set, Jesus’ body was lifeless and lying in a borrowed tomb. There was nothing to do but to go back to the borrowed room they were staying in and wait for the Sabbath to be over. And because I wonder such things, I wonder what they talked about during that time. I mean, from sunset until Sunday morning, they were a lot like we’ve been these last couple of weeks: on lockdown. Sabbath rules meant you couldn’t work, you couldn’t travel, you couldn’t cook, nothing was open—basically, you had to stay home because there was nothing else to do. The rules enforced the “rest” aspect of the Sabbath. So from Friday night, when Jesus was laid in a tomb, until Sunday morning when it was once again light out and you could be out and about, the disciples and the friends of Jesus had nothing to do but mourn his death and remember his life. What do you suppose they talked about that night?

Well, of course I don’t know exactly, but I have some guesses, some speculation. If they slept, it was probably out of sheer exhaustion. The last day—really, the last week had been nonstop and full of confusion. If they were honest, they would have to admit that the last three years had been full of confusion. I wonder if, on this night, they remembered some of the things Jesus had taught and if they constantly asked each other, “Did you understand that?” I mean, you know that thing he said about plucking your eye out? What was that all about? Or what about the time he told us we had to become like a child if we wanted to be in his kingdom? And as those conversations usually go, I picture each person trying to outdo the other with a more outlandish thing Jesus had said. To be fair, he gave them plenty of material. When he called the disciples, he told them they were going to fish for people. Talk about your mixed metaphors! Then another time he said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). That flew in the face of what their leaders told them! Or there was that time he rejected his own family and said his brothers and sisters were really whoever did God’s will. Yeah, that had not gone over well, especially with Mary! And remember the time when they had gone to the home of a synagogue leader? His daughter had died, but Jesus said she was just asleep (Mark 5:39). There’s a reason the rest of the family laughed at him; the girl was not breathing, her color had changed, she was clearly dead. Until she wasn’t. Jesus raised her. Crazy stuff that they still didn’t have an explanation for. I would imagine they could have filled up most of the night talking about all the things Jesus said and did that they just didn’t understand. They didn’t understand it then, and they still didn’t understand it now. And, of course, of all the things he did that they didn’t understand, at the top of that list would be what had happened today. Why did he allow himself to be crucified? Couldn’t he have stopped it?

After some silence, I picture one of the disciples speaking up and asking something like, “Hey, how would you sum it all up?” After getting some quizzical looks, he might have said, “I mean, Jesus. How would you sum him up? We’re going to go home after this Sabbath and people are going to want to know what we’ve been up to these last three years. What are we going to tell them?” And after some more silence, I think it would have been Peter who spoke up. “He told us what he was all about in his very first sermon. Do you remember it?” As if anyone remembers sermons! But Jesus’ first sermon was short and to the point: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). “Don’t you see?” Peter may have said. “Jesus’ unmistakable focus was on the kingdom of God, not an earthly kingdom. I don’t know how we could have gotten that so wrong.” In fairness to them, though, the whole nation of Israel was focused on re-establishing an earthly kingdom. They wanted a Messiah who would rule, not one who would die. They wanted a kingdom they could taste, touch and see, not one that was invisible. They wanted a kingdom of power and prestige, not one of servanthood. They—and everyone else around them—wanted a kingdom that would benefit them; they couldn’t even envision the kingdom Jesus came to bring, one where the mourners are comforted, the merciful are blessed and the meek will inherit the earth (cf. Matthew 5:3-12). Though they hadn’t figured it out on this night, I wonder if they could at least all agree that Jesus’ central focus had always been the kingdom of God. There was never really anything else on his mind. And they had to wonder if they could have that same sort of singular focus in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

As that sinks in, I picture one of them, maybe the youngest, usually thought to be John, piping up and asking, “Do you think it was all a mistake? The last couple of days, I mean. Do you think Jesus made a mistake in coming to Jerusalem, in getting arrested? Do you really think he intended to die?” And their thoughts would drift back to the several times when Jesus had told them exactly what would happen to him in Jerusalem. Not that long ago, on their way here, he had told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him” (10:33-34). Well, that had certainly happened, just like he said it would. They couldn’t escape what seems obvious: this was not a mistake. Jesus knew this was coming. In fact, it seemed as if Jesus maneuvered himself so that it would happen. He intentionally did things to make certain people angry. There were some people who had been trying to get rid of him from the beginning, but he had never done so many things in such a short amount of time to turn everyone against him. It had been so intense that during his trial, when Peter was hanging out in the courtyard outside the house, Peter had said he didn’t know Jesus (cf. Matthew 26:69-75). And he didn’t. He didn’t recognize Jesus anymore. Jesus was doing things and saying things that put him at odds with everyone. Peter didn’t know who he was, none of them did—that was true. No, while what had happened was bad, it wasn’t a mistake, at least not on Jesus’ part. He knew what he was doing and he knew what would happen. He allowed himself to be killed, to be crucified.

And, strangest thing of all, he seemed to think he was doing it for them. Now that the end had come, they couldn’t help but wonder what his death—his violent, bloody death—on a cross could do for them. When Sunday came—and that seemed a long way off on this night—they would go and finish the burial that had been interrupted by the arrival of the Sabbath, and then they would figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. It had been a great three years, wandering around with Jesus, but it was over. No one was going to listen to any of them; they couldn’t teach and preach like Jesus had. But going back to fishing wasn’t all that interesting after all they had been through. The end had come, for Jesus, for them. What had he thought he was doing? Why was he up on that cross? Why was he now in that tomb?

It is an amazing and somewhat disturbing thing we celebrate and remember tonight. Early on in the Christian faith, no one would have put a cross up in a public building or used it as a symbol of the faith. The cross was a grotesque tool of Roman execution, Roman oppression. Archaeologists have discovered early churches decorated with fishes, doves, anchors and ships, but not crosses. Crucifixion was for criminals and rebels, not rabbis and not faithful religious people. It wasn’t until the fourth century, when Emperor Constantine had a vision of a cross and heard the words, “Conquer in this,” that the cross became a symbol of the faith (cf. Fuquay, The Passion Play, pgs. 102-105). And yet, as those who have inherited this symbol, we know of the power of the cross—well, not the cross itself, but the power of what happened on that cross. Somehow, in some way we can’t begin to really explain, Jesus died on the cross so that we could live. He took our place when we deserved death and when we trust in him, we find life. What was he doing on the cross? He was dying so that we don’t have to.

I love the story of Chris, an at-risk student who was receiving tutoring from a volunteer from a local church. One day, when the volunteer showed up, she was told Chris had had a bad day. He’d been causing a lot of trouble that day, so the volunteer asked him what was wrong. He didn’t respond, so she persisted. “Chris, you have so much ability. I believe in you, but you have to let me help you. What do you need?” Chris looked up and said, “I need a tee.” The volunteer was confused. “A tee?” she said. “What do you mean?” “You know, a tee. Like that,” Chris said, pointing at her necklace—her cross necklace. Chris associated the love and support he had been given, the path to a better way of life, with the “tee” that the volunteers who came to his school all wore (Fuquay 77). He saw the power of the cross even without knowing what it was or what it meant. What Jesus is doing on that cross is changing life for all who will believe, all who will follow. What Jesus is doing on that cross is rightly called his “passion,” because it’s out of his love that he offers to change your life—for now and for eternity.

Yes, the end of the story is near—but it’s not over yet. No matter what the disciples in the borrowed room thought that night, the story had only just begun. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing that day. He was changing the world. He was saving the world. And all it cost him was his life.