I am indebted to my son-in-law, the Rev. Frank Lyman, pastor of Lake Harbor United Methodist Church in Muskegon for my opening story. It seems that there was an unusual story on radio station WGN awhile back. A fellow sat down and ate 874 Walleye minnows at one sitting. That’s a lot of Walleye minnows! Why did he do such a strange thing? Because earlier in his life he had sat down and eaten 862 Walleye minnows and his accomplishment was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. So he set out to break his own world record - and he did! But he was disappointed when he sent in his new world record to the Guinness people. They told him that his new record would not be listed in the upcoming editions of the Guinness Book of World Records, nor will his old one. It seems that they have a new policy - from now on no records will be listed which might be considered hazardous to a person’s health!
I. THIS LAST SECTION OF MARK’S GOSPEL OUGHT TO HAVE A SIGN APPENDED TO IT: “THIS COULD BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.” These verses record one of the resurrection appearances of Jesus. But the Jesus we meet there seems strangely out of character. First he “upbraids” the disciples for their unbelief....(v. 14), and then He says: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”(Mark 16:15-18) This seems to be out of character for Jesus, because in Matthew He says: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”(Matthew 12:39)
Nevertheless, I believe that I have witnessed three out of these five “signs.” I believe that the casting out of demons is something quite different from the wild scenes in movies such as “The Exorcist”—and I have seen the demons of hatred, cruelty, racism, etc. cast out of people’s lives and persons become new creatures in Christ Jesus. Though I myself do not speak in “tongues” a number of fine people I know do, and I respect them, and am grateful that they respect me as well; and I know that sick folks do recover through the power of faith and prayer. That is why we have re-instituted an ancient service of communion, prayer, and healing in the Chapel on Wednesday nights. A number of us can testify to some extraordinary things taking place when we harness up the power of prayer with the best possible physical medicine. Some may call it coincidence, but I have discovered that when I pray I have more “coincidences,” than when I do not. But picking up serpents? Deliberately drinking poison? That’s downright scary...and sounds hazardous to one’s health.
Unfortunately, this odd ending to Mark has opened the door for all sorts of weird things: snake handling cults, for one thing. An article in “People” magazine I chanced to read in a doctor’s office awhile back told of a Saturday night service in a tiny clapboard church in West Virginia, where mountain folk dance and clap their hands, wail and gnash their teeth, and eventually pick up poisonous snakes and pass them around, and take a swig from a jar said to contain a mixture of water and strychnine. Then the worshipers set a kerosene cloth alight and hold their hands over the flames.(May 1, 1989, Vol.31, No. 17, p.79) One of the leaders points to Mark, chapter 16, verses 17 and 18 and says that he has been commanded to do all of these strange things because there it is, in the Bible. Why on earth would Jesus ever say such a strange thing...something which could well be hazardous to people’s health? The answer, I believe, is that JESUS NEVER SAID ANY SUCH THING.
II. In my Easter sermon I noted that SCHOLARS HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME THAT MARK’S GOSPEL IS CUT SHORT AT THE END OF VERSE 8. Verses 9-20 of Chapter 16 are simply not from the pen of St. Mark. Scholars know this for three reasons: (1.) They are not in our oldest and best manuscripts. Eusebius, the first great church historian, and St. Jerome, the greatest Biblical scholar of antiquity, both of whom lived in the 4th century, testified that the best Greek manuscripts they knew ended with the eighth verse. (2.) Their style is quite unlike Mark’s, and (3.) Their contents are obviously a patchwork, mostly drawn from Luke and Acts. What happened to the rest of the Gospel? The most probable answer is that the Gospel was accidentally mutilated by the end of the papyrus roll being torn off. This must have happened very early on, for neither Matthew nor Luke, who used Mark in the composition of their own Gospels seem to have known of the lost ending of Mark. Nobody knows what the lost ending may have contained, but it must have recorded one or more appearances of the risen Lord, for Mark alludes to the resurrection in the body of the Gospel. Throughout the Gospel there are hints that the writer intended to describe events after the resurrection. For example: Mark 14:28 looks forward to the account of at least one resurrection experience with Jesus. “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee,” He said. Mark knew about the resurrection even as he wrote his Gospel. One can imagine that he was eagerly looking forward to telling us more about it when he got to the end of the story. But his Gospel was never finished. The apparent incompleteness of this ending prompted early Christians to add either a short two-sentence ending which appears as a footnote in English versions, or (as in most manuscripts) a longer ending designated as Mark 16:9-20.
In heraldry it is not rare to find lions blazoned with two tails. The symbol for St. Mark is the lion, as anyone who has visited the Piazza de San Marco in Venice knows. The Lion of St. Mark is just such a two-tailed creature. Mark’s Gospel has (at least) two endings, and in a number of ancient manuscripts they appear side by side. If you have a Revised Standard Bible, the translators and publishers were courageous enough to note that the best manuscripts end at verse 8, and they put the two variant readings at the end for the sake of interest. Some even dare to leave these verses out altogether and put them in a footnote. I have editions that are printed both ways.
There is much in these last verses of Mark that seems strange. This “lost ending” tacked onto the Gospel has Jesus saying, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” (16:16) That sounds more like modern TV preachers than the Jesus of the Gospels. And there is nothing like it to be found in any of the other Gospels. It sounds much more like a theological development in the life of the church during its first centuries of existence. So: one conclusion is that the last verses of Mark are really a compilation of isolated events which occurred in the life of the early Christian community, and were tacked onto Mark in order to complete the story.
The so-called “lost ending” of the Gospel of Mark as it appears in our Bibles is different from the rest of the Gospels. One has only to read it to see the differences...even in the English versions. The literary style and vocabulary of the longer ending for Mark is so different that scholars conclude that it could not have been written by the Mark who wrote the rest of the Gospel. Then who wrote it? There have been a number of guesses hazarded by scholars over the years. For instance, in 1891 a scholar named F.C. Conybeare (really!) discovered in the Patriarchal Library of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Vatican of the Armenian Church, an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels written in A.D. 986, in which the last twelve verses are said to have been written by the hand of the Presbyter Aristion (no doubt the Aristion mentioned by Papias as one of the disciples of the Lord.). (Major, Manson, and Wright, THE AND MISSION AND MESSAGE OF JESUS, New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1938, p. 206)
I have a hunch that whoever wrote these verses knew of Paul’s experience in Acts with a “serpent” and read it back into the story. Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, when a viper came out because of the heat and “fastened on his hand.”(Acts 28:3) ....or perhaps the author meant to tell us that Christians are now able to trample that old serpent Satan under foot. The “drinking of any deadly thing” is possibly a reference to an experience of Barsabbas as related by Papias, an early Church historian, and cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, or it may be a reference to an event in the apocryphal “Acts of John.” The classical word for “any deadly thing” appears only here in Biblical Greek. “Plainly, what we have in the longer ending of Mark is a striking summary of primitive Church tradition gathered from a variety of sources.” (Ibid., p.207)
I know, this gives problems to those folks who want an infallible translation of an infallible Bible. But there doesn’t seem to be any. All we have to go on are copies of copies of the original manuscripts, which must then be translated and edited and compiled. To say “I believe the Bible cover to cover” is like saying “I believe the Library, from one wall to the last wall.” The Bible is a Library of books, edited and put together by a committee, passed on by another committee, translated by still another committee, and now read by us. It is “The word of God” only in the sense that God speaks to us in and through it. And according to the Bible itself, Jesus Christ is “THE Word of God.” (John 1)
So, the Gospel of Mark is an unfinished story. We are grateful for the other Gospels which complete the story, but this, the first Gospel, ends at verse 8, with the disciples silent and afraid. This is a thought-provoking state of affairs.
III. YOU SEE, THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH THE GOSPEL RECORD IS NEVER REALLY FINISHED. You and I are part of the story. After the four Gospels there appears another book, called the “Acts” of the Apostles...(Bill Coffin says that it should be titled: “The Arrests of the Apostles”...for it is filled with stories of those first Christians who believed that their primary obligation was to “obey God, rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) Clarence Jordan, of “Cotton Patch Gospels” fame calls it “the doin’s.” Not bad. At least, the title of the fifth book of the New Testament is not “The Resolutions of the Apostles.” It is “The Acts of the Apostles.”
The great Scots Biblical commentator William Barclay, while admitting that it is not necessary to accept everything literally that appears in the editorial addition at the end of Mark, says that it is important for us to note what this anonymous early Christian writer thought the task of the Church was:(1.) To preach. Proclaim the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ’ (2.) To heal. The Gospel is concerned with people’s bodies as well as their souls. Whoever saw a soul walking around without a body attached? We heal through medicine, yes, but as many of us have discovered, God has special healing mercies which come through prayer and meditation as well. (3.) The Church has power. Barclay says that we do not need to think that the individual Christian is literally to have the power to lift venomous snakes or drink poisonous liquids...but behind this picturesque language there is the conviction that the Church is to be a place of power. (4) The Church is never left alone to do its work. (William Barclay, DAILY STUDY BIBLE, MARK; Phila: Westminster Press, 1956, p. 390) Christ is Lord of the Church; He loved it and gave Himself for it, and stands by it through thick and thin, “turmoils without, within.” And the Gospel ends with the glad Good News that the Christian life is lived in the presence and the power of Him who was crucified and rose again.
To quote our old friend Halford Luccock one more time: “There is a real fitness...in the fact that (Mark’s) is an ‘unfinished Gospel.’ ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,’ is always unfinished. It is a continued story, to be carried on in individual lives. Paul added his page to it, “Last of all...he appeared also to me.” (I Cor. 15:8). There is an unwritten page left for each of us to write, our record of what Jesus has said and done in us.” (The Interpreter’s Bible, New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951, p. 917)
I came across the story of a university professor who gave his students a chance to evaluate his course. A dangerous thing to do. One of them said, “I LIKE the course but I feel very strongly that the professor puts too much responsibility for learning on the STUDENTS.” The educators among us can appreciate that. Well, Jesus has placed the responsibility for carrying on His work squarely in the hands of His students...His disciples. There is an old story that has circulated for many years now. You may have heard it. It seems that after the “esurrection and Ascension,” Jesus ascended to the heavens and returned to the Father. God asked Him, “What provisions have you made for carrying out your work back there on earth?” Jesus replied, “I have chosen twelve, Father. They will carry out the work. One of them has already failed, I know, but there is about to be an election to fill the vacancy.” To this, God said to His Son: “And what provision have you made in case the rest of them fail?” To which Jesus replied, according to the story, “I have no other plans.”
Now, I don’t know whether that story is true or not. I don’t know whether Jesus has any other plans for the salvation and redemption of the world. I don’t know but what He could get along without us, if He had to. I don’t know. It does seem arrogant for us to think that His plans are all exhausted if we fail. I don’t know. But I do know that for now, he has entrusted His mission into our hands. The question is: what are we going to do with it? Early in my ministry I came across a poem, which I was able to find in my archives. I don’t know who wrote it. It is not good poetry. And the sexist language is a problem. But nevertheless, it seems an appropriate way to conclude this sermon and, indeed, this entire series of sermons on the Gospel According to St. Mark. It goes like this:
There’s a sweet old story translated for man, But writ in the long, long ago: The Gospel according to Mark, Luke, and John, Of Christ and His mission below.
Men read and admire the Gospel of Christ, With its love so unfailing and true; But what do they say, and what do they think, Of the Gospel according to you?
‘Tis a wonderful story, that Gospel of love, As it shines in the Christ life divine; And, oh, that its truth might be told again In the story of your life and mine.
Unselfishness mirrors in every scene; Love blossoms on every sod; And back from its vision the heart comes to tell The wonderful goodness of God.
You are writing each day a letter to men; Take care that the writing is true; ‘Tis the only Gospel that some men will read... The Gospel according to you.
AMEN.