The Last Word
(Matthew
28:16-20)
I
remember as a child getting into arguments with my sisters. It could be over
almost anything: who ate the last biscuit in the cookie jar? who left the teddy
out in the rain? who was responsible for the crayon writing on the wall? The
dispute would rage until all arguments were exhausted. And then it would get
down to who could say the last word. ‘You did.’ ‘I didn’t.’ ‘You did.’ ‘I
didn’t.’ ‘Did so.’ ‘Did not.’ ‘Did.’ ‘Didn’t.’ And, when finally shushed up by
an exasperated parent, you would say it under your breath. ‘Did.’ ‘Didn’t.’ Getting
the last word somehow decided the issue.
Well,
the last word is often important in
our lives. The lawyer in the court room tries to sum up a long case for the
jury with a last concise statement. The giver of a eulogy at a funeral tries to
capture a whole life in a few final words. The last word is an important word.
Children know that as well as adults.
The
reading from Matthew this morning is the ending of that gospel. These are the
last words of Matthew’s telling the story of Jesus. As I read them this week, I
was set to wondering: what are the last words that the other tellers of the
story of Jesus use? How do Mark and Luke and John wind up their narratives? Are
they the same? Or different?
Well,
it turns out they’re different; very different. I’ve set the words out in the
order of service so you can see them. This is how the first tellers of the
Jesus story decided to sum up, to say the
last word, about their subject. And look at the difference.
For Matthew the last word is given to Jesus himself, risen
from the dead. Jesus speaks to his disciples, who are in doubt and turmoil, and
says to them: ‘And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ (Matthew
28:20)
Mark is harder, because the ancient
manuscripts differ as to where the story actually ends. Some put it at chapter
16 verse 8. Others have a more extended ending going to verse 20. And the two
are different as you can see. I’m going for the earlier ending; the one that
stops at verse 8. Mark finishes abruptly with three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary
the mother of James, and Salome, at the tomb of the crucified Jesus. They find
it empty and confront a young figure in white, perhaps an angel, who tells them
Jesus the crucified in risen. They are scared. And Mark’s last word is: ‘So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and
amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were
afraid.’ (Mark 16:8)
Luke wraps it up differently again. He has Jesus taken up
into heaven after blessing his disciples. And the last word is. ‘And they
worshipped him [Jesus], and returned
to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing
God.’ (Luke 24:53)
John takes a completely different tack. His last word is not
spoken by Jesus, or three frightened women, or joyful worshippers in Jerusalem.
John concludes with a reference to his
own story telling. ‘What I have written in this book,’ he says, ‘is a true
testimony to Jesus.’ And then he concludes. ‘But there are also many other
things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that
the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.’ (John
21:25)
So, four different last words concerning Jesus: Remember I
am with you. They were amazed and said nothing. They worshipped God in the
temple. And, there’s lots of other things Jesus did. Of course the Gospel
writers tell us lots of things about Jesus. But these four things are
particularly significant because these are the last things they choose to tell us about him. As such they are
worth pondering.
Matthew has the risen Jesus say, ‘and remember, I am with
you always, to the end of the age.’ In other words, he wants us to take away
from the whole story of Jesus this final word: the Jesus of his story is not a dead figure. Jesus is not locked into
the past as others who have died are locked in. The resurrection means Jesus’
life continues beyond death, into the future, into our time, and into our life.
We will not get the point of Jesus life, according to Matthew, if we don’t get
that his life is now, not just then; is always and everywhere, not just back there
and at that time.
The church is not a museum of an interesting but now
finished historical episode, like the famous Tutankhamen exhibition on show in
Melbourne. The church is the arena of an on-going spiritual presence; the life
of the risen Christ. The same characteristics that Matthew records in his life
of Jesus then—his love, courage, grace, teaching, deeds of justice and
mercy—are present now, alive now and transformative still; and will be to the
end of time. ‘Remember I am with you always.’ This is fundamental to the
gospel; to the life of the church; and to the destiny of the world. The love of
God made present to us in the life of Jesus remains a living reality in us and in
the world. That’s Matthew’s last word. And so we believe.
Mark is so different. ‘They fled from the tomb, for terror
and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were
afraid.’ The last word for Mark is that the life of Jesus is astonishing, even terrifying.
And if faced squarely, with eyes open, it reduces its participants to awed silence.
How salutary is that? We become so used to the story of
Jesus. We’ve heard it all before. It runs off our minds like water from a duck’s
back. ‘O yes, Jesus. We know all that stuff. The word of God among us. Yes, he
created trouble and was thrown out by the powers that be. And yes, he was
rejected, tortured, killed, and buried. And yes, we even know he was supposedly
raised again.’ But we say all that as if we were talking about whether we will
have or not have milk with our morning tea.
Mark fronts us with our complacency. This Jesus, he says to
us, is the Lord. God with us. And
this is how God fares in our human company! Thrown out; denied; crucified. And here
is how God responds. The rejected one is raised from the dead. The tomb is
empty and God thunders back into the equation, unstoppably. Doesn’t that amaze,
challenge, frighten? If the tomb is really empty where is that going to leave
us who organized it in the first place?
Mark’s last word is: ‘think hard before you presume to speak
the story of Jesus.’ This is a strange and powerful and mysterious story; and you
do not own it. It belongs to God’s presence and God’s judgment and God’s redemption
of the world. Perhaps our first reaction should be holy silence in its
presence. Unless we know that we are on holy ground here, and act and speak, or
keep silent, accordingly, we will act and speak falsely of Jesus. ‘They said
nothing at first because they were afraid.’ And so, too, we are awed.
Luke speaks yet another last word of the Jesus story. Not so
much presence; and not holy silence; but joyful worship. To encounter Jesus in
Luke’s story is to meet with God. Jesus leads us to God, to God the Lord of all
being; to God the creator of the universe; to God the judge and goal of history.
To know Jesus, as Luke sees it, is to be placed by Jesus in the presence
of this God. And worship is the natural and appropriate response. ‘And they
worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were
continually in the temple blessing God.’
And that too is the outcome of the Gospels. We find
ourselves meeting God; which is precisely why we are here in the church now. To
listen to the story of Jesus is to be drawn to worship and rejoice in the
presence of God. For Luke, if hearing the story of Jesus does not culminate in
worship, we simply haven’t understood what we are dealing with. Jesus is not
just a very, very good person and a very, very influential teacher. He is that
of course. But more. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. God in our history and in
our form. God who can be met, addressed, heard, felt. The last word of Luke’s
telling the story is that we bow in worship, joy and prayer. And so we worship
now.
John’s last word is different again. John finishes his story
by reflecting on the business of storytelling itself. The things I have written
in the story about Jesus are true, he says. And yet what I have said is just a part of it, and a small part of it at
that. ‘But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of
them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the
books that would be written.’ In other words, the Jesus of the story cannot be
contained in the story of Jesus. Jesus breaks out of the limits of every
telling of his life, even the greatest, of which John’s Gospel is surely one.
But even this, John’s inspired text, cannot contain and circumscribe its
subject.
Again this is a vital word for us to hear. Of course the
words of the bible are important and irreplaceable. And yet, says John
reflecting on the life of Jesus, don’t think that this truth is wrapped up
finally in words, even these words. There are many other things that Jesus did
and was. His life is open-ended; and its final truth will fill the whole world.
Do not think that you have control of it because you have read these words.
Jesus will break out of all words and create new situations and new
possibilities. And we need to be open to that.
If, as Matthew says, Jesus is livingly with us to the end of
time, then with John we must also say, Jesus is more than any particular
telling of his story envisages. We in our time must tell the story of Jesus, based
on the stories of the first gospels. But not just parroting them. We have to
find new ways to say new things about the reality of Jesus;
things that breaks all bounds, all stories, all sermons, all witnesses to date.
This story continually draws the world into the new future of the God who has
come to us in the life this story tells. If all of it were written down … the
world itself could not contain it. Of course it couldn’t. God in Christ
contains the world, not the other way around.
And so four last words about Jesus. ‘I am with you always’. ‘They
said nothing because they were afraid’. ‘They were continually in the temple
blessing God’. And, ‘the world itself cannot contain what God does in Christ’: Presence,
awed silence, worship, and a sense of infinite possibility. These are the final
words about Jesus according to his first and greatest witnesses. God grant that
they remain words of truth for us in our time.
Graeme Garrett
Canberra Baptist Church
12 June 2011