Thus it seems that throughout Mark’s gospel, far more than
the other three, there is always a sense of motion—not of hurry, not of things
moving more quickly than they ought or being out of control, but always moving.
The final point at which we encounter the word “immediately” is in the opening
verse of this morning’s Gospel reading. Unfortunately you won’t see it in very
many of our English translations. However, rendered literally, Mark 15:1 sounds
like this: “And immediately, very early in the morning, the chief priests, with
the elders and scribes, and the whole council, held a consultation…” And that
is the last time we hear it. Suddenly, it seems, time slows down.
The foreknowledge of God
Mark compresses three years of Jesus’ life into fourteen
chapters. He does not even give any account of Jesus’ birth. Now he devotes an
entire chapter to just nine hours. I find myself asking, why is this so? One
idea that comes to my mind takes me back many years ago to a winter morning
when I was driving on the open freeway out in the countryside. Suddenly, a considerable
distance away, I could see that all the traffic had come to a halt. I tapped
the brakes and realized that I had no control whatever over my car. I was
driving on black ice. I put the car into neutral and tried to steer it gently to
the side of the road. But nothing I did had any effect. Unable to do anything
to prevent whatever was going to happen, I found myself beginning to feel more
like a helpless observer than a driver. As my car glided toward the vehicles
ahead of me, I had an eerie sense that time had slowed down. The interval
between first spotting the stopped cars far ahead and when I finally crashed
into the back of a school bus that had gone off the road seemed not like the
few seconds that it was, but minutes.
So I ask myself, is this the way that it was for Jesus’
disciples? As events took their course on that fateful Friday morning, there
was a sense of inevitability, that now there was nothing they could do to
intervene in the series of events that was unfolding before them. Looking back
on it, we can say they should have known. On more than one occasion, going all
the way back to the time when Peter had proclaimed him the Messiah, Jesus had
warned them that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed…” (Mark 8:32).
At what should have been a celebratory event—the Passover meal—there had been
the sadness that had hung over everything like an ominous cloud, when Jesus had
taken the bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you,” and the wine with
the words, “This is my blood, poured out for you and for many.” That same night,
as Judas Iscariot entered the Garden of Gethsemane with the soldiers and a band
of ruffians, who dragged Jesus away to the court of the high priest, they must
have known in their hearts that things had gone beyond the point of no return. All
that was left for them to do was to look on helplessly as Jesus was carried
away to be crushed by the unstoppable wheel of fate.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people. (Isaiah 53:7-8)
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people. (Isaiah 53:7-8)
What the disciples did not know, what they could never have
conceived at the time, was that things were not out of control at all—that what
was unfolding was not evil running unchecked, but the long-awaited plan of a
loving Father. “It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to
grief…” wrote Isaiah centuries before (Isaiah 53:10). Or not many days later,
as Peter himself would soon recognize and proclaim, “This man [was] handed over
… according to the deliberate plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor? (Romans 11:33-34)
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor? (Romans 11:33-34)
A fact of history
Let’s stop there for a moment. For I believe that there may
be a second reason why time slows down at this point in Mark’s gospel. It stems
from a curious incident the night before, as Jesus is being led away from the
Garden of Gethsemane, and of the four gospels it is found only in Mark’s
account. In chapter 14, verses 51 and 52, we are told about a young man who had
been following along behind Jesus and the disciples wearing nothing but a linen
cloth. The guards tried to apprehend him, but all they managed to do was to grab
hold of the cloth and off he ran, naked, into the dark.
Practically ever since people have been asking, could this
have been Mark? After all, it is not unlikely that the upper room where the
last supper took place was in the home of Mark’s mother, Mary. Could he have
sneaked out of the house and followed Jesus and the disciples across the Kidron
Valley to the garden? Added to that, Mark would have been a very young man,
likely not even have reached puberty, so he would not have been regarded as a
threat by the authorities. Could it be then that what we have from this point
on in the gospel is not a second-hand report of the events, but an actual
eyewitness account? I grant that all of this is to some extent speculation, but
it might explain why Mark goes into such detail at this point.
He carefully notes times—a detail we don’t find anywhere
else in his gospel. At nine o’clock Jesus is crucified. At noon darkness
shadows the whole land. At three o’clock Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema
sabachthani?” and then breathes his last. Why all the detail? Because Mark
wants to make sure that we know that what we are reading about are actual
events. The nails that pierced Jesus’ hands were hard iron. The wood on which he
hung was rough and splintered. The pain that tormented his naked body ran
through every nerve.
As we read the account of the Passion, we need to remember
that this is not just a story, a myth that has been devised or a legend that
has been passed down. What we commemorate over this Holy Week are actual
events, testified to by eyewitnesses, that took place in real time. “For I
handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received,” wrote the
apostle Paul less than twenty years later, “that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). “What we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our
hands,” wrote St John, “we declare to you” (1 John 1:1). The crucifixion
was a real event. The cross is real.
The fulcrum of eternity
There is another reason that occurs to me as to why Mark
slows down at this point. Picture yourself on a train, speeding across the
countryside. The train begins to decelerate. Then slowly, its brakes squealing
and sparks flying from its wheels, it comes to a halt. You have reached your
destination.
It is at the cross that the gospel also reaches its
destination. It is at the cross that everything stops. All creation holds its
breath and gasps as the Lamb of God breathes his last and bows his head. And a
centurion, who knows nothing of the Bible, nothing of God’s centuries-long
pursuit of his people, nothing about Jesus, looks up and exclaims, “Truly this
man was the Son of God!” For the cross was Jesus’ destination also. “The hour
has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” “And I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:23,32).
The cross is the fulcrum on which the destiny, not just of
humankind, but of the entire universe, turns. “Through him God was pleased to
reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace
through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). It is on the cross that sin
is canceled, the powers of evil overthrown, the tragic chain of events that can
be traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden is reversed, and death becomes
the gate to eternal life.
But we have not let the cross do its work until what is the
fulcrum of eternity becomes the fulcrum of our lives as well. We can accept it
as a fact of history. We can wonder at it as the ultimate act of sacrifice by a
loving Savior. But until we bow before it and receive the grace and forgiveness
that Jesus has wrought for us there, it can only be a symbol, a distant event shrouded
by the mists of the past.
“I have been crucified with Christ,” wrote the apostle Paul,
“and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life
I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The
challenge of Holy Week, the challenge of the cross, is to allow what Jesus has
done there to become a present reality for us, to accept in humble gratitude
the terrifying but awesome truth that it was for me and for my sins that
Jesus shed his blood and gave himself over to death. He died so that I might live…
What more is there to say, except to pray? And for that I
would like to use the words of Isaac Watts. If you know them, perhaps you would
like to say them with me.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ my God:
all the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
save in the death of Christ my God:
all the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
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