I wonder if this will become more and more common in the years to come. I wonder if churches on both the far right and the far left will slowly move to other denominations (or no denomination), leaving those in the middle to dwindle away. I wonder if the costs of our robust connectionalism will eventually outweigh the benefits.

Thinking about a progressive church leaving the PC(USA) for the UCC—a scenario with which I can more easily identify than the more typical conservative departures—made me think once again: what is it that makes us Presbyterian?

This was a question that I thought about a lot during my time on the Mid Councils Commission. As we discussed what kinds of changes we could recommend to help our denomination better meet the challenges and needs of our rapidly changing world, I often wondered: what are the essential elements of Presbyterianism that we cannot change if we want to remain Presbyterian? In other words, at what point of change do we stop being Presbyterian?

As I tried to empathize with a congregation leaving the PC(USA) for a denomination with a congregationalist polity, these questions surfaced once again. What would it be like to show up to church one Sunday and suddenly be UCC?

There are at least four categories of church identity that are pertinent to this discussion.

Theology
There are enough books out there on Reformed theology to suggest that there are some theological convictions that are uniquely Presbyterian. However, it is obvious that we do not in fact have theological consensus on some major issues like christology and the authority of scripture. Moreover, in our post-denominational reality, I don’t think you’ll find that many people in the pews of a typical Presbyterian church that are really that committed to total depravity, double predestination, or even providence and the sovereignty of God. Given the general flattening of Protestant theological discourse in North America, I’m not sure we can say that there is still a particularly Presbyterian theology.

Polity
If anything, I would say that the ideals and realities of Presbyterian polity makes us unique, or at least significantly different from denominations with episcopal or congregationalist polities. However, an argument could be made that many Presbyterian churches effectively function in a congregationalist way, with a relatively small portion of the congregation engaging in or even understanding presbyterian polity. Congregations jump through the hoops and check the boxes they need to, but they mostly function independently of their presbytery, synod, or the General Assembly. We value the ideal of connectionalism, but we don’t really know what it means anymore and the bureaucratic ways we have done it in the past seen anachronistic and ineffective today.

History
There are a lot of people who have been Presbyterian their entire lives and come from long lines of Presbyterians. As I’ve learned more about Presbyterianism around the country, I’ve found this to be especially true in the South and East. For these people, there is a connection to history that cannot be recovered if it is lost. But there are also a lot of people like me who are adult converts to Presbyterianism. Again, in our post-denominational reality, I wonder if the balance is tipping in most congregations away from life-long members of any particular denomination toward people that switch denominational affiliations (sometimes more than once) or participate in a particular church for reasons other than denominational connection.

Ethos
In his classic textbook, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition, John Leith has a chapter on the “ethos” of the Reformed tradition. Some of what he discusses is more about theology, like providence and the polemic against idolatry. But when it comes to things like ethics, the life of the mind as the service of God, preaching, church order, and a disciplined life, I think he has identified some of the elements of Presbyterianism that people really gravitate toward. When I ask people to describe what Presbyterianism means to them, things like this is what I often hear. My hunch is that a particular ethos is more important to most people in Presbyterian pews than particular theologies, the ins and outs of our polity, or historic connections to Presbyterianism.

If I take my church as an example, as long as our worship style, quality of preaching, and general theological inclinations did not change, we could in fact become a UCC congregation and 99% of the congregation wouldn’t even notice. I bet that is true of many Presbyterian congregations.

So it seems to me, as we try to be an effective, relevant, and faithful church in the 21st century, the PC(USA) ought to flatten our structures, deregulate our polity, and discover a new kind of connectionalism that unites us as Christians who share a common ethos and way of living into God’s transformation of the world. In a post-denominational, post-Christendom, postmodern world, theological unity is no longer realistic and regulatory and bureaucratic forms of organization are no longer effective. But there must be a kind of connectionalism that transcends these limitations.

I believe that the recommendations of the Mid Council Commission might help us move in that direction. What do you think?

While it was obvious that many in attendance were really being fed, there were several of us wondering what was “new” or “emerging” at the conference. Given Brian McLaren’s invitational video and some of the primer readings like this one from Dave Csinos, I expected that the conference would really explore what it means to do children and youth ministry in a postmodern context informed by the probing questions and paradigm shifts of the emerging church movement. But relatively few speakers addressed these shifts (or addressed them well). There were some big name speakers who really didn’t have anything unique to say about children and youth ministry, even if what they did talk about was really good. There were many presentations about what people are doing in their particular contexts, but not many of them really pushed the needle toward a postmodern or emerging perspective on children and youth ministry. At the halfway mark of the conference, I posed the question on Twitter: what have we heard that actually reflects or engages a “new kind of Christianity”? I didn’t receive much of a response.

When I asked Brian McLaren about this during one of the breaks, I think he thought I was talking about what “emerging church” as a brand has to do with children and youth ministry. But that wasn’t my concern at all. I completely agree with his recent post about “emerging” not being about style. But what I found missing at this conference was a deep engagement in the theological issues Brian and others (like Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt) have been wrestling with for the past decade or so. There were nods to important issues like narrative, missional youth ministry, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. But there were a lot of issues left untouched or barely scratched.

Again, it was obvious that the overwhelming majority of those in attendance thought the conference was great and that it really met their needs and expectations. Perhaps I just had the wrong expectations about what the conference would be like. As with some other conferences I have been to recently (NEXT Church comes to mind), I have two primary frustrations: 1) we keep asking the same open questions without working toward robust responses; and 2) church leaders (especially youth workers) are too quick to focus on best practices rather than dig in and explore the big theological issues that inform our practices. Don’t get me wrong, I like big questions and best practices, but by now I come to conferences with a good sense of the driving questions and I think best practices ought to be a side dish rather than the main course.

As I mentioned on Twitter during this event, I’m thinking quite seriously about hosting a children and youth ministry conference in Chicago in the fall of 2013. The particular focus is still gelling, but I want to gather together practitioners and academics to think about the following three questions:

1. What does religious education/faith formation for children and youth look like in a postmodern context? For example, what is the purpose, role, and shape of confirmation in a church context that embraces uncertainty and ambiguity?
2. What does children and youth ministry look like in a post-denominational context? Are we raising emerging generations in particular faith traditions or are we reinforcing the post-denominational trends? Does it matter?
3. Even more broadly, how do we effectively minister to children, youth, and families in a post-Christendom context in which church is no longer at the center of culture?

I’m thinking of calling it something like “Children and Youth Ministry in the Posts.” Chris Rodkey (somewhat) jokingly suggested “Children, Youth and a New Kind of Post-Christianity.” Whatever we call it, if this sounds interesting to you, let me know.

But, what troubles me about the Romney bullying story is that he and some of his surrogates are laughing it off as if it was nothing important. But given our current cultural discourse about bullying—something youth pastors like myself are very concerned about—you can’t simply dismiss a charge of bullying by calling it a “prank” or a “joke.” You can’t say that perhaps someone was “traumatized a little” but “no harm, no foul.” Can you be traumatized a little? Isn’t that like being pregnant: you either are or aren’t?

If Mitt Romney—as an immature high school student—actually bullied someone, I can forgive that if he is truly sorry for what he did. But I don’t have tolerance for adults acting as if bullying doesn’t matter, when kids around the country are taking their own lives because of “pranks” like what has been described in this story.

Check out this page from ABC News for several videos on the story. Here is the one that really caught my attention:

Biologically, there is no reason children should not breastfeed beyond infancy. It is only because of particular cultural attitudes that we have determined that at some point children should stop drinking milk from their mothers and begin drinking milk from entirely unrelated species of mammals. As far as I know, no other animal on the planet engages in such objectively odd behavior.

Further, it is primarily because female breasts are sexualized in our culture that a picture like this is considered so taboo. It blurs the cultural lines we have drawn between the maternal and the sexual. But we should keep in mind that not all cultures have the same sexualized attitudes toward exposed breasts as we do—think about all those pictures of topless African women in National Geographic we used to marvel at as kids. And why are female breasts sexualized in a way that male breasts are not? Or why is it that in popular culture today, nearly the entire female breast can be exposed as long as the nipple is covered? It’s all relative. It’s all arbitrary.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating extended breastfeeding—I’m too encultured in our social norms to be comfortable with this. And I believe that this particular picture is more exploitative than illuminating. But I also realize that I think this way because I’ve been conditioned to do so by the culture in which I was raised. This magazine cover and the controversy surrounding it exposes the cultural relativity and arbitrariness of the social norms we assume to be natural or objectively true.

Why should we care about this? Because in our nation’s culture wars, arbitrary and relative social norms are invested with religious significance and wielded as weapons against others. Thank God the ancient Israelites didn’t write about breastfeeding in the Bible—if they had, this whole thing would become an issue in the presidential campaign.

But ancient Israel did write about other social norms—like the gender of one’s sexual partner—which some people now treat as objective truth or eternal mandates from God. Yet these ancient Israelite social norms are as relative, arbitrary, and conditioned by context as our own. While conservative culture warriors are willing to concede this point regarding ancient norms they no longer care about—like abstaining from pork or allowing polygamy or forbidding divorce—they hold on to others as if the fate of humanity depends upon them.

It is simplistic and irresponsible to pick and choose from the social norms of ancient Israel as we work together to discern God’s way in 21st century America. We can do better. We must do better.

Photo by Andrew Malone

Reading: 1 Corinthians 7:25-31

Reflection
It’s no easy thing for 21^st century people of faith to consult religious writings from the first century on matters of sexual ethics—or any ethics for that matter. It doesn’t take much historical digging to conclude that the social, political, and religious contexts of these two time periods are very different. Can ethical or behavioral norms from one period be seamlessly transferred to another?

Many Christians in our contemporary world seem to think so. Passages of scripture are lifted out of context and wielded as weapons in culture wars. Usually, this is done with no real concern for the original context of the passage or faithful discernment of what God is saying in the new context of today’s world.

Given the hubris of such approaches to so-called “biblical ethics”, I find today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians quite illuminating—and humbling. In a sweeping chapter on his understanding of marriage, Paul notes quite clearly that he is offering his own opinion rather than a direct commandment from God. Not only that, he offers this opinion based on his belief that the world would soon end with the second coming of Christ. Unless we missed a major memo, that didn’t happen as Paul (and most of the early Christians and writers of the New Testament) thought it would. There is no question that his teachings were influenced by this end-times mentality. What do we make of such thinking twenty centuries later? What else was Paul wrong about? What else was merely his opinion, not the word of God?

I raise this not to cast our faith in the Bible into disarray. Rather, this passage should inspire us to be even more diligent in how we read, interpret, and apply the teachings of the Bible. It should teach us that what we now consider scripture was once the contextual and perhaps even provisional writings of real faith communities trying, as we are, to figure it all out. It should humble us to realize that even Paul was sometimes grasping for answers. And it should remind us that without the living Spirit of God guiding us today, we would truly be lost.

Prayer
Help me, God, to read the Bible with humility and care. As I struggle to know how to live your way in today’s world, give me wisdom and insight. Most of all, give me your Spirit and faithful companions to journey with together, because I cannot do this alone. Amen.

A version of this devotion appears in today’s Fourth Church Daily Devotion. I also reflect on this passage in the following video, today’s contribution to the daily 90-second videos Fourth Church Youth are making as our congregation reads through the Bible in 2012. When I wrote this devotion last month, I had no idea how timely and relevant it would be today.

The number of emails I had waiting for me when I returned from vacation

Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been over three weeks since I unplugged for vacation in Utah. Clearly, I’ve had some trouble plugging back in.

But, it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I had a ton of emails to sort through after not logging in for several days. I jumped right into our Senior High Pancake Breakfast, which was a great success. I officiated the funeral of a college student who took his own life while I was gone. I seemed to have non-stop meetings. (On this note, check out my guest post over at Pomomusings, written en route to Utah.) And this past week I attended the Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity conference.

After my time away and all of this since my return, I have lots of stuff swirling around in my head. So it’s time to plug back in and resume blogging…

Like most people who are talking about this movie, I don’t want to ruin it for folks by giving away too much. Instead, I thought I would simply provide a list of things  I found intriguing about this film. If any of this sounds interesting to you, you might also enjoy checking it out.

• I do love how this movie plays with and critiques the horror movie genre, a genre that I have enjoyed since I was a kid. This isn’t a satire, like the Scream movies, as much as it is a postmodern critique that blurs the lines between what’s happening on the screen and what’s happening with the audience watching.
• As someone raised on the “classics” of 80′s slasher films, I didn’t find this movie to be scary. Rather, at times it was intentionally comical as a parody of those films.
• One of the main questions this film wrestles with is why we watch movies like this in the first place. What primal blood lust are we satiating through the catharsis of horror films?
• Given my recent posts on atonement theology, and my longstanding suspicion of both substitutionary atonement theories and the myth of redemptive violence, this film was fascinating to watch just over a week after Easter.
• This is yet another addition to the already rich canon of contemporary fiction that tackles the perennial question of how providence (or fate) is balanced with free will. Do we have free will or simply the illusion of free will? Are philosophies and theologies of providence (or fate) just as contrived as the plot of this film?
• Though it is a relatively short movie, this film pushed a lot of the same buttons for me as the television show Lost, which is one of my all time favorite works of fiction.

This was well worth the price of a matinee ticket. It is entertaining as a meta-horror film and raises lots of fascinating questions that seem to persist as part of our cultural zeitgeist.

Photo by craigie3000

This is my Confirmation Sunday sermon from yesterday. The scripture readings were Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 1 John 1:1-4.

This is an unprecedented time in the history of Fourth Presbyterian Church.

I realize, of course, that you will hear this a lot during this time of transition and change. But let me take a moment to put my spin on it.

In 1986, this church baptized 31 newborn children. Last year, we baptized 140.

In the nearly six years that I have served this church as the Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry, I have heard it said countless times that 25 years ago Fourth Church was not a place that welcomed children and youth. This has clearly changed.

Now, children and youth—and the families that bring them—represent the fastest growing segment of our congregation. The need for space that will allow this population to grow and thrive was a major driver of Project Second Century and the construction of the Gratz Center. Over the last quarter of a century, Fourth Church has become a downtown, urban church for children, youth, and families.

To be sure, in a church this size, numerous populations are attracted and served. This is still a church that appeals to younger adults and older adults, young couples and empty nesters, singles of all ages, and couples of various configurations. But never before in the history of this church have children, youth, and families been so prominent or so central to our identity and our mission.

A major challenge for this congregation as we move into our second century at this fortuitous corner of Michigan Avenue, and a major opportunity as we look for a new pastor, is the potential we have to become a truly multigenerational congregation.

Of course, in a superficial way, we already are a multigenerational congregation. On any given Sunday, we have at least four generations represented in this church. But for the most part, these generations are essentially segregated from each other. Our oldest adults and youngest children rarely cross paths. Even our youth and young adults, who really aren’t so far apart in age or culture, don’t have many points of contact.

At some level, this kind of age appropriate programming makes good sense and is even necessary. For a variety of developmental and sociological reasons, age differentiation is important. But if the boundaries between generations are never permeable, we miss a real opportunity to be the kind of community that is so rare in today’s world. More than that, we miss the opportunity to reflect the diversity of experience that I believe God desires for us all. In God’s emerging kingdom, God’s children of all ages will live together in bonds of love and mutual support.

To do this, we must begin to remember what our faith tradition has always known: religion is not an individual endeavor. This is counter-intuitive for contemporary Americans, raised as we have been in a culture of rugged individualism. This is counter-intuitive for those who profess to be “spiritual but not religious.” But, if this church, or any church, is going to make it in the 21^st century, we must remember what has kept us going, generation to generation.

The short New Testament book we know as 1 John was written for a community that already lived a few generations after Jesus. It gives us a snapshot of what the church looked like at the turn of the second century. It is a church concerned about passing on the traditions it has cherished, the traditions that shaped it and sustained it.

“We announce to you what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and our hands handled, about the word of life.”

Given what scholars think they know about when this book was written, it is unlikely that the person who wrote this or the people for whom it was written were actually alive during the time of Jesus. In this respect, even though a gap of nineteen centuries separates us, they are not that different from us. What they are passing on—what they talk about as a tangible reality that they have seen and touched—are not eyewitness accounts of Jesus and his disciples. Rather, like us, what they are sharing with each other are the faith experiences of people removed from those foundational times yet nonetheless moved by the living Spirit of God in their midst. They have experienced something real, and they want to share it with others.

Likewise, the passage we heard from Deuteronomy is a foundational text for Judaism. It forms the core of the Jewish prayer known as the Shema. It was identified by Jesus as one of the greatest commandments in the entire Bible. And like our text from 1 John, it envisions a situation in which the traditions of the community are passed down from generation to generation, le-dor va-dor as it is said in Hebrew. Le-dor va-dor. Generation to generation.

Of course, the world operates a lot differently now than it did during the simpler days that gave rise to these ancient encouragements, when the primary modes of communication were talking around campfires and in homes and gathering together to read sacred scriptures out loud.

A few weeks ago, computer chip manufacturer Intel circulated a graphic that describes what happens in a single minute on the internet. 204 million emails are sent. 3000 photos are uploaded and 20 million photos are viewed on Flickr. 100,000 tweets are published on Twitter. There are 277,000 logins to Facebook and 6 million views. There are over 2 million search queries on Google. There are 1.3 million video views on YouTube. All of this happens in one minute—60 seconds.

In this context, what does it mean to “announce what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and our hands handled”? Certainly, the possibilities are staggering.

Yet, we all know that a significant portion of all that data streaming around the world in a given minute is total junk. Advancements in communication technologies do not guarantee quality content. Actually, it’s probably the case that the exact opposite is true—the better we get at sharing information quickly and efficiently, the easier it is to share the worthless and superficial things that distract us from what really matters.

This is why we need a truly multigenerational church. We need to be a community that passes on to emerging generations what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched.

Today we celebrate the confirmation of another class of eighth graders. Over the course of eight months, our youth ministry staff and volunteer leaders have shared with them what we know and trust—what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched.

This is some of the most important work the church does. Did you know that the median age of Presbyterians in the United States is 61? Though we trend about a decade younger here at Fourth Church, this overall reality is simply not sustainable. By contrast, the median age of Chicago is 32. The median age of the United States is 35.6. That’s quite a gap.

It is also the case that our denomination, like every mainline Protestant denomination, is gradually dwindling. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost over 1,000,000 members since our predecessor denominations reunited in 1983. I think that the primary reasons for this substantial decline is our poor record of planting new faith communities and our inability to retain young people after they leave high school. In fact, our own statistics suggest that we won’t see 60 to 70 percent of these eighth graders after today.

Sociologists of religion are in almost universal agreement that the greatest indicator of whether or not adults participate in a faith community is whether or not they participated as youth. And the number one influence on the spiritual development of young people is not their totally cool youth pastor, as hard as that may be to believe—it’s their parents first and the adults they interact with in the congregation second. We must be a multigenerational church.

As a leading congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA), if we want to offer something to our declining denomination, we need to get this right.

As a public church right in the middle of a rapidly changing city, if we want to offer something to the families of our community, we need to get this right.

Census reports show that the average household size in the city of Chicago continues to grow. And my hunch is that most of us raising families in the city today were not raised in a city like this ourselves. At some level, we are charting new territory together. For all of the amazing benefits of raising children in a diverse and culturally rich city like Chicago, there are also significant challenges. Single parents and couples must work incredibly hard to afford to live here, which cuts into valuable family time. Navigating the Chicago school system is one of the most complicated and stressful endeavors I have ever witnessed.

For families today, church is one of many activities vying for time and resources. Church is no longer at the center of American culture, and there’s not much we can do about that. In our post-Christendom age, relevancy is no longer assumed; rather, it must be earned. We must offer people what they cannot get anywhere else.

So, what is that exactly? What are we offering? What are we passing on, generation to generation, le-dor va-dor?

If the statements of faith written by our confirmands are a reflection of our wider congregation—which I believe they are—then it is clear that we are not a community that insists on strict adherence to traditional or orthodox doctrines. We have core beliefs and practices, to be sure, but we are very much a “big tent” kind of church that makes room for people of all kinds of faith, all kinds of uncertainties, all kinds of incredulities. Our way forward into the emerging future of faith in a postmodern, post-denominational, post-Christendom, pluralistic world is not to retreat into fundamentalism. Rather, our way is to tell the story we have heard in fresh, new, and relevant ways.

Every single person has a worldview that shapes the way they interpret and engage the world around them. More than anything else, these worldviews are shaped by the stories we tell.

Many times from this pulpit you have heard me talk about superheroes. Clearly, these stories have shaped my worldview. Generation to generation, I’m learning how quickly I’m passing this on to my son.

Superhero movies are so good now, it’s easier than ever to teach him the stories that have meant so much to me. But I’ve noticed some interesting side-effects. When we’re at home, it’s cute when he pretends to be Spider-man or the Hulk. In fact, I usually encourage him by playing right along. But it gets a little awkward when we’re walking down the street and he starts shooting webs at total strangers or contorts his little cherub face and yells, “Hulk smash!” I suppose it’s all part of internalizing the cultural stories that will shape his worldview.

At some point, I’ll be able to move him beyond this stage of pre-critical naiveté and start engaging these stories on a different level. We’ll talk about how with great power comes great responsibility. We’ll talk about how each of us has a monster inside that we struggle to control.

And at some point, he’ll grow up and start to deconstruct these stories. And his generation will tell these archetypal stories in new ways that are relevant and meaningful for them.

Throughout this entire process, generation to generation, he is making these stories his own.

Emerging church pastor Doug Pagitt calls our time the Inventive Age, and contrasts it to what came before, what has been called the Information Age.[1] In today’s world, people are no longer content to be consumers of culture; rather, we want to be participants. We want to engage, we want to interact. This is why Web 2.0 and social media have exploded in recent years.

And this is what our confirmands have done this year. They have not simply absorbed some ancient creeds and old doctrines and regurgitated them back to us. Rather, they have expressed their faith—and their doubts—in their own words. We have signaled to them how important this is by empowering them to make this decision their own. Some of them have owned it; some of them have said “thanks, but no thanks.”

But none of them can do it on their own. Faith doesn’t work that way. They need a multigenerational church.

Yesterday we brought our son to C2E2, the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo. Like all conventions of this type, it was filled with people dressed up in elaborate costumes, embodying the heroes of the stories that shape their worldviews. Indeed, it was a gathering of people whose lives have been profoundly shaped by a collection of shared stories. My web-slinging, Hulk-smashing son fit right in.

It may sound silly to you, but I think church should be a lot like that. I’m not saying we need to dress up in costumes—though maybe that sounds odd coming from a guy dressed like it’s the 16^th century. But what I really have in mind is people of all ages, gathered together to be shaped by a story that is told and retold, generation to generation. The story is a little different each time it is told, but the essence is always the same.

Our story is one of exile and redemption, estrangement and reconciliation, death and resurrection. Our story gives us hope for rebirth in our lives and the re-creation of the whole world. This story shapes who we are and how we live in the world, a world that we have come to know is loved beyond measure.

“We announce to you what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and our hands handled, about the word of life.”

Amen.

My Easter Vigil sermon…

Each of the four gospels found in our Bible tells the story of Jesus is a slightly different way. Each version of Jesus’ story represents the particular contexts, questions, and concerns of the individual gospel writers and the communities for whom they were writing. To fully appreciate these distinctive tellings of the story of Jesus, it is important to hear each story on its own, without imposing what you know—or think you know—from the others.

So I invite you to listen to the ending of Mark’s story of Jesus, perhaps the most surprising and confounding conclusion of the four gospels the church considers sacred scripture. I invite you to listen to it with fresh ears, as if you had never heard it, or any of the other gospels, before. Forget what you think you know about Easter, forget what you think you know about Jesus’ resurrection, and listen for the shocking way that Mark concludes the signature story of our faith.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus’ dead body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb. They were saying to each other, “Who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance for us?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. (And it was a very large stone!) Going into the tomb, they saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right side; and they were startled. But he said to them, “Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised. He isn’t here. Look, here’s the place where they laid him. Go, tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.” Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:1-8, CEB)

What kind of ending is that? Could this actually be the conclusion to the story of Jesus? Is this really the end?

If you read the last chapter of Mark in contemporary editions of the Bible, you will see that there are in fact some additional verses that tell a more traditional story of the resurrection. But biblical scholars are in almost universal agreement that these verses were added later to soften what was almost certainly the original, perplexing, troubling ending of Mark’s story.

Most scholars agree that Mark was the first of our four gospels to be written. It was later expanded into the two versions of the story we know as Matthew and Luke, and completely rewritten as the Gospel of John. These other versions highlight what’s so surprising about Mark’s story. The resurrected Jesus doesn’t actually appear. All we have is the report of a mysterious young man sitting in an empty tomb. The disciples aren’t there, and as far as this story is concerned, they never even find out what happened because the women who discover the empty tomb and talk to the mysterious young man are so frightened that they fail to tell anyone the news of Jesus’ resurrection. The greatest story ever told ends in fear and silence.

It’s not exactly the most inspiring Easter message. It’s no wonder the other three gospels add the details we are more familiar with: appearances of Jesus and the responses of his followers. It’s no wonder that scribes were dissatisfied with the original conclusion of Mark and added a happier ending.

But filling in the blanks with elements from other stories strips Mark’s story of its literary and theological genius. The whole point is to leave us uncomfortable, to make us wonder what this strange story of Jesus could possibly mean.

Mark scholar Werner Kelber, my first Bible teacher in college, has suggested that the key to understanding this ending—and Mark as a whole—is to pay attention to its original context. According to Kelber, Mark was written not long after the Jerusalem temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. It was a time of great upheaval for both Jews and Christians. Everything that they knew was literally crumbling around them. Jerusalem was burning, and the Jewish people—those who believed Jesus was the Messiah and those who did not—were suddenly faced with a profound crisis.

Kelber suggests that the writer of Mark was actually quite critical of the church in Jerusalem. The Christian community there was mostly Jewish, founded by the original followers of Jesus. They were quite conservative in their theology in the sense that they held tightly to their Jewish traditions. They were less open to the idea of expanding the community to include non-Jewish Gentiles. And, like everyone in Jerusalem during the disastrous final years of the Jewish revolt against Rome, they were cast into disarray when the temple was destroyed and the city burned.

In this context, Mark’s story of Jesus—which is consistently quite critical of the twelve disciples—reads like a repudiation of the Jerusalem church. They missed the point, Mark is saying. They failed to fully understand the mysteries of Jesus’ vision of God’s kingdom. They missed the point and held on to what they could more easily understand, what was more comfortable and reassuring. But when that grand temple came tumbling down, they didn’t know what to do. They failed to realize that Jesus’ vision of God’s kingdom was much bigger than any temple made of stone.

So Mark ends his story of Jesus with a deafening silence. The people we expect to be the heroes—Jesus’ disciples and closest followers—utterly and completely fail to do what he asked them to do. But the writer of Mark didn’t intend this to be a simple tragedy. Rather, it’s an invitation to those who hear this story to pick up where the disciples failed. Having heard the story of Jesus, and realizing that no one in the story succeeded in sharing it with others, we are compelled to do what the women at the tomb and the disciples could not do.

What a staggeringly subversive reading of Mark’s story of Jesus. Jerusalem may be burning, but Jesus’ good news of God’s kingdom can triumph still. The establishment church may have failed—it may be burning right along with the city around it—but all hope is not lost. The faithful and the searching, who gather to hear a sacred story, not in grand temples but around campfires on the margins, they are entrusted with a message of hope. Jesus isn’t here in this tomb. He is alive. Go find him. Go follow him.

Almost twenty centuries later, the faithful may find ourselves in a similar situation. Like the church of Jerusalem, perhaps the church we know and love has failed as well. On the right, the church preaches a gospel that is exclusionary, judgmental, misogynistic, and homophobic. On the left, the church preaches a gospel of social justice and being nice that doesn’t really even need Jesus at all. Perhaps we all need to rediscover Jesus’ gospel of God’s kingdom.

Like Jerusalem and the temple so long ago, perhaps our institutions are also crumbling and burning before our eyes. We live in a decidedly post-Christendom era. Long gone are the days when the church was at the center of culture. Relevancy is no longer assumed; it must be earned. On the right, Christians wage culture wars to regain footing. On the left, Christians stand by while the church quietly fades away.

And the world—the world is burning too. Kids are killing each other on the streets of Chicago. Bloody revolutions rock the Middle East. Children are bullied and lose all hope. Relationships fail and families are torn apart. People are hungry and homeless. People are lost and alone.

But on a night like tonight, we gather around fires and in darkened sanctuaries to be reminded of a story that has the power to save us. From creation to the empty tomb, it is a story of deliverance, redemption, and rebirth. It is a story that shapes who we are and how we understand the world in which we live.

What will we do with this story? Will we be like the women at the tomb who are too frightened to share it? Will we be like the disciples who don’t even bother to show up?

Friends, this isn’t the end of the story. This is only the beginning.

Amen.