Daily Reading, 9/8

One of the practices of the Anglican Church, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, is the praying of the Daily Office. There's Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline, each a service adapted from the ancient monastic practice of praying 8 times a day.

Part of these offices is the reading of scripture-each day there is a selection from the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Gospels, as well as several Psalms. You can find out what the reading for the day is yourself if you follow along the lectionary-a set order of readings found in the Book of Common Prayer p 934. Or you can go to www.dailyoffice.org and find them there as well (it's a bit easier, I'll admit). One of the features of this blog will be reflections on a reading from the Daily Office. This may not happen every day, but I'm aiming for at least four days a week! So check back here often for updates-some reflecions may even come from one of you, or from something we talk about during a GYC meeting. Or I might find a song or video that speaks to the reading for me that I'd like to share. You never know what you'll find...

For today, we have chapter 16 in Mark's Gospel. If you look in your Bible, you may notice "headings" throughout the text. They might say "the Sermon on the Mount" or "God and Abraham Make a Covenant" or something like that. Just so you know, these aren't in the original text. Indeed, chapter and verse markings are later additions. What you might notice in today's readings if you look at the headings might be something like "the shorter ending of Mark" and "the Longer ending of Mark." Verses 9-20 are only found in later manuscripts and, if you look at the resurrection narratives in the other Gospels, you will notice some similarities.

What does this mean? It means that the actual appearances of Jesus after His resurrection are missing from the more reliable Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark! The most we get is the angel telling the women that Jesus will meet them in Galilee, and a reference to Jesus sending the disciples to proclaim salvation-but even then it's a reference and feels somewhat different from the Jesus we meet in the rest of the text.

Does that mean the recurrection isn't true? If the earliest Gospel in the Bible doesn't have stories of Jesus's appearances, how do we know any of this actually happened? The first thing to remember is don't fret. There are three other Gospels in the Bible. I know, I know this sounds like a cop out-it's not! We take the Bible as a whole, not just the bits and pieces. In some cases this "holistic approach" can cause problems when we see contradictions, but in other cases it enhances and deepens our understanding of different texts.

But if we turn to this particular selection from Mark, I think it speaks to what it means to have faith when we know there's an empty tomb, but we don't get to touch the wounds of the risen Lord as Thomas did. We have to take it on faith, which is definitely hard. The women in the Gospel see an angel who tells them "He has been raised." They have to take that on faith-who knows who could have rolled the stone and removed (read:stolen) the body, but it was a possibility! But the women chose to believe-they went and told the other disciples what they had seen-which wasn't Jesus. It was the empty tomb! That's pretty extraordinary, if you think about. The faith of these women was such that they spread the Good News of Jesus's resurrection without having seen the risen Jesus. They saw the empty tomb!

Sometimes, when I'm in a particularly doubting frame of mind, I have to focus on the empty tomb-I can't even bring myself to conceive of a risen Christ. But the empty tomb feels like something I can begin to get a handle on; something I can see. It's the empty tomb that leads these women towards an understanding of the resurrection of Jesus. It's the empty tomb that first brings that fact home to them. It's the empty tomb that opens their eyes to the fact that death no longer has hold on any of us. This empty tomb can lead us to the risen Christ-something to remember when the risen One is hard to see...