The Greatest Story Ever Told

Mark’s Gospel has been called, quite aptly, a passion narrative with a long introduction. It’s the briefest of the Gospel texts, and probably the first one written.  Scripture scholars marvel at Mark’s clumsy Greek and his rather ham-fisted storytelling.  The text baffles us and confounds us at various points, often through the eyes of the disciples, who never quite seem to get it.  There’s no Bethlehem birth account; Mark begins with an adult Jesus in Galilee seeking baptism by John.  Hardly an image for the front of the Christmas cards.

More poignant, however, especially as we enter the Lenten season and depart from reading Mark daily in the lectionary cycle, is the fact that there are no appearances of the resurrected Christ in Mark.  His original text ends at 16:8 (the rest, we find, is added by later editors), with an empty tomb and a mysterious “young man” telling the attendant women to report the risen Christ to the disciples and to return to Galilee and wait for Jesus there.

Go back, in other words, to the beginning of the story and tell it again – and again.  You’ll figure it out eventually even if disciples couldn't quite do it while walking in Jesus’ company.

At the Br. David Darst Center, stories are our lifeblood.  We invite visiting students to tell their stories and to listen to the stories of others, especially those of people who haven’t had the advantages we may have.  We caution of the hazards of resting on a single story, and survey the many ways one might “see it differently.”

We wish you a reflective and meaningful Lenten season for 2015.  We encourage you to revisit your stories and the stories of those you love, over and over again.  And as we prepare to witness the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus in Lent’s final week, we bid you to return – perhaps with Mark – to the beginning of that story often.  It is, after all, the greatest one ever told.