WHEN IT COMES TO LIVING THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, beginnings are better than endings. That may be one of the most important lessons that the Gospel of Mark, by its very structure, teaches us.
We live, unfortunately, in a society more interested in endings than in beginnings. Sporting contests, business profits, and personal résumés exalt final scores, bank accounts, and individual achievement. Endings are more important, it seems, than beginnings.
At first this seems right. Winning, money, and success make life a whole lot easier than losing, debt, and failure. Everyone concerned with raising a family and navigating through the difficult roadblocks of life needs to pay attention to endings. Although reasonable and attractive, however (especially when the Bulls win and our bank account is healthy because of a good job), placing too much emphasis on endings actually creates a climate in which it is impossible ever to be satisfied or whole. The “endings” turn out to be illusory. They are not really endings after all but merely penultimate resting places that lead to new goals and more endings, stages, and levels that go on and on and never really get us to a satisfactory end.
Thus, describing life in terms of endings may not be the best way to do it. It may lead not to the best worldview or philosophy or theology. In fact, it more often than not leads to discontent, neuroses, and despair. We always want to win more, make more, succeed more. More is an insatiable taskmaster. Is there another way?
Yes. As Professor David Garland shows in this commentary on the Gospel of Mark, the better way is focusing on beginnings rather than endings. Why? For one reason, it is a better way of describing reality. It gives answers, or hints at answers, to some of the more difficult problems of life. It gives meaning to suffering—although I suffer now, in the Christian life tomorrow is always a new beginning. It makes perseverance sensible—why stick it out? Because life in Jesus Christ promises eternal life. It restores hope to its rightful place as queen of virtues.
One of the geniuses of this Gospel is that it shows how the coming of Jesus Christ helps us focus on beginnings, leaving the endings to God. How? Primarily by showing that Jesus Christ is the New Beginning to end all new beginnings. In one sense, the whole story of the Bible is the story of God’s giving first his chosen people and then the whole creation chance after chance to start over again and get their relationship right with God. Jesus Christ represents the culmination of that process, not by saving everyone once for all, but by giving everyone the chance, forever and ever, to start over again at any time. We can never lose hope because there is always another chance, as offered by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
One of the interesting features of Mark’s Gospel is that it starts abruptly and really has no ending. Scholars speculate on the reason for this unique feature. I lean toward the idea that this was intentional on Mark’s part—one more way of showing that Jesus, the New Beginning, did not end anything but made it possible for the story of God, working in human history and in the church, to go on and on. The Story is never finished, never ended. We are living the salvation offered in Christ right now, and more and more people are beginning to experience the reality of this each and every day.
The ultimate new beginning, of course, is the Resurrection. Death, the ultimate ending, has been defeated by Jesus Christ. Faith ceases to be faith when it is wedded to endings. It is the Resurrection that symbolizes all the new beginnings of the Gospel of Mark, and it is the Resurrection that teaches us that after Jesus Christ, there is no ending, only the hopeful promise of eternal life.
—Terry C. Muck