On Easter morning, March 30, 1997, newspapers reported that “a peaceful rally against government corruption in the plaza outside of the Parliament building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia was turned into a killing field by grenade hurling soldiers. The blasts, which killed 20 and wounded 117, were part of a calculated attack by troops loyal to Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge field commander.” Their target was democratic activist Sam Rainsy, who barely escaped with his life. (“U.S. Policy and the 1997 Easter Sunday Massacre in Cambodia,”By Al Santoli. Special To The U.S. Veteran Dispatch March/April/May/ 1997. )
One year later, on April 11, 1998, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, former US senator George Mitchell presided over the “Good Friday Accords,” which sought to end, once and for all, the strife between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
”This is a day we should treasure,” said Bertie Ahern, the Northern Ireland prime minister who worked with British prime minister Tony Blair to broker the deal. ”This is a new era of friendship and reconciliation.”
The settlement hoped “to end a conflict that had taken more than 3,000 lives since 1969 and had poisoned relations between Britain and Ireland for centuries.”
The Boston Globe reported that
As the two leaders finished their remarks and shook hands warmly, the skies turned dark and a snow shower broke out — a climatic reminder that the settlement aimed at ending a centuries-old conflict between Christians was reached on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar, commemorating the death of Jesus Christ for their salvation. So emotional was the moment that some British and Irish journalists betrayed their objectivity and applauded. (“A Belfast Accord ‘New Beginning’ hailed; the next step; voters get say;” by Kevin Cullin, Boston Globe, 04/11/98)
Part of the human experience is this juxtaposition of seeming opposites, of incongruous and contradictory influences. A massacre on the day of resurrection; a peace accord on the day we commemorate Jesus’ execution. Life isn’t neat and tidy. We want faith to explain away contradictions, to give order to the disorder of our world and of our lives. But faith is as slippery and as contradictory as life itself.
Scholars generally believe that the original version of the Gospel of Mark ended at 16:8, where the women discover the empty tomb, are confronted by an angel, and flee, terrified. There was no resurrection appearance, only the promise of it. Later editors were uncomfortable with Mark’s untidy ending and tacked on resurrection appearances copied from the other gospels.
But Mark’s untidy ending is terrifying because it reveals the truth. At the moment the women discover the empty tomb, they discover that none of our choices are tidy choices.
Mark’s uncertain ending invites us to one of Peter Gomes’ “thin places”—a place where heaven and earth meet, a place of spiritual openness—a place of both possibility and peril. It is in these places of possibility and peril, places that defy our sense of orderliness, that God’s world and our world meet. Often it is a terrible place–an Easter massacre, or a September 11th. Often it is a place that looks hopeful, but has perilous implications—a Good Friday Accord, full of hope, but burdened by potential darkness.
If there is no resurrection, then death is always the victor. In fact, if Jesus is in the grave, then death is actually the arbiter of earthly order, and the hand that holds the sword is the hand that determines history. Rome always wins, and life remains in the hands of the powerful. There is neither justice nor hope.
But if there is a resurrection, the world is turned upside down. We realize that God’s grace is a kind of chaos, an interruption in the expected flow of life and history. It is unpredictable and untidy. It doesn’t tie up all the lose ends. In fact sometimes it confounds us by being a loose end itself, like the lose end of Mark, where we don’t exactly know and can’t exactly say precisely what happened.
Like the loose end that we experience in the dark night of the soul, when we wonder if God is even there. How can we ever be sure? But it’s true, anyway.
Like the loose end we experience when we go through doubt and depression and uncertainty about ourselves and the world. Are we really adequate? Do we really measure up in God’s sight? The answer is, of course not. But God loves us anyway.
God’s grace is a kind of chaos, but it is the chaos of hope.