March comes in as winter and then it goes to the birds, at least in our neck of the woods. Ever since my pubescent period, I have revelled in March and what comes quickly on its heels. Then, as now, I lived on the swampy end of a lake, which is to say, the productive end when it comes to birds and wildlife. A lot of the birds that strongly influenced my youth were shore birds. None were more influential than the killdeer.
When the killdeer returned from wherever they spent their winters, drama season was officially upon us. At first they just ran along the shoreline, picking up worms and uttering thin piping cries. Soon they began to mate and that's when the drama really began. When I was a kid, you couldn't go anyplace around the shore of the Wasa Slough without a sandpiper kill-dee-ing at the top of its lungs and looking like it was weak and wounded near to death. One or both wings would be hanging like they had been shot off. And oh, the limp! The limp was so pathetic it almost brought tears to your eyes. If you didn't follow the bird to try and catch it, it would literally fly into your path and throw itself at your feet trying to get you to give chase. I usually did. Then the horribly wounded bird would lead me off on a tangent, looking for all it was worth like death was imminent. When I was led suitably far away from the eggs or the young, the bird would suddenly lose every vestige
of being wounded and fly off with a victorious cry. I would look then, as I still do today, and marvel at how the vanquished is the victor in this drama. It was never in doubt, and it was wonderful. It is kind of like Easter.
The writing down of the Easter story in all four Gospels has a context. In all four Gospels, to one degree or other, that context is the persecuted Christian community. Mark's Gospel, very likely written down for the Christian community in Rome close to the time of Nero's persecutions (sometime after 64 AD) would have been blown away by the Easter story.
In the Passion (Mk 15:6ff), Jesus is forced to be an actor by the whole cohort of Roman soldiers (that's about 600 soldiers or 1/10th of a legion, for us military buffs). They forced him to act like the Emperor of Rome. They forced him to wear purple like the Emperor of Rome, they forced him to wear foliage as a crown like the Emperor of Rome, they hailed him like the Emperor of Rome, they knelt before him like he was the Emperor of Rome. This forced act was to mock Jesus, to make Jesus, whom the Roman procurator Pilate has called King of the Jews, appear vanquished.
The forced act of weakness goes on with more mocking by everyone at the cross, from the casual passerby, to the chief priests and the scribes, to the voyeurs who try and keep Jesus alive to see if Elijah will actually show up. Even the two men who are crucified on either side of Jesus mock him. Everyone mocks Jesus as weak and vanquished. But when he dies, when he gives up his own life and breathes his last, something else seems to be going on.
Paradoxically, the first to catch wind of something else going on is the company commander of the Roman soldiers, who is doing his duty, standing before Jesus to watch him die, and when he does die, marvels: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk.15:39). But the something else going on isn't fully realized until three days later. Three days later the word is out: “He is risen; He is not here.”(Mk. 16:6)
“He is risen; he is not here.” Mark's persecuted Christian community must have marvelled at how the vanquished is the victor in the drama they had just participated in by hearing the Gospel. It was never in doubt, and it was wonderful. It is not just a resurrection; it is the flat-footed defeat of Rome. Some of Mark's community were being martyred for following Jesus. All of them were, to some degree or other, being mocked for following Jesus. That's how religious persecution works. What really ends up being feared is the mocking. But Easter is all about the mocked one winning; the vanquished is the victor. In the drama of the Gospel, or in the dramatic living out of their faith in first-century Rome, the vanquished is the victor. From first century Rome I can almost hear “Hallelujah!”
Oddly enough, it is being mocked for my faith that is a big issue for me in my time and place. I like to think I am in no danger of religious persecution physically, and thankfully in Canada, I probably am not. But the reality is, if I am to speak outwardly about Jesus in most secular corners of my society, I will quite possibly be mocked. And the fear of that causes me to go about incognito in my faith, feeling publicly vanquished, feeling a huge disconnect between my Christian faith and the society where I am trying to live it out. And in that sense, I am strangely like the people that Mark's Gospel was written for.
But wait a minute. Like Mark's community, I am invited to participate in the Gospel too. Mark didn't write the Gospel just for his community to read, but to fully participate in. I am positive that's the reason he emphasized the Roman emperor so clearly in the Passion narrative. The vanquished is the victor. It is Christ's story; it is Mark's community's story; and it is my story. And in the face of that, and in the face of my own fear of being mocked for my faith, I now personally can appropriate those most precious Easter words, “Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here: behold the place where they laid Him” (Mark 16:6).
Epilogue: In 1951, Peter Ustinov played Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis, about Nero's madness and his persecution of Christians in Rome. As it progresses, Nero burns Rome and blames it on the Christians, who make up the lowest and most vulnerable section of Roman society. As a result, Nero begins to slaughter Christians to justify himself and to satisfy his psychotic madness. One online reviewer (amazon.com) writes: “But the slaughter of the Christians brings no satisfaction to the Emperor. The Christians sing as they go to their slaughter, inspiring the reluctantly impressed Marcus to snap, 'These people know how to die, Nero. You will squeal like a hog.' Nero cannot understand how the Christians can sing as they are being killed. After the slaughter, he goes at night into the arena and is appalled to find that they are all smiling in death.”
