Gospel Order


	Fr. Roger Vermalen Karban

The readings for Sunday, June 1, 2003, the Ascension of the Lord, are Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1: 17-23, Mark 16: 15-20.

We humans have a knack for putting things in order — especially things that happen in our lives. There’s nothing wrong with that habit. But it has a tendency to eliminate events which don’t fit into the pattern we create. This seems to be the case with today’s gospel pericope.

I frequently remind my students that even the bishops at the Council of Trent recognized that verses 9 to 20 of Mark 16 weren’t written by the author who composed the rest of the gospel. Mark’s gospel originally ended with the last verse of this year’s Easter Vigil passage. “Then they (the women) went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Though this seems to be a strange way to end a gospel, we must never forget that Mark wrote the first gospel. He could end (or start) it any way he wished. He invented the genre. He had no other gospel to compare his to.

We do. In Matthew, Luke/Acts and John we hear stories about Jesus’ post-resurrection words and actions — including mention of his ascension. This seems to be why some scribes tacked on at least three different endings to Mark. They wanted to put him in line with the other evangelists.

But, no matter how much order their efforts provided, it’s always good to go back to that period in the early church when post-resurrection events weren’t so ordered. If someone, for instance, reads Mark’s original gospel (without the additions), he or she is left with the impression that the risen Jesus is “still out there somewhere.” He didn’t definitively take leave of this earth by means of an ascension. The risen Jesus could be just around the corner, waiting to encounter us anywhere, anytime, in anyone.

Even when Paul, the earliest Christian writer, speaks about the risen Jesus and mentions that God “Seated him at his right hand in the heavens,” he doesn’t seem to be thinking about this event as a definitive ascension. Jesus’ resurrection and Jesus’ “enthronement” seem to be interchangeable concepts for Paul.

In our Ephesians selection, the Apostle is concerned with making certain his readers understand the transformation the historical Jesus experienced after his death. The risen/enthroned Jesus hasn’t been taken away from us. God simply “... put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.” In other words, Jesus is still among us, but in a different way than the historical Jesus was among us.

Luke, writing 15 years after Mark, and 25 after Paul, seems to include today’s well-known ascension narrative in his work as a way to force his readers into action. Some in his community were “sitting on their hands,” waiting for Jesus’ return in the Parousia. Jesus here not only gives his disciples a geographical pattern for evangelization, he also promises to “baptize” them with the Holy Spirit so they’ll be able to witness to him wherever they go.

Even the “two men dressed in white garments” suddenly standing beside them as they watch him ascend ask, “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” There are things to be done. And Luke has discovered that no one is going to do them as long as they’re spending all their time looking for Jesus’ Second Coming. Jesus must leave so the Holy Spirit can work effectively in us.

No matter how the risen Jesus is present to the community, with the help of that Spirit we’re empowered to accomplish what he calls us to accomplish. In the same way, no matter how we order things, our actions are always more significacnt than the structures we apply to them.

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