The Lady or the Lion
By Frank Stockton (edited and revised)
In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas were indeed semi-barbaric. The king had a daughter, beautiful and fair… the envy of every woman in the nation. She could have any man in the kingdom… but her heart was set on a lowly stable boy. He had no position and no wealth, but he was handsome and he made her heart leap. It was not long before the two fell in love and began to meet in secret. Unfortunately for them… their secret love was discovered by the king, and the king… furious… ordered the boy to be captured and jailed.
The king was outraged that his daughter has steeped so low, and he began to devise the cruelest punishment that he could fathom. And then… he thought of it. The boy would be taken into the public arena and be given a choice… a choice of chance. Two identical doors would stand before him… behind one, the loveliest maiden he could find in all of the kingdom, behind the other… the most ferocious lion that could be found. If he chose the door with the maiden he would be forgiven for his transgressions and immediately married to the fair maiden. If he chose the door with the lion, he would pay the price for his misdeeds and be torn to shreds and devoured.
The lion-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, and the country was searched for fairest maiden that could be found. The king found a particularly fitting woman, one that almost matched the princess in beauty, and one who everyone knew was close to the stable boy, perhaps even a little too close. It was known that the princess was jealous of this relationship and felt threatened by this fair maiden.
So the stage was set and the appointed day arrived. All was ready. The king and princess were seated, and as they waited… the king leaned over, and told the princess who the fair maiden was. The princess glared at him… oh how cruel. Anyone… anyone but her. Then… to her amazement the king told her which door she was behind. Then he sat back and smiled.
The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the stable boy emerged. Tall, beautiful, fair, no wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!
He was pale and trembling with fear. His eyes were fixed upon the princess, hoping she knew… hoping she could give him some guidance. His glance shouted at her “Which?” and there was not an instant to be lost.
Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the man in the arena.
He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it. The End.
No seriously… that’s how it ends. How many of you liked that ending? How many of you want me to tell you the ending? But that isn’t how it was written… it was written to leave you answering the question… who was behind the door, the lion or the lady? It is written to create that tension… what happened next!
Alright… for those of you who NEED to know how it ends, I don’t want to lose you completely… I don’t want you to miss the point of the sermon so I’ll tell you how it ends. Flying ninja’s swoop down with uzi’s and blow everybody up. The end. There… all those loose ends tied up quite nicely. We good?
Some of us like the ending of that short story… like the freedom… like the opportunity to use our imagination to craft our own ending. Others of us hate this ending… it is incomplete… unfinished… unanswered. And this tension sits there at the end of this story… just waiting to be resolved.
So what does any of this have anything to do with Easter? It is time to read our New Testament text. Open up your bibles for this one, because we get to something cool… something I bet you’ve never noticed before.
Mark 16:1-8 NIV
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 "Don’t be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ’He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’" 8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
The end!
See that big black line? The little note there in the middle of the bible. That is how the oldest manuscripts of Mark end. They don’t have verses 9-20. Those verses were added years later by scribes who hated that ending. The tomb is empty… and the women… trembling and bewildered flee saying nothing because they were afraid. The end!
That’s not a good Easter story. Being left there… alone with those women trembling and afraid. Why is the tomb empty? What have they done with my Lord? What is going on here? You can’t end it like that!
The scribes were right… we need verse 9… “Jesus rose.” There we go… that’s more like it, Jesus in person… doing something living people do… like getting up out of bed!
We need verse 14… “Later Jesus appeared to the 11.” That’s right Jesus… kick it with your homies! Let them see you… let them touch you… let them feel the wounds… then they’ll know for sure… then we’ll know for sure.
We need verse 15 and 16, “He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
There we go, now THAT’s an Easter sermon. The feel good verses we have been waiting for… for 6 weeks now. Jesus rose. Jesus taught. Jesus went home. Believe… be saved. Now GO… serve! THAT’s an Easter sermon.
But that’s not how Mark wanted it. That’s not how Mark wrote it. He wrote: the tomb was empty and the women fled trembling and afraid. The End! He doesn’t want us to see Jesus risen… he wants us to stare into that empty tomb… and decide for ourselves. Why is the tomb empty? What have they done with my Lord.
He wrote it intentionally to leave you answering the question… what happened? It is written intentionally to create that tension… making you beg the question what happens next! The cold, dark, foreboding tomb sits before you today… and Mark asks the question of you, what do you think happened.
Did somebody steal the body? Are they at the wrong tomb? Has someone desecrated his remains? Or… did he raise from the dead? The big question behind it all… who is Jesus, really? Is he the Christ?
It is a question that Mark has been hinting on for 16 chapters… on and on again… Jesus would do something miraculous… and the person or the demon would declare… “Surely, you are the son of God.” And Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone.” Time and time again… Jesus keeps his true nature a secret:
Mark 3:11-12
11 Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.
Mark 7:34-36
34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly. 36 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it.
Mark 8:27-30
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?" 28 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." 29 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ." 30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Mark 9:9-10
9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what "rising from the dead" meant.
Now, I gotta ask why? Why not tell everybody… why not do something so huge… so amazing that everyone once and for all can see Christ is the king of kings? The point is… each person needs to decide for themselves who Christ is… if he shows them… it no longer becomes faith… it becomes something else. So Christ continues to say time and time again… tell no one.
And so it is here at the end of Mark that he uses the same literary device to beg the same question of you. You have sat with Mark for 16 chapters now, you have seen Jesus’ deeds, you have heard his words, you have heard him teach the disciples:
Now, we stand before the cold, dark, and foreboding tomb… and the question looms before you. The answer isn’t given to you all pretty and tied up in a bow… in Mark you have to wrestle with the empty tomb. Was this man the son of God? Why is the tomb empty? What happened? What happens next? Those questions are for you to answer?
Do you still need to know how it ends?
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
