However, simply declaring yourself the messiah would not get you crucified. In Jesus’ day, there were many people who called themselves the messiah. In order for you to be noticed by the Roman government, you needed to do something that would incite rebellion. Jesus did just that when he overturned the tables of the money changers and the sellers of the sacrifices in the Temple. Thus, it was the act of declaring himself the messiah combined with the act of disrupting the business transactions in the Temple that determined Jesus’ fate.

The act of crucifixion was not unique to the Roman government. Crucifixion was used by the Persians, Indians, Assyrians, Scythians and Greeks. The reason it was utilized as a form of capital punishment is because it was cheap and public. All you needed to crucify someone was two planks of wood and some nails. Often, the executioner was given discretion as to how the accused was to be hanged. Some were hung upside-down; some were hooded; most were stripped naked. Indeed, it was often the case that the accused would be executed before even being nailed to the cross. The Romans were simply the first to make the process uniform by requiring the executioner to nail the hands and feet to the cross beam.

Mark tells us that after being convicted of treason and sentenced to death, Jesus is flogged and then forced to carry his own cross, a task handed to all criminals sentenced to crucifixion. Jesus is apparently unable to carry the cross on his own because the soldiers must compel a passerby, a man by the name of Simon of Cyrene, to help Jesus carry the cross. When Jesus arrives at the hill on which he is to be crucified, Jesus is stripped naked, nailed to the cross and after six hours of being hoisted into the air cries out his last words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is here, after Jesus’ death, where the gospels do not match up with the historical reality of what we know to be true about crucifixion. It is said in the gospels that after his death, Jesus was taken down off of the cross and placed in a tomb. If you study the history of crucifixion, you realize that the purpose of this type of execution was quite simple – the government wanted to demonstrate to the public that, under no circumstances, will rebellion, in any form, be tolerated. Crucifixion was always performed in a public place where lots of people could see the results. The entire idea of hoisting someone up in the air was to deter other people from engaging in the same behavior.

It was a public display of torture and this is why Jesus was led to a hillside outside of Jerusalem. This hillside was public enough that it would be hard for anyone to miss as they went about their daily activities. This hillside was nicknamed Golgotha, otherwise known as the place of the skull. The reason why it was called the place of the skull is because the hillside was littered with skulls from other people who had been crucified. The way those skulls got there is because the bodies of the crucified were left on the cross to decompose after they had died. The whole point of crucifixion was to leave the body on the cross to serve as a reminder for as long as possible that you don’t want to be like this person.

But this isn’t what happens in the gospels. The gospels tell us that after Jesus is convicted of treason and crucified, he was taken down off of the cross and placed in a tomb. What many Christians don’t realize is that the removal of an executed individual from the cross for burial was extraordinarily rare. Pulling the body down for burial would defeat the entire purpose of being crucified. Why go through all that trouble to hoist them up in the air if you were going to take them down as soon as they were dead?

The gospel authors knew how rare it was to be taken down off of the cross and this is why they portray Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man with political connections, stepping in to procure Jesus’ body for burial. Historically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Jesus, a poor Jewish peasant from Nazareth, would be shown such treatment. The reason why is because the person who would have granted permission for the burial of the body is Pontius Pilate, and as I’ve told you before, Pilate hated the Jews with every fiber of his being. It’s certainly not impossible, but it seems highly unlikely to me that Pilate would grant this permission, even for someone who had political connections.

Jesus was probably left on the cross like everyone else and when his bones had fallen to the ground, his remains were probably thrown into a mass grave along with all the other criminals who had been crucified alongside him. One piece of evidence in the Bible that supports this point of view is the fact that the apostle Paul, who is responsible for writing many of the earliest documents we find in the New Testament, documents that predate the gospels, never once refers to Jesus as being buried in a tomb.

Why does that matter? Because Paul is the only author in the New Testament who personally knew Jesus’ disciples and who personally saw Jesus’ resurrection. So if Jesus was buried in a tomb, I think Paul would have heard about it. Yet, Paul never discusses how Jesus was buried. And you want to know why Jesus being buried in a tomb doesn’t matter? Because Christianity doesn’t revolve around Jesus’ burial. Christianity revolves around two distinct events: Jesus’ death on the cross and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. And that is what we must talk about next – Jesus’ resurrection. (Break)

It was commonly held belief in ancient Greece that swans, having been silent during most of their lifetime, would sing a beautiful song in the moments just before death. We use the phrase Swan Song to refer to a person giving their last performance before retirement or death. In Jesus’ case, his last words before death are, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Christians have pondered this phrase for millennia because it would seem that Jesus, in his last moments, feels completely abandoned by God. And this is hard for us to understand because how can a man who embodied the very essence of God’s love feel abandoned by God?

Was Jesus expecting something else to happen? Did he think God would save him? Did he think his death was in vain? We’ll never know for sure, but what we do know is that those were not his last words. Jesus’ disciples, his friends, his family, his followers, they experienced something profound. Jesus appeared to them following his death.

We don’t entirely know what it was that they saw, but I have explained to you that the New Testament describes Jesus’ resurrection in three different ways. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus is portrayed as physically coming back to life. In portions of John’s gospel, Jesus is portrayed as a ghost or spirit who can walk through walls. And in Paul, Jesus’ appearance is portrayed as a vision that was experienced by hundreds. It is unclear which one it was, so you may take your pick.

This ambiguity is a big reason why Mark ends his gospel in the way that he does. Just to be clear, Mark’s gospel ends at 16:8 when the women, after being told of Jesus’ resurrection, flee from the tomb “for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” In other words, there is no resurrection appearance in Mark’s gospel. Later editors of the New Testament did not like that Mark excluded an encounter with the resurrected Jesus, so two separate people added two different endings to Mark’s gospel. However, we know from the earliest copies of Mark that those endings are not original to his gospel.

Therefore, in the original version of Mark’s gospel, we only hear about Jesus’ resurrection, we never get to see it. A big reason Mark does this is because he doesn’t want to define what the resurrection looks like due to the fact that it is unclear exactly what they saw. But what is clear is that this encounter with Jesus after his death was impactful enough that it caused Jesus’ followers to continue his movement.

We are here today because of what they experienced almost 2000 years ago. This is the moment that truly makes Jesus the Black Swan that would change history in ways that no one could imagine. Had his swan song been at his death, then we would not know the name of Jesus of Nazareth today. But the reason why Jesus’ movement carries on as it does is because his last words did not cease at his death, but rather, were given to us to complete.

Today we are hearing Mozart’s Requiem. This was the last piece that Mozart ever worked on during his lifetime. Indeed, he would die before he had the opportunity to finish it. The Requiem was a church mass commissioned by Franz von Walsegg in honor of his wife, Anna, who unexpectedly died at the age of 20. Walsegg had a penchant for paying composers to create music for him and then claiming the composition as his own work. Walsegg planned to pawn the Requiem off as his own composition and have the music played every year on the anniversary of his wife’s death.

Mozart had been paid half the commission up front and had completed about 60% of the Requiem when he contracted Rheumatic Fever, an illness that would take his life. Mozart’s wife, Constanze, who now had no source of income after Mozart’s death, needed to have the Requiem finished so she could receive the second half of the commission. She first turned to one of Mozart’s closest friends, Joseph von Eybler, who worked on the movements Dies irae up until the Lacrymosa, but felt he was not up to the task of finishing the piece completely because of the great respect he held for Mozart.

After Eybler, Constanze handed the manuscript off to Franz Sussmayr, an assistant to Mozart who copied scores. Sussmayr attempted to mimic Mozart’s style using directional notes provided by Mozart. He completed the Requiem within 100 days of receiving the manuscript. So Mozart’s Requiem is technically a compilation of three different composers. Mozart, the musical master himself began the piece, then two of his disciples worked diligently to finish it off. Interestingly, most musical scholars agree that the final version of the Requiem that we are playing today is very close to what Mozart would have composed himself had he lived to finish the piece.

Indeed, there is wide consensus that Mozart’s Requiem is greatest piece of music ever composed by a master and his students, which brings us back to Mark’s gospel. Mark ends his gospel in a rather odd way. After Jesus’ death and burial in the tomb, some women travel to the tomb in order to anoint the body with spices. When they arrive at the tomb, they find that the stone covering the tomb’s door has been rolled away. Upon entering the tomb, they find that Jesus’ body is gone. Sitting in the tomb is a young man wearing a white robe, who informs the women that Jesus has risen from the dead. He instructs them to tell the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead of them and will meet them in Galilee.

But the women do not follow the young man’s instructions, for they leave the tomb and say “nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” In essence, the way Mark ends his gospel, is that the message of Christianity never spreads because these women were too afraid to say anything about Jesus. So after reading all of Jesus’ story in Mark – after hearing about the teachings and the healings and the miracles, the crucifixion and the resurrection – the story just ends with those women saying nothing. I know that might seem kind of lame, but when you understand why Mark ends with these women saying nothing, you realize that his ending is absolutely genius!

What Mark is trying to tell us is that because these women didn’t do their job, it is now your responsibility to complete Jesus’ story. As a follower and disciple of Jesus, you are the one who must take the manuscript and finish it off. In Mark’s gospel, we find that the disciples never quite seem to understand who Jesus is. It never really makes sense to them. But unlike them, you do know who Jesus is. You do get it. You know the entire story because you’ve read Mark’s gospel and now you have been entrusted with completing the final movement. In Mark, it’s you who makes Jesus’ gospel complete.

You are the one who becomes Jesus’ hands in the world. You are the one who helps bring God’s kingdom to earth. You are the one who serves the least and the lost. You are the one who carries the message that we can experience resurrection here and now, in this place and in this time. You are the one who reflects God’s love to the people in the world around you. You are the one who represents Jesus, since Jesus is no longer here to represent himself.

Mark’s gospel ends with you because as long as Jesus’ message is alive within you, then Jesus’ movement will never die. May Jesus’ message live on inside of you and may you do your part to spread that message so that Jesus can continue to be the Black Swan that changes the world for the better. Amen.