A few weeks ago I heard an interesting story on National Public Radio’s "This American Life." The story was part of a program about fathers and sons. It was told by a man who I’m guessing was thirty or forty. He was still trying to understand his father.

The storyteller’s father is a professor. He’d had a secure job at a respected university, a wife and kids, and a house in the suburbs of one of America’s major cities. When the storyteller was eleven or twelve, his father left his job, home, and family and moved in with a woman who lived in another city. Eventually, he found a position teaching in a university there.

The storyteller had titled his piece something like "The Father With the Most Embarrassing Job."1 It wasn’t the professor’s vocation that stigmatized him in his son’s eyes as having the most embarrassing job in the world. Nor was it the professor’s area of expertise, which the storyteller never mentioned.

No, what embarrassed him was his father’s avocation. This man had set up and was maintaining a Web site devoted to SETI—the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Basically, his Web site assures any space alien who might be surfing the Web that the purveyor of the site is friendly and interested in talking. "Just drop me a line."

The professor had gotten a few responses. Most were from pranksters, and all but one of the rest were from people clearly out of touch with reality. However, one response had seemed genuine enough to arouse the professor’s interest. The man who’d responded claimed to have radio waves emanating from his body. He said aliens had planted instruments in him to monitor his body functions and broadcast the findings back to wherever the aliens were based.

The professor believed this man was the most likely prospect of all those who’d contacted him. In any case, at least he could do some objective research—the evidence the man claimed to have was measurable. So, the professor arranged for this man to meet him and the other members of his Web site’s board. The professor also invited his son to join them as they did their investigation.2

During the course of that day, the storyteller asked his father what he found most meaningful in life. The professor didn’t say it was his job or his relationship with his lover. Nor did he say, as the son was hoping, that it was his children. He said it was this project in which he was involved: maintaining the Web site, attempting to contact extraterrestrial intelligence, extraterrestrial life—or at least to find evidence of its existence.

The son said he realized then the depth of his father’s discontent. His father hadn’t found meaning in conventional life—home, family, and job. Nor, apparently, had he found it in his middle-age fling. Now, this intelligent, rational, educated man was screening wisecrackers and lunatics in the search for aliens, hoping to fill the hole in his soul by finding evidence that the immense universe around our little world isn’t simply fire and dust and empty space.

I’m sympathetic with the son who was hoping to connect with his father, to receive some affirmation from him. But I’m sympathetic with the father too—with his search for meaning. I think that most people would admit that when they’re not muffling their thoughts with work and socializing and entertainment, the question arises: Isn’t there more to life than this—a few years of mixed struggle and pleasure, and then deterioration and death?

Relationships—family and friends—provide some meaning. And so do acts of service. But what’s the point of producing new beings or smoothing the road for other people when, despite our best efforts, they’ll all eventually go the way of all flesh?

The Gospel of Mark points, in a rather cryptic way, to Christianity’s strongest argument that life has larger dimensions than we typically see. Mark wrote that on the Sunday after the crucifixion, a group of women went to Joseph’s tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. An angel there told them the tomb was empty—Jesus was resurrected. The women, Mark wrote, "went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (Mark 16:8, NRSV).

Mark doesn’t write of their relief. Nor happiness. Nor rejoicing. "Terror and amazement seized them;…for they were afraid"!

Why this reaction?

William Lane notes that Mark consistently portrayed people who witnessed God’s direct intervention on earth as reacting with fear (see 4:41; 5:15, 33, 36; 6:50; 9:6, 32).3 In other words, terror seized these followers of Jesus because they realized that they were witnesses to something much bigger than they’d ever before experienced. Now they knew for sure that the supernatural had broken into their world, and all they had believed about life must change.

What does God’s intervention say to us? It says that life can extend beyond the tomb. That’s nice, but it’s not enough. In fact, the thought of eternal existence would simply add to our distress if that existence had no meaning.

But Jesus’ resurrection does more than merely promise us eternal life. It tells us that we’re not alone in the universe. Beyond that, it means the universe isn’t inhabited just by other finite beings like ourselves. It means that there is an omnipotent God.

This God of the resurrection is also the God of creation. He made us. He did so on purpose. And by finding and fulfilling his purpose for us, we can find meaning for our lives—both now and throughout eternity.

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Notes and References

1. I’ve tried to reproduce this story accurately. I couldn’t find a transcript of the broadcast.
2. Unfortunately, of course, this man turned out to be just another crazy who was slightly more convincing than the others who’d responded.
3. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. F. F. Bruce (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 590. In fact, Lane believes Mark ended his Gospel with this verse. He says this ending “leaves the reader confronted by the witness of the empty tomb interpreted by the word of revelation. The focus upon human inadequacy, lack of understanding and weakness throws into bold relief the action of God and its meaning” (592). (As most modern versions note, the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end with verse 8.)

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