WHAT HAPPENS NOW? Easter Day
April 8, 2007
Mark 16:1-8
Well, we’re finally here. Standing at the empty tomb at the end of a busy week. A week crowded with services that are filled with emotional and spiritual impact. Some of us have been companions for the whole journey, from last Sunday’s Palms and Passion, right through Thursday’s hand-washing and Last Supper and coming of the darkness, to Friday’s despair and fear, to the glorious wonder and triumph of this Easter Day.
There have been moments of sheer loveliness, moments of immense power, moments of intense grief, moments of such awe that I was speechless (although I know that’s hard for you to imagine!). One of the most moving parts of the week usually comes, for me, as I stand on the steps of the church and watch the two halves of the Good Friday walk converge here for worship. But this year, because it was colder on Good Friday than it was on Christmas Day, the east group was too cold to wait for the west group to arrive and came on and in. The frozen west group arrived a few minutes later and we sent them on in, too. And the last thing was the procession of the joined crosses into the sanctuary.
The crosses are still here, by the way. They stand as one and today they are covered with daffodils. Something has happened between Friday and this morning. Something that we signify by glorious music, triumphant processions, our best stoles and paramets and banners, by lilies and daffodils in profusion, by joyful faces and hope-filled words. And that something is called Resurrection.
Each of the gospel writers tells the story of the Resurrection in his own way. But they all agree that it was the women who went to the tomb first on the day after their Sabbath. Matthew, Mark and Luke tell that three women went to do for Jesus what was necessary—when his body was taken down from the cross it was already after sundown on Friday, the Sabbath had begun. And so the body was just given rudimentary preparation, wrapped in linen cloths and laid in the tomb. The proper anointing for burial was not done. The women in the first three gospels were going to do the loving work of preparing the body. Mary, in John’s gospel, just “came to the tomb,” alone, before the others—probably to mourn by herself for a moment.
They risked much, those women. After all, the soldiers who had crucified Jesus, who had been ordered to guard his tomb, might do the same to them that they had done to Jesus. But they had courage, these women. All the gospels agree that they were the only followers left after Friday. Everyone else was in hiding.
The other thing that the four gospels all agree on is that the women and the other disciples did not know what to do with this rolled-away stone, this empty tomb. In Luke’s gospel, the men react to the women’s news by thinking that it was an idle tale, the result of wishful thinking. In Matthew’s gospel, the women run to tell the disciples in joy, but also in fear. In John’s gospel, after Peter and John have been to the tomb and Mary has told them that she has seen the Lord, they lock themselves in a room, for fear of their lives.
I can imagine them sitting there, looking at one another in disbelief, in confusion, in terror. This is unbelievable. There was nothing like this in the rule- books. The Manual had nothing to say about this eventuality. What do we do now?
But Mark’s gospel tells the story a little differently, and perhaps more truthfully. Mark, believed to be the gospel first written, ends the Easter story abruptly, even awkwardly, ambiguously, particularly in comparison to the other gospels. The last words of Mark’s gospel are words about the women, the women who have just seen the empty tomb and heard the words: “He is risen; he is not here…” And Mark says of the women: “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for terror and amazement had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Then the gospel of Mark ends.
And it was unacceptable to the early church. For, by the second century, the church had added a “better” ending to Mark, an extra eleven verses. It certainly rounds out the story better. But there is clear evidence that those eleven verses were added almost 125 years after the rest of the gospel was written, long after the writer was dead.
Mark, himself, tells of no appearances of the risen Lord, no suppers at Emmaus, no reassuring words to the women on the way back to Jerusalem, no breakfasts on the beach. There is nothing but this abrupt, stunned, fearful ending.
And I expect, if we were really to get down to the nitty gritty, that Mark does a better job of expressing how many of us feel about the Resurrection than do the more elaborate, more refined, assured words of Matthew, Luke or John.
A minister tells of shaking hands at the door after an Easter service and receiving the usual comments on how wonderful the service was and so on. And then a young man shook his hand and said only: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” That young man could have been the women, or Mark, or you, or me.
If you want the Resurrection explained to you, if you want Easter done in technicolour, pounded into you in sure and certain words of earnest conviction, argued scientifically, or evoked poetically with talk of crocuses, butterflies emerging from cocoons, or the return of robins in the spring, don’t read Mark’s gospel. For the three women have only to tell, if you can get them to tell it at all, of Easter fear, trembling and silence.
Once again Jesus had given them the slip. They had come out to the cemetery to give him a decent burial. But Jesus would not stay nailed shut, stay some sweet memory. As always, he had gone on before them, out ahead of them, into the future; out of death, into life. And it scared them half out of their wits.
Have we come here this morning as those women came to the tomb? Have we come to pay our respects to Jesus, Jesus who lived so long ago, Jesus who did and said some wonderful things? Have we come to nail down our faith, to be reassured once again that we are certain? “Resurrection? Right! Got it all nailed down, secure and certain. No problem. Amen. Alleluia. Stand and sing the final hymn!” If that’s what we came for, we are going to be disappointed.
Because that’s not the way the risen Christ does it. What he offers is not always certainty, but more often trembling, wonder, awe, stupefied amazement, fear. The whole point of the empty tomb is that the story is open-ended. Like the women at the tomb, we see something, we hear something, but nothing has been explained. We must decide for ourselves. At that empty tomb, Jesus’ story becomes our story. Ours to continue. Ours to complete.
We can’t stay at the empty tomb. We can’t stay hidden in our fear. Because Jesus isn’t there. He has gone on before us. He’s out in Galilee. If we come out to the place of death, wanting proof, we get no proof. What we get is life, a living Lord who is way out ahead of us.
We must finish the story for ourselves, in our lives. We have been told that he is not there, in that tomb. He will not be held by death. So, if we follow him, it will not be to places of deadly certainty. It must be forward, into the future, into the risky and uncertain places, out into whatever Galilee is ours. That’s where he is. That’s where we’ll meet him and he’ll meet us.
And that news is more than a little frightening. No wonder the last words in Mark’s gospel, and in the story of the first Easter is fear. “They were afraid.”
What are we supposed to do with such a story? After all, we came here this morning looking for certainty, looking for Jesus. But he isn’t here. We just missed him. By this time of the morning, he’s already in Galilee. He’s gone before us. We have to go and find him in our world. We have to go and tell others by word and action the good news of his life and ours. We have to go and live him.
For Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
Alleluia!
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