Easter Sunday
April 4, 2021
Mark 16: 1–8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So, 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.
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Isn’t this a shabby way to end the Gospel story of Jesus and his resurrection?
“So, 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.”
What kind of an ending is that? I’ve never be comfortable with how Mark tells of the resurrection and ends his story of Jesus. During my years of pastoral ministry, I never preached on Mark’s resurrection account. Whenever it came up in the three-year schedule of readings, I diverted to the option of John’s Gospel which has a much happier, festive ending. I did this not only due to my discomfort, but out of regard for the people of the church I served. They deserved a festal shout, not a fearful whimper on Easter Sunday. I was certain, that if I preached on Mark’s resurrection account, that some of those good folks would find another church next Easter.
If you open your bible to Mark chapter 16, you will see there are two additional, optional endings to Mark: the Shorter Ending and the Longer ending. This is thanks to Christians in the second and fourth centuries who tried to improve the conclusion by adding their own endings, each one just a little better than the last one, so they thought. Yet, most scholars agree that verse 8 is where Mark ends (“and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”)
In the original language of the New Testament (Greek), the final word in verse 8 is a dangling conjunction, like ending an English sentence with “and then …”
However, upon further reflection I have become grateful that Mark left us with this dangling non-ending. Why? Well, beyond the concern of disappointing worshipers looking for a festive Easter account, Mark’s dangling non-ending is often the way it is with life.
As much as we would like to orchestrate life and have exclamation points at the end of every line, the reality is we keep ending up with a lot of incomplete sentences:
· relationships that do not get healed,
· fears that never go away,
· doubts that defy simple answers,
· temptations that return with disturbing regularity,
· economic, social, and racial divisions that never get resolved,
· hopes that are dashed on the rugged rocks of reality,
· dreams that remain unfulfilled,
· dramas that never see the final curtain fall.
Mark’s incomplete ending at the resurrection of Jesus feels like an invitation to step onto the stage and see where the story will take us.
The preceding act has ended with a simple declarative sentence. It is like something Hemingway would have written. “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus saw where the body was laid.” Period. The end. The curtain falls. The lights go out. The stage is left in silence for the Sabbath.
Then, the curtain rises again on the first day of the week. It is the day after the Sabbath. Think like it is our Monday morning with the feeling of going back to the same old grind, in the same old world, in the same old way. Three women walk onto the stage. They are going to finish the embalming of the body of Jesus that had been left uncompleted on Friday.
It was gruesome work, but they knew what to do with a corpse. What they did not know is who would roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb. When they found the stone had already been rolled away, it was the shocking, unanticipated disruption of everything they knew or expected. No wonder it scared the daylights out of them.
Mark says they saw “a young man” sitting at the entrance, like an usher waiting for people to leave the theater after the performance. He told these shellshocked women, “Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus. Sorry, but he is not here. He has been raised. He left you a message. He said to tell you that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. That is where you will see him. You need to get moving if you want to catch up with him.”
That is it for Mark. No bold doctrinal affirmation, no scientific evidence for the transformation from rigor mortis to resurrection — nothing but the announcement that the Jesus who had been crucified had been raised from the dead, nothing but the promise that he was already out there ahead of them, headed back into the world out of which they had come, and that they would find him there.
Today, Easter, is not simply the remembrance of something that happened in the past. It is the good news that the risen Savior is alive and is on the road ahead of us. We will not find him:
· in the tomb of our broken dreams and shattered expectations,
· in the graveyard of defeats and failures,
· embalmed in some experience in the past.
We will find him out ahead of us on the road that leads to a radically new tomorrow.
The good news of so long ago given to those frightened women at the tomb is timeless.
Do not be afraid. He has been raised and he goes ahead of you into the ordinary, everyday places where you live and work, laugh and cry, suffer and rejoice, succeed and fail.
Do not be afraid! He has been raised, and he goes ahead of you through death into life everlasting. Followers of the risen Savior face the awful reality of death in the awesome assurance of new life in the resurrection.
Do not be afraid. The risen Christ goes before you into all of the incomplete, unfinished, confused, and conflicted dramas of your life.
There is a catch in all of this, of course. If you are going to see him, you have to know who you are looking for. The way we open our eyes to see and tune our ears to hear is by participating in the practices of discipleship that form us into the likeness of Christ and enable us to see where he is going and to know what he is doing.
But Mark says the women fled in terror. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. They got over it, of course. You can read about that in the other Gospels and the book of Acts. But for the moment, they were scared stiff, immobilized with fear. And if we tell the truth, it is usually some kind of fear that holds us back, that blocks our way, that keeps us from following Jesus and becoming the agents of his life and love in this world:
· fear of failure,
· fear of rejection,
· fear of the risks involved,
· fear that it might actually cost us something to follow Christ.
But to experience resurrection is to discover that we, like those women, are sent out to complete the story that Mark left hanging with that clumsy conjunction, “and then …” Having seen the empty tomb, we are called to become the living expression of the life of the risen Christ in this world.
The invitation for each of us this Easter is to listen for the voice that says, “Do not be afraid. You seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised. He is going ahead of you into the real places of your daily lives, and if you train your eyes to see him, you will find him there.”
We are called to a new commitment to follow the risen Christ into the future and to allow our lives to be the continuation of the story that Mark left dangling with the words “and then …”
I do not know much about opera except that it is not over until, as a cliché puts it, “a certain lady sings.” But I know that Giacomo Puccini was one of the all-time great Italian composers. He began work on “Turandot” in 1920, but before he could complete the work, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and then died of heart failure. Puccini’s protégé Franco Alfano took on the task of completing the opera based on Puccini’s outlines.
The first performance was at La Scala in Milan on April 25, 1926. Arturo Toscanini, the greatest conductor of the time, held the baton. When they reached the point in the opera where Puccini’s work ended, Toscanini abruptly stopped the performance, laid down his baton, turned to the stunned audience and said, “Here the maestro died.” He walked away from the podium, the curtain came down, and the astonished audience went home with the uncompleted opera haunting their minds.
The next day, the orchestra, performers and audience returned to the opera house and completed the opera with Alfano’s ending. And that is the way it has been performed ever since. However, there are other endings, written by other musicians, just the way other endings were tacked onto Mark’s Gospel.
Mark’s dangling non-ending of the Gospel offers the invitation to each of us to complete the resurrection story with our story, to allow our lives to become the living witness to the presence of the risen Christ.
It may be a shabby way to end the Gospel. But it is a wonderful way to live!
