As we worked through the passages, more than once
she stopped and looked at me. She would scrunch up her face and say, “Huh. Why
did he do that?” “Why did he say that?” She was more than surprised. She was,
perhaps, disdainful.
If you can remember hearing the story for the first
time, then maybe you know firsthand how strange it is. C.S. Lewis, that
wonderful writer who expressed the essence of Christianity so powerfully and so
imaginatively, calls the resurrection story “the strangest story of all.” I
wonder if we can see how strange it is.
We have a habit of putting a nice filter over it –
gauzy, soft light. Gentle faces. Smooth skin. white, clean cloth. It’s a pretty
picture, our Easter story.
Mark gives us the shortest, most concise version of
the story. After the Sabbath, the women went to the tomb with their spices so
they might anoint his body, which had been laid in the tomb on Friday. This is
Sunday, very early in the morning.
And as they walk there, they chat amongst themselves.
They share a concern about how they would move the stone. The Friday before,
when his body was taken down from the cross, Joseph of Arimathea brought it to
a tomb hewn out of rock. He rolled a stone in front of the opening before they
all went home. The stone, these women knew, was quite heavy. They doubted their
ability to move it on their own so they could anoint the body of their Lord.
When they arrived there, these women were stunned to
see the mouth of the tomb open before them. Is it possible that some of the men
had come earlier to do this for them? They stepped inside the tomb where they
saw a young man in a white robe.
A young man in a white robe – an angel, of course.
Right? How many times have you seen a young man dressed in a white robe who was
not an angel? His first words to them were the same words that angels always
open with: Do not be alarmed. Do not be
afraid. That is what they always say.
The angel explains to the women that Jesus is not
here, of course not. He has done what he said he would do. Just a few days ago,
in fact, he said, “When I am raised up I will go before you to Galilee.”
And if you followed the link at the top you know that is where we left it. He is not here. He went to Galilee, just
like he told you he would.
Perhaps we don’t think much of it, because we have
heard the story so many times, we fill in the rest. He is not in the tomb. He is raised. Now you will see him again in
Galilee. Go and tell the others, and
so on and so forth.
It is a story that has been told in bits and pieces,
pretty much as we do – little bits and pieces every Sunday morning – over and
over again. The first witnesses told it to someone else, who then told it to
others, who told it to others. The story handed down from one to another to
another over the ages.
It traveled across deserts and rivers and oceans,
through forests and cities, from mouth to mouth, the story of Jesus Christ.
Little bits and pieces, here and there.
The story that Mark wrote down was handed to him by
others, in bits and pieces and woven together to create the narrative we now
have in our Bibles.
The story we ended with verse 7 of Chapter 16.
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.
But this is not where Mark ends the story. There is
one more thing.
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.
This is the story as Mark told it. Maybe Mark himself
sat around the fire with others in the evening sharing stories. and he told his
story. His listeners leaned in to hear. He says,
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.
And his listeners are motionless, mouths open.
Waiting for him to go on. And then what,
they ask. Mark shrugs. That’s all I’ve
got. Is it not enough?
Well, no, we say. It is not enough. Because we want
to know that the disciples carried the good news of the resurrection with them
back to the others. We want to know that they did, in fact, see Jesus again as
he promised they would. We want all the post-resurrection details.
We wouldn’t get it from Mark, though. Mark left that
to others to tell. Other evangelists, like Matthew, Luke, and John. Other
apostles like Peter and James and Paul. And the next generation, and the
generation after that.
But let us not leave behind the first story – Mark’s
story – where the women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them;
and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Let us hold this story
close in all its sparseness and severity, because it is this story that assures
us that, yes indeed, something profoundly, powerfully, awesomely otherworldly
happened that day.
Something that
terrified them because it utterly upended everything they knew about the world.
Something that
terrified them because it was unnatural. This is more than the return of new
life in the springtime, bulbs that flower, trees that bud with new leaves. That
is all that we expect, but the dead resurrected? This is something new.
Life came back into
his beaten and broken corpse, and he arose. Jesus rose from the tomb where his
body had been laid, to become the living proclamation that death has been
defeated. That love wins. That in the end is life.
In the end is life.
and this life comes not from our own good intentions or cleverness, or the
strength of our human will. It comes from the awesome power and love of God. That
is the only way life comes.
We are no stronger
or wiser than these first disciples. The women who ran away confused and
terrified. Like them, we need time and experience to form our faith, to teach
us these truths about life and death. To recognize that this truth is a perfect
fit for that gaping, dark hunger deep within us. It fills us, it completes us.
In it we know that, as T.S. Eliot wrote, in the end is our beginning. In the
end is life.
Again and again,
whenever we are faced with death, the church asserts this belief: That God has
defeated the power of death in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. It is a hard truth because we wish to never have to face death at all.
And so when we have
to face this truth, whether for the first time or the hundredth time, perhaps
we are ready to say what we believe…what we know deep in our souls had to be then
and is now and forevermore: Jesus is risen.
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
All praise be to
God.
Amen.
Photo by ArtHouse Studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/entrance-to-cave-4581191/
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