When the End is the Beginning
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. 2And
very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they
went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, “Who will
roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4When
they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had
already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man,
dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were
alarmed. 6But 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. 7But 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.” 8So 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.
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
How wonderful it is to gather together on Easter
morning to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus! We’ve known this day was
coming. We reflected on
sin, death, and evil. We
read the accounts of Jesus betrayal and death. Nevertheless, as we did so, we
were always aware that this day was coming!
After all, we are an Easter people. This is the day that defines
us. We wait each year for
this day to celebrate fully what we are called to celebrate each day
–that Christ has risen and the world will never be the same as a
result.
That is why it is so hard to imagine how those
women felt that morning. We’ve
read the book and we know that it has a happy ending. However, they didn’t know
that. Or course, they should have—Jesus had
told them often enough—but they just hadn’t understood. Besides, unlike the men,
the women had stood by Jesus as he died.
They knew the pain and the agony he had endured and they knew
just how dead he was. Then
they had seen him placed in the tomb.
Because of the Sabbath, they hadn’t even had the
comfort of the routine rituals of preparing the body of the dead loved
one. They must have looked
forward to Sunday morning so that they could do the only thing that
they knew to do when faced with death.
So they awoke early on Sunday morning—before
the sun had even risen—and walked to the tomb with the fragrant
spices needed to properly prepare his body. They were so intent on their
task and befuddles by their grief that they didn’t even consider how
they would get to his body.
They knew that they were not strong enough to move the stone at
the entrance of the tomb, but they went anyway simply because they
felt that they had to do something.
When they arrived, they were startled to discover
that the stone had already been rolled away and they entered that dark
tomb expecting the worst. They
must have been thinking: “Haven’t they done enough to him? They beat him, humiliated him,
and then cruelly murdered him. Couldn’t
they leave his body alone? He never hurt anyone. Surely he deserves more respect
than this!”
Of course, what they discovered wasn’t a
ransacked tomb but an empty one—well actually, it wasn’t empty
because in the tomb was a man dressed in white—an angel—who said
to them, “Don’t be afraid. I
know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified, dead, and
buried. But see here,
where they laid him, he isn’t here.
He has risen. So,
go and tell the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead of you to
Galilee
—just like he promised! Go
there and you can see him for yourself. ”
Then according to Mark, the women fled the tomb. Because they were frightened
out of their wits, they said nothing to anyone.
That according to the oldest versions of the
Gospel of Mark in existence is the where Mark’s story ends.
No resurrection appearances. No breakfasts on the beach. No doubting disciples touching
Jesus’ nail scared hands. No
words of reassurance from the resurrected Jesus. Just three frightened women
running off from the tomb and doing the opposite of what the angel had
asked them to do.
And it is unsettling . . . .
Most of us want our stories to end neatly with
all the loose ends sewn up. But Mark’s gospel unsettles us by
leaving us hanging like a TV series canceled mid-season. And no one wants it to end this
way. As a matter of
fact, as far as I can tell among all the paintings and drawings of the
resurrection story no one has painted the women running away in fear! There is something very
uncomfortable about that scene. No
wonder, several authors wrote new endings to the gospel—resulting in
a gospel that appears something like a Director’s cut of a movie
with one or more possible endings depending on your translation of the
Bible.
But today, I want us to reflect on what appears
to be Mark’s original—albeit rather quirky and
uncomfortable—ending.
After all, this is where we live our
lives—somewhere in between the empty tomb and the physical presence
of the living Christ. Like
the women that morning, we only know that Jesus is alive because
others have told us. None
of us has ever bumped into Jesus at sunrise in a garden. We’ve never had the
opportunity to place our hands in his wounds. Jesus has never prepared us
breakfast on the lakeshore. All
we have is the word of others that the tomb is empty and Jesus has
risen. And like them, we are left with instructions
about what to do with an empty tomb—you go and tell.
When most of us think of Easter, we generally
focus on our own future resurrection.
Interestingly enough, none of the four resurrection accounts
mentions a life beyond this one for us!
Paul will expound on that later. The New Testament is full of
discussions on how the resurrection is a foretaste of what is to come
for us. But the risen
Christ doesn’t talk about life after death! He doesn’t talk about a
future hope! Instead,
Jesus leaves instructions for his
followers about life in the here and now!
“Go and tell!”
“Feed my sheep.” “Go
and make disciples.”
Jesus fully intended his resurrection to make a
difference in this life—so much of a difference that we would be
compelled to go and to share the good news with others. And he fully expected us to do
so!
Perhaps that is why the women were afraid of the
empty tomb. The empty tomb
makes a claim upon us. The
empty tomb shouts that sin, death, and evil have been defeated and,
therefore, everything has changed and we can’t continue to live the
same lives as before. The
empty tomb means that Jesus’ work on this earth is not finished and
those who call themselves his disciples have work to do.
The empty tomb was not the end of the story but
the beginning of a new one!
Unfortunately, the truth is that we humans are
not very good at living in the reality of resurrection. Fear comes naturally to us. We fear death. We fear each
other. We fear
vulnerability. Fear runs
our lives. In fact, the
fastest track to gaining power in our world is to play up people’s
fears and then promise them a quick fix for those fears.
However, the resurrection says something very
different. The gospel does
not allow for quick and easy fixes for the problems of the world. Temptation, suffering and death
are not avoided, ignored or denied.
Rather resurrection says God is stronger than any of them. So Jesus defeats evil by facing
allowing evil to do its worse to him--even to the point of nailing him
to a cross. Jesus defeats death not by avoiding it but embracing it. Resurrection says we can
face the absolute worse life has to throw at us and still believe that
all will be well.
Yet how often do we come to church, declare that
Christ has risen, and then go home still trapped by our fears!
We fear illness thinking that death is the end. We fear evil as if the evil in
this world is stronger than the good.
We act as if we think Supreme Court justices can take Christ
out of our schools. We act
is we think television and movie producers can take Christ out of the
lives of our children. We
act as if we think governments can take Christ out of our lives and
out of our communities.
But the main point of all four gospel narratives
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is simply this: because Jesus Christ was raised
from the dead, we now know that he is the Messiah, the Lord of the
universe and we now have a job to do!
We are called to declare the good news through our words and
through our actions on behalf of that world. We are called to live a life
defined by love and resurrection rather than fear and death! Because Jesus was resurrected,
nothing will ever be the same!
In her book, The Irrational Season,
Madeleine L’ Engle tells of visiting the Church of the Chora in
Istanbul
. At the church, she saw a
magnificent painting of Christ above the altar. And in the very center is the
figure of Jesus striding through hell, the gates crushed beneath his
feet, with one hand grasping Adam and the other grasping Eve wrenching
them from the power of hell!
This is the Jesus we worship on Easter—not some
whimpy Jesus who was misunderstood and killed—but the Lord of the
universe who has broken the power of sin, death, and evil! What is more amazing is
that he didn’t break the power of sin, death and evil by becoming
some sort of superhero. Rather
he defeated their powers by becoming fully human even to the point of
dying. Nor did he defeat
them by taking on the trappings of earthly power rather he allowed
those powers to do their worse to him and still he defeated them!
And
that means nothing can keep this Jesus out! As Paul declares so beautifully
in the eighth chapter of Romans: “If God is for us, who can be against us? Since he did not spare his own
Son, but gave him up for the sake of us all . . . Are we not sure that
it is Christ Jesus, who died—yes and more, who was raised from the
dead and is at God’s right hand—and who is adding his plea for us? Can anything cut us off from
the love of Christ—can hardships or distress, or persecution, or
lack of food or clothing, or threats or violence . . .No; we come
through all these things triumphantly victorious, by the power of him
who loved us. For I am
certain of this: neither death nor the life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come
between us and the love of God known to us in Christ Jesus, our
Lord.” (Romans
8:31b-32, 34b-35, 37-39)
Nothing can keep this Jesus out! And if we are honest, we must
admit that this is a somewhat frightening prospect! Because if we let this Jesus
into our lives, we can’t control him.
If we let this Jesus into our lives then everything must
change. He is the
nosy guest poking into our business and calling on us to change. Furthermore, he won’t be
content for us to stay holed up in our comfortable homes. Rather he will be hard at work
pushing us out of our homes and our churches and into his world.
As Bishop Willimon once said, “At Easter, we
are met by a living, free Lord, the risen Christ. To be met by the
living God is a bit frightening, for it means that our God will not be locked up in the past,
will not be imprisoned in history, or within our limited notions of
what God can and will do. Jesus
is raised!”
The tomb—that appeared to be the end—was
merely the beginning of something new.
“We serve a risen Savior. He’s in the world today!” Not just yesterday. Not tomorrow. Not when we die. Not when the last trumpet
sounds. He is in the world
today!!!
No wonder the young man in white said to the
women, “Do not be alarmed!” It
is a fearful thing to come into the presence of the risen Christ!
So we peer into the empty tomb with some fear and
discover that Jesus truly is not there.
And we hear the words of the angel. “He’s gone ahead of you to
Galilee
; that is where you will see him, just as he told you.”
On that first Easter, Jesus went ahead of the
disciples to
Galilee
—the place that most of the disciples called home. The place where the disciples
would return—presumably to their pre-Jesus lives and careers.
What does that mean for us? That means that Jesus goes
ahead of us into our daily lives.
Jesus commands us to go and tell, to feed and
tend his sheep, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to work for
righteousness and justice in this world.
And then Jesus goes ahead of us expecting those of us who call
ourselves followers to do just that—to follow him into ministry to
this world!
This is the purpose of the church: to be the body of Christ alive
and active in the world! We
come here today not simply to celebrate Christ’s victory over death
and then to return home as if nothing has happened. We are here to celebrate a new
reality—a new beginning—that calls us to live life so differently
that we can’t help but share the joy and we can’t help but reach
out to others as Christ has reached out to us.
But like those women so long ago, we have a
choice to make! Is the
empty tomb the end of the story for us or the beginning? Do we run away in fear and
silence or do we follow our Lord into the world to share the good
news?
When I was in
Israel
a few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the garden tomb of
Jesus. Like many other
places in the
Holy Land
, more than one location claims to be the tomb of Jesus. One is at the Church of the
Sepulcher in the middle of old
Jerusalem
. The other is outside the
walls of the old city in the midst of a garden and near a cliff that
looks a lot like a skull. I’m
not a biblical archeologist but I think there is good reason to
suspect that the so-called Garden tomb is more likely the original
tomb than the one in the Church. But
I was struck by two things as I entered that tomb. One was how empty it felt. Everywhere else I visited, I
had been almost overwhelmed by the sense of being on holy ground. But here it just felt empty.
Then as we started to leave, I noticed a sign on the door, which read,
“For he is not here, he is risen!”
The tomb is empty!
As our tour guide reminded us in many ways it really doesn’t
matter where his tomb might have been.
Jesus who was dead is alive!
And we who call ourselves his followers are not called to
entomb ourselves in a church or to sit waiting for him to return but
to follow him into the world he so loves.
That is why I
love the quirky, unsatisfying ending of the gospel of Mark because it
speaks to us where we live. Mark
asks us to search our hearts, to hear the words “He is Risen!” and
then to decide if we can wholeheartedly respond, “He is Risen
indeed!” Because if it
is true then nothing can ever be the same. And if it is true that we
serve a Risen Savior then we must go and do what the angel commanded. We must go and tell through our
words and through our lives!
For Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
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