What a strange ending! So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them: and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. No appearance of the Risen one? Flight, fear and silence? That’s it? The end? Sure doesn’t sound like Easter to me! Or a proper ending to the Gospel of Mark. Our other two lessons this morning sound far more familiar. Peter in the Book of Acts preaches: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Likewise the apostle Paul: He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. So what gives with Mark’s strange ending where the women fled the tomb and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid?
It surely did not sound like Easter to early readers of Mark’s Gospel. If you look in your Bibles, you will see long and short endings that early copyists appended to Mark’s strange conclusion, explaining how the story got out anyway. Attempts to fill in the story didn’t end there. Luke begins his Gospel referring to earlier attempts—undoubtedly meaning Mark’s—which told the story of Jesus in a “disorderly” way, which he would now be correcting. And Matthew fills in what’s missing in Mark by telling how it came about that the disciples saw the risen Jesus in Galilee, just as the young man in the tomb had told the women in Mark. Clearly, just as for us, Mark’s ending did not sound like Easter to a host of early readers.
And indeed there is much that is puzzling about Mark’s ending. To begin with, how would Mark ever have known that the women at the tomb fled in terror and said nothing, unless eventually they fessed up and the truth came out? But why, then, did Mark end his “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” as he titled his Gospel in the very first verse, in this enigmatic way? Let’s do some Easter Sunday detective work, since that evidently is how Mark wants to engage us, like a mystery novel.
Let’s look at the clues. First, on the way to the tomb the women are wondering who will roll away the great stone that covers the entrance to the tomb. Careful readers of Mark will recall that this question reflects exactly how this Gospel characterizes God, namely, as the One for whom all things are possible, hence, as the One who becomes manifest when human possibilities are at their end, who makes a way out of no way all the way back to parting the Red Sea for the cornered Hebrew slaves to escape the pursuing slavemasters. When the rich young man went away sad, and the disciples wondered who could ever be saved, if it were easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus sharply replied: “With human beings it is impossible. But not with God. With God all things are possible.” And in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus in prayer surrendered to His Abba Father’s strange will that he be delivered into the hands of sinners to drink the bitter cup, Jesus had addressed him precisely as the one to whom all things are possible, hence trusting in the promise of the resurrection. From this, careful students of Mark’s Gospel see that the women’s perplexity about rolling away the stone is asking the single great question about God whose possibilities begin to manifest where human possibilities come to their natural or historical end, who makes a way out of no way.
Now some more clues. The young man in bright array, who greets the women at the tomb, certifies that they were seeking the body of Jesus who was crucified. He points to the place where the corpse was laid. This is an revelatory act of identification. Son of God, Christ, the Risen One – these are not free-floating titles that can apply to just anyone. Imagine if I preached something like this: “I’ve got good news. Someone’s risen from the dead, and conquered death. He’s on the move. He’s coming to finish the work, and his name is….Joseph Stalin!” Would that be good news? I don’t think so!
Everything depends on identifying the Risen One as Jesus of Nazareth, as Luke attests, anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him, who was crucified for our sins, as Paul says today, according to the Scriptures; that this Jesus is risen, friend of sinners and the hurting all the way to cross and grave -- that is good news indeed. Since he lives we are no longer dead in our sins! Since he lives, we too shall live and be healed of all our hurts! Good news for time and eternity.
The next clue. The young man in dazzling array addresses a message through the women to the disciples, singling out Peter. Peter, we had just learned in Mark’s Gospel, was the one who vowed to go to death with Jesus, but in the hour of trial denied his Lord, and wept bitterly. If you think about Peter’s leadership role in following Jesus all through Mark’s story, this denouement seems to be saying something like this: in one’s human power, it is impossible –and not only for the rich-- impossible to follow Jesus. Like the disciples, we too in human power are poor; we too betray, abandon, and deny Him who calls us to follow in the Spirit’s freedom and divine power. How remarkable, then, that the lead denier, Peter, is singled out on Easter morn as if to say, “Now, Peter, because of the life I lived for you and the death I died for you, now you can rise up in divine power truly to follow me.” And so Peter would in the Spirit follow Jesus, as early church tradition has it, to his eventual death as a martyr at the command of the emperor Nero in Rome.
Next clue. It is not just geography, then, when the angel tells the women that they will see Jesus in Galilee. In Mark’s Gospel Galilee stands for this groaning earth, this sorrowing creation, where the anti-divine powers of sin and death cruelly dominate a captive humanity. This is the region into which Spirit-endowed Jesus first broke in to bind up the strong man, namely the devil, and recapture his goods, namely suffering humanity. This is where the risen Jesus is risen to be, not to be absent far away in some idle heaven, but to be present as the very man on the mission that he was and is and always will be – in the Galilee of your life too, then, as in mine!
Final clue. The readers of Mark’s Gospel have known from the first verse the mystery of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. They have been made privy to the divine voice’s pronouncement at His baptism, “You are my beloved Son.” They have watched as the demons, exposed and threatened by His presence, cry out, revealing His secret, “You are the Son of God. You have come to destroy us.” They have witnessed how ineptly human beings in their own power identify Jesus -- how even the disciples who walked and talked with Jesus on the dusty byways continually got it wrong. Indeed, in Mark’s Gospel the only human being who correctly identifies Jesus as the Son of God is the executioner, upon seeing how Jesus died. This uncanny recognition is not, then, some clever human insight, but a divine disclosure, a revelation or apocalypse. Nor is it by accident that Mark mentions at just this moment that the veil of the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the profane and sinful world was torn in two. So the secret is disclosed: Jesus in true divine Sonship has laid down his life as a ransom for many, as if to say, “Dear reader! If you don’t get it here, at the cross, you won’t get it at all –even if you should see a risen One!” But the Risen One is and forever remains Jesus who once and for all was crucified, truly Son of God.
Mark’s readers, and we too, already believe in the Risen One. Indeed, Mark already has told a resurrection story, if you will, a resurrection appearance, though he has placed it in the middle of his Gospel at the Transfiguration. Here precisely the identity of Jesus, who knowingly and obediently heads to Jerusalem to suffer, to die, be buried, and to be raised again as the glorious Son of God, beloved delight of His Abba Father, has already been enunciated. The burning question Mark puts to us is not whether there is a Risen One somewhere, but whether the Risen One is Jesus who was crucified, hence the One who ever comes to meet us in the Galilees of this life.
I’ve got good news. Someone has risen from the dead, and conquered death for us. Now He is on the march to Galilee. He is coming to finish the job in Galilee. And his name is…Jesus.
Thanks be to GOD, Christ Jesus is risen.