The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day, rcl yr b
Sunday, March 31, 2024
ACTS 10:34-43; PSALM 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11; MARK 16:1-8

for they were afraid

There’s something of a mystery surrounding the ending of Mark’s Gospel. And that mystery is: how exactly does it end?

There are three, or maybe even four, different contenders for the ending of Mark. There’s a long ending and a short ending—which you will find in brackets in most Bibles—both of which though are clearly not written by the person who wrote the rest of Mark’s Gospel. There’s the possibility of a missing ending, as though some first century equivalent of an overtired toddler or overstimulated French Bulldog tore off the last page in a fitful bid for attention.

These two fabricated endings, and the theory of a lost ending, have arisen for a very particular reason: and that’s because the ending we are given in chapter 16 verse 8, the last verse we heard this morning, is deeply unsatisfying: “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.”

To end there would be to end Mark’s Gospel with no resurrection appearances of Jesus, we would only be left with an empty tomb; we would only be left with the mysterious young man in white, telling the women that Jesus was not where they were looking for him; we would only be left, finally, with the fearful flight of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James,  and Salome. No Jesus, just the unreliable witness of a stranger, and three women running away afraid.

One theory is that this is the ending that Mark intended; and aside from the distinct lack of a resurrected Jesus, it begs the question: could the good news of Jesus Christ,  the Son of God, end with fear, or terror, or dread?

Most of us live with an imagined future for ourselves, though we don’t always realize it. We take our present circumstances and extend them into the future. As we imagine the next months, the next year or two, in this imagined future we have the same income, we are just as healthy as we are now, we live in the same home, and we imagine this future populated by the same people.

And then. And then. And then some part of this future is taken away from us. We get sick, or someone we love gets sick. We lose a home or an income. We lose someone we love. And then this imagined future, where all things were to be good and well, begins to fall apart. And our lives are entirely disrupted. And faced with a future opened up and widened to the unknown, we panic, our minds become shrouded and cloudy, and a destabilising dread comes over us. And we wonder how it is we can even live in a world marked by such a frightful loss.

I know this fear. When I was nineteen, I was a tall smart kid from the right sort of neighbourhood. My future was bright, I was sure that I could make my way through anything the world could throw at me. I had stability, and a home I could rely on. My world was full of potential. And then I fell out of a tree.

And in that moment, as I realized what had happened—that I had broken my back—I was seized by fear. How in the world was anything in my life going to work now? A future full of potential became a future I hardly knew at all, empty of so many of the things I had assumed would be there. Things got better; but those first hours were terrifying.

That’s only one kind of loss that leads to disquieting uncertainty. I’ve been with enough of you in other times of loss as you reimagined a future—without someone you love, or with an unwelcome health diagnosis—to know how destabilizing that can be. To call it deeply disquieting feels like an enormous understatement.

To think on these sorts of destabilising circumstances can begin to help us imagine what kind of fear the women who went to the tomb were living with. Those three women had lost someone they loved, and had to reimagine now their futures without Jesus, their friend and teacher. Not only that, they were doubly traumatized by the sort of death he suffered. And now the loss is redoubled—the body they went to anoint, the body of their friend and teacher wasn’t even there. Crucifixion, death, and now an empty tomb—their opportunity for fear doubled, and then doubled again. This was not how things were supposed to be.

There is something more happening, though than simply fear in the face of loss and trauma. What the women heard from the strange young man in white was that “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified … has been raised;  he is not here … he is going ahead of you to Galilee;  there you will see him, just as he told you.”

This is more than loss—this is a proclamation of a new, and even more unsettling presence in their lives. The tomb is empty, and Jesus lives, but not like any of our other loved ones. He lives in a way we do not know, we do not understand, and yet he is here, somewhere now at the edge of our vision, just out of sight, and now by this presence—not his absence—he is disrupting every future the world has ever imagined.

And this kind of terror is more like awe than it is fear in the face of loss. Because this is the Jesus who silences the wind and waves, leaving us in awe at his power. This is the Jesus who has authority over the demons that plague us and bring us out of our right mind, leaving us in awe at his power. This is the Jesus who heals a woman simply through her touching his garment, and we are left in awe at his power. This is the Jesus who is transfigured on the mountain, and like Peter James and John, we are left in awe at his power.

This is the kind of fear that the women felt: this fear that is more like awe, wonder, astonishment, and amazement at a future in which this Jesus who heals, who is Lord over creation, and who is transfigured in light—this Jesus is now not here in the tomb because he is raised, not lost to uncertainty, but here in a newly destabilizing uncertain certainty, because the world is charged now with possibility.

If he has been raised, then all that was promised in his healing, in his love, in his transfiguration, is now unleashed upon a dying world; if he has been raised, then even the grip of death has no hold on him, and he releases us with him into a future of life where there once was only death.

And we would know a new and terrifying awe as we are swept up into this strange and bewildering new life with him, inhabiting now a world cracked open where things are no longer what they seem: because now, to lose is to be vindicated, to be weak is to be strong, to die is now to live.

So does the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, end with fear, or terror, or dread? Yes, and no. The Gospel cannot end in fear—not in the fear that comes with loss. Because in the empty tomb, all loss is now gain—the empty tomb is the beginning of the reversal of all our misfortunes, the renewal of our bodies and our minds, and in the world to come reunion with all those we’ve lost—now, because of God’s vindication of Jesus in his resurrection, we are poised with him to gain all things, as all things, and all of us, are made new.

Because on this day, the tomb is empty—and Jesus is the victor over death, bringing, leading, and sometimes just plain dragging all of us along with him into a new and bright future that erupting now with life— and he carries us, and he bears us, by grace, by gift, by love, and by a suffering, but living kindness.

The Revd Cannon Preston Parsons PhD