Easter Sunday
Mark 16:1-8
One of the things I look for rating a book either good or bad is a satisfying ending. On the one hand, I don’t like stories that tie up too neatly and on the other I don’t like to feel that the author just stopped writing because they got bored or tired of their plot line.
For millennia, readers of the Gospel of Mark have gone back and forth about the stories ending. Indeed most scholars today believe that the last eight verses of the gospel were added by a reader disgruntled enough to take matters into their own pen and add what they thought was a more complete and worthy ending to Mark’s missive. You will find those verses in a small print footnote or in parenthesis in your Bible.
Without those verses, there is, of course no debating that the gospel comes to an abrupt halt. Jesus has been crucified and hurriedly buried before sunset on Friday when the Sabbath begins. On Saturday at sunset the Sabbath is over but of course then it is too dark for anyone to go to the tomb. So very early on Sunday morning, Mark tells us, Mary Magdalene and Mary, James mother and Salome buy spices so they can go and anoint the dead body of Jesus. On the way they worry about how they will get into the tomb since a very large stone has been rolled across the opening. When they get to the tomb they find they don’t have to worry because the stone has already been rolled away. So they go into the tomb and there sitting inside they see a young man in white. We are told they were alarmed. Who wouldn’t be? This is not what they expected. But the young man tells them not to be alarmed. He says, Jesus is risen. Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee and there you will see him. And then we are told they didn’t tell anyone because they were afraid. And that’s it. That’s the end.
Matthew Luke and John all give us wonderful stories of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples, but Mark, well Mark just stops here. Though we don’t know a lot from this ending we do get three things—Jesus is risen, Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. And there, in Galilee, you will see him.
Now this morning we must have uttered those words “He is risen” through proclamation and joyous song fifty times so far. But it didn’t hit the women that way. They were afraid and their fear fed their silence. So we can only assume that what the man in white said next is what gave this message legs; the legs to carry it around the globe.
“He goes before you.” Think of it. The disciples, certainly the chief priests the Romans, they believed that Jesus had been rendered history. With his death they believed that this Jesus was no longer a factor. With his death he became irrevocably a part of the past and the announcement of the resurrection was the announcement not only that he is risen but that “He goes before you.” The risen Lord is in the future; the risen Lord had escaped the past and become part of his followers today’s and tomorrows.
How many of us come to Easter services to commemorate the past? A great man, a miraculous event, history. But if the resurrection is to mean anything to us in our time, we too must hear the message, "He goes before us." Jesus Christ is ahead of us. He's thinking and acting and preparing the way into our future. He is not a relic of yesterday. He is the Lord of tomorrow. He goes ahead of us.
The messenger also said something about "where." "He goes ahead of you to Galilee." Now that bit of geography may or may not be meaningful to you. If we were first century Jews, we would have expected major religious events to happen in Jerusalem in the temple. The Jerusalem Temple was the religious center of everything and Galilee was the fringes. Galilee was the boondocks; it was the marginal area of the time. Nobody ever thought that anything of major importance was going to happen in Galilee, but Jesus and his disciples were all Galileans. So when the angel said, "he goes before you to Galilee," he wasn't saying that Christ is just out there anywhere, but he was saying to the women and through them, to the other disciples, that they were to go back to the scene of their ordinary lives and find Jesus, the risen Lord, there. They were to go back to the place where they grew up. They were to go back to the place where their relatives lived. They were to go back to the place where their old jobs were. They were to go back to the place that was home and work and neighborhoods and family and he, the risen Christ, will be there waiting for them.
Now, do we come to Easter services expecting to find the risen Lord here among the Easter lilies, and within the great anthems, hymns? Well, of course he's here, but this is the Jerusalem Temple of our lives. The risen Christ is not nearly as interested in the sacred precincts as he is interested in the world where we live and work and where our families are. Jesus cares about the world where the conflicts and struggles and decisions of work site take place. He cares about the world where people get sick and the world where people get confused. He hurts in the world where people die. It is out there in the Galilees of our life and world that he awaits us. If Easter is to be more than simply a commemoration of yesterday, let us hear the message of the angel as a message to us, he goes before us too, to the Galilees of our life, wherever that may be.
He goes before you to Galilee and what was the third promise? "There you will see him." And we can, too. We can also see Jesus out there in the real world. We see Jesus wherever the resurrection is repeated and replicated in the lives of ordinary people. We see the resurrection wherever despair is transformed into hope. We see the resurrection wherever broken relationships are healed and someone mutters the words "I forgive you" and the tomb is emptied. The resurrection happens out there in the real world where someone stands on their feet for the causes of righteousness and justice no matter what it costs. In those and countless other places, the Lord is risen indeed.
Maybe Mark wasn’t so interested in tying up all the loose ends and making us comfortable with the ending to his gospel, his good news of Jesus. Maybe the whole of what he wrote is summed up in the words he penned in chapter one verse one, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Maybe the story only continues as we head out to Galilee to meet Jesus there.
Amen