Easter Vigil
April 11, 2009
Mark 16:1-8
When Tom and Francie and I were deciding who gets to preach tonight, it might look as if I drew the short stick. Because I get to preach Mark’s ending to his story of Jesus’ resurrection. And his ending is so unlike the others. In fact, Mark’s ending to his resurrection story does not encourage us to sing and shout our Alleluia’s tonight. If anything, I think he would rather have us get to a monastery where we might ponder its mystery—for a long time.
But I must tell you that when the question was asked, “Who will preach?” I actually spoke up first. I offered to preach Mark’s gospel tonight, because in all truth, I love Mark’s ending to this story. I enjoy pondering its mystery. And when I come away from it, I always feel that I have connected more deeply with Jesus’ resurrection, even though I often come away with more questions than answers. The difference, it seems to me, between the story Mark tells and the stories his gospel colleagues tell is this: I believe Mark wants us to engage with his story of resurrection by faith more than by argument, by assurance more than certainty. And I like to preach this difference.
You have to wonder why Mark’s gospel ends so differently from the other gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. Why it ends so abruptly and with such a fearful response from women who came to Jesus’ tomb that day to anoint his corpse for burial. Mark’s ending shows great tension, I think, between God’s life-giving love to us in resurrection and our human fear of death. And Mark shows us some important things about ourselves in that tension. The young man who sits in the open tomb that morning tells us that God has done what he has promised he would do by sending his Son to us. By two ultimate acts of divine love, Jesus’ birth and Jesus’ resurrection, God shows us that fear and death do not have to rule our life. Because there was no death at his birth, and there is no death in his tomb. And there is no fear we cannot overcome when we no longer fear death; because by God’s gifts of birth and resurrection we come to know how completely we are loved, how completely we are forgiven and how completely we are redeemed in this life and for eternity.
The problem for the women who go to Jesus’ tomb this morning is that their human love for Jesus and their human expectation that he is dead and buried limits what they see and experience in that tomb. And I believe Mark wants us to see our own human limitations through theirs, limitations which keep us from recognizing what God is showing us in resurrection. It is our human limitation which keeps us from fully embracing the divine love and the ultimate freedom from death which awaits us at that empty tomb. It is our human limitation which keeps us from allowing God to roll the stones away from the tombs we inhabit in this world; tombs which keep us imprisoned in dead and dying places of our own life. And it is the limitation of our human experience and expectation of death which keeps us from living into the life God has given us to live by his promise of eternal life. Just like these women, we flee from those things which challenge us to see our life and understand our world as God would have us see them and understand them. We close our mouths to the life-giving possibilities of resurrection because they are so far removed from our human experience and comprehension that they become unspeakable.
These are some of my thoughts about Mark’s ending to his gospel. And I share them with you this evening, because I believe Mark is inviting each of us to find ourselves in the experience of these women, and he inviting us to find God in our encounter with them. But this is pretty heavy stuff for an occasion like this, wouldn’t you agree. I mean, we don’t hear the joy and acclamation Easter people expect to hear on our primary feast day. In fact, there are those who would argue that we should put Mark’s story away for another time of the year, because it doesn’t seem to fit the occasion. After all, our Easter celebration each year is God’s coming out party. It’s the New Year’s Eve of our soul. And there is no one who wants to sing and shout Alleluias and have a real blow-out party more than I do. But as you can see, Mark does not take us there in his gospel. Nevertheless, I think that Mark takes us to deep and rich places of understanding in his account of resurrection. He takes us into its mystery. It’s a mystery which leads us into an awareness of life in which there is no death—except by the limitations of our human experience with death and our expectation of dying. Mark emphasizes the empty tomb in his gospel. And his message is clear: there is no death in that tomb. These women come to anoint Jesus’ corpse, but there is no death in Jesus.
“He has been raised,” says the young man seated in the empty tomb. “He is not here.” And the young man anticipates their question, “Then where is he? Where is Jesus?” “He has gone on to Galilee,” he tells them. “Tell the disciples to meet him there.” At that moment, awe and amazement turn to terror for these women. They expected to find Jesus dead, but now they are told he is alive, out there in the world, waiting for his followers to come to him. How can that be? What does that mean? And what can these women possibly say about what they have seen and heard? So they say nothing; in fact, they vow to become mute and not tell anybody anything. And then they run away. And with that very human response to this very divine event I think Mark wants us to ponder for ourselves how we will respond to this resurrection event? Where we will go with this incredible story of Easter? Who we will tell it to, and how that can make a difference for good in our own life and in the world.
I know that when I accept Mark’s invitation to engage with his gospel account of resurrection, it makes me think of the many ways God has invited me and challenged me to break out of the tombs of my own life; tombs of my own making, and the tombs others have placed me in. But there have been times I have been so fearful of leaving the dead and dying places of my life. So frightened that I ran from the invitation. So fearful of the possibilities for living a new life I couldn’t even imagine such possibilities, no less speak of them. And all the time I did not know that God had already rolled the stone away. All I had to do was take the leap of faith and walk out of that tomb into the life God was inviting me to live—a life lived in the promises of resurrection.
An important difference for me in the ending of Mark’s gospel account is this: Mark is not trying to convince us that Jesus is alive in resurrection. For Mark, life in resurrection is a given. And God’s power of life over the power of human death is also a given. What concerns Mark is the power that death has over life; a power which imprisons us in tombs which paralyze us by fear and provoke us to terror; a power which limits God’s truth for our life and limits our ability to live in its freedom. The central truth of Jesus’ resurrection for Mark is this: there was no death in that tomb; there was no death in Jesus. And there is only one thing that can mean for us. When we can believe what Mark shows us by Jesus’ empty tomb, and believe what that young man says about his resurrection, we find that our response is different from the response of the women in Mark’s story. Our mouths become opened for praise, and our feet begin to take us into the promises of our life in God, right now, in this life, and forevermore.
Perhaps the most important difference in Mark’s gospel account is that Mark shifts the burden to us, the reader to make sense of resurrection. The fact that we never witness Jesus’ appearances to others gives me to believe that Mark wants us to find Jesus for ourselves in this mystery; not by the human limitations of reason or argument, but by our experience of God and the faith we bring to our understanding of resurrection throughout out life.
Twentieth century theologian Richard Niebuhr poses this intriguing and somewhat radical question about all our gospel accounts of resurrection. The question, says Niebuhr is, “not did Jesus rise from the dead, rather did he ever die?” Which leads us to ask, do we ever die?
Seventeenth century poet and Anglican priest, John Donne, writes a bold and powerful response to this very modern question with the kind of assurance I believe Mark gives us by ending his account of resurrection in Jesus’ empty tomb. In his tenth poem from his collection of Holy Sonnets, he writes
by John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Alleluia. Death has died. Alleluia. Christ is risen. [Response: The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia.]