Resurrection of Our Lord/Easter Sunday, Mark 16:1-8

March 31, 2024 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Listen again to key features of the resurrection account in Mark’s Gospel. This will help you get a feel for the emotions conveyed in and by the story.

The women who dutifully visited Jesus’ tomb, expecting a very difficult and unpleasant task, asked, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” That’s a question dripping with anticipatory anxiety if not to say dread. 

Then the women saw that the stone had been rolled away, and they went in only to see a young man dressed in a white robe, and naturally, they were “alarmed.” 

The young man tries to reassure them with words of resurrection proclamation and promise: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here… But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just he told you.” 

These wonderful words didn’t help the situation, though, for 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.” 

Alarm. Fear. Terror. Amazement. Fleeing. Being seized by strong, mostly negative emotions that left them absolutely speechless. They were afraid to say anything to anyone about what they had seen and heard. 

Do you catch the mood? It’s a real downer, actually. If this is how it all really ended, if they really kept their silence, we would not be here today. 

Think about it: there’s nothing in this story that matches the festive, celebratory mood of Easter Sunday with all the triumphant music played on the organ and sung by the choir. The story of the resurrection in Mark does not match the glory and beauty of all the flowers which we enjoy as joyous signs of new life. Today’s weather actually matches well with the mood of Mark’s resurrection story: cold, damp, dark….

Moreover, if we’re left only with alarm, fear, terror and paralyzing speechless amazement, then we’re also left with human business as usual where sin and death have the last word.

Thank God there are other resurrection stories in the Bible that are more definitively hopeful and victorious. 

But here’s the thing: what we just heard today as the Easter gospel reading is likely how and where the most historically accurate version of Mark’s gospel ends. Today’s reading is the likely place where Mark stopped writing.

Why on earth and in heaven’s name would the gospel writer Mark end on such a seemingly downer of a note when the resurrection of Christ is all about unambiguous victory and joy? It’s as if the story that Mark tells is unfinished, without closure, without a genuine ending. 

And there may be a real purpose to that. Some scholars suggest that Mark’s gospel was intended to be dramatically acted out as a kind of passion play. So, the gospel of Mark might be seen as more of a script than a stand-alone narrative to be read like a book. Maybe this is why the text of Mark’s Gospel is so sparse and comparatively brief – because the drama of the acting would speak for itself. 

If this is the case, if the story is meant to be enacted, then we are invited to look elsewhere for how the story ends. Obviously, the women – or others – did end up telling someone about what went down in the empty tomb, or again, we would not be here today. And Jesus did meet the others in Galilee as he promised.

Here’s what may be going on: if Mark’s Gospel was acted out in the theater, as it were, of the early church, the story of Jesus’ resurrection has its true ending amidst those in the audience, that is, the gathering of the early community of believers who were assembled to hear the story. That’s where the story is completed.

And once the story, the proclamation of the word had concluded, maybe those early believers in Christ in Mark’s community went on with their usual early Christian practices of singing and praying and sharing the peace and celebrating the meal of breaking bread, all the while enjoying the vibrancy of early Christian community. 

Which is to say, the assembly of God’s people is where the resurrection story finds its completion – when the risen Christ shows up in that community as the believers hear the story proclaimed, when Christ shows up in the singing and praying, when Christ appears while believers are reconciled to each other in sharing the peace, and above all, when the risen Christ is made known to the community in the breaking of the bread. It’s Christ’s appearing in these ways amidst God’s people that completes the story.

Friends, here’s the good news: the risen Christ still shows up among us in these same ways even now, even here – in the stories, in the praying and singing, in the meal – to complete among us the gospel narrative of victory over sin and death. Alleluia!

And when we are gathered by the Spirit in the name of the risen Jesus, our terror and alarm turn to joy, our fear turns into faith, our paralyzed silence turns into speech. Our amazement becomes an amazement, an ecstasy, that is joy-filled and not frightening. 

Just as the young man in the tomb proclaimed that the risen Jesus of Nazareth was going ahead of the women to Galilee, so, too, we discover Jesus here. Friends, this place is our version of Galilee where the risen Christ meets us again and again. 

Here in this place, where every Sunday is Easter Sunday, a celebration of the resurrection, Isaiah’s prophecy that we heard this morning is fulfilled: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And [the Lord] will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; [the Lord] will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces…” (Isaiah 25:6-8a)

Friends, this place is our mountaintop. This table gives us the feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, food and drink that are Christ’s very living body and blood. 

Here on this mountaintop, the shroud that casts a pall over our lives and the life of the world is destroyed as death is swallowed up forever. 

Here in this place, the risen Jesus himself, known to us in the word and in the breaking of the bread, wipes away our tears. 

Jesus himself finishes the story of Mark’s gospel when he shows up in Christian community again and again and again. He showed up to Jesus’ original followers. And he appeared to the growing numbers of believers in those ancient, early years. Jesus made himself known to Paul, even though he was not one of the original eye witness apostles: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, Christ appeared to me,” Paul writes. “For I am least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace toward me,” Paul concludes, “has not been in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:8-10a)

And it’s been happening this way for two thousand some years.

And just as Jesus appearing to the original apostles and Paul and the early church, including Mark’s community, caused those early Christians to get up on their feet to proclaim to still others the good news of Christ’s resurrection, so, too, we are sent to others to echo the words of the young man at the tomb: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised!” The urge to flee is transformed into a passion to go and tell the good news.

Thus, with our own faith routinely resurrected here in our Sunday gatherings, we’re called to leave this place to invite other people to this mountaintop of our version of Galilee where Christ will always meet us with the gift of his very presence, the gift of his very resurrected life for the sake of a world still paralyzed in alarm and terror. 

Again, and finally: as has been the case for two millennia, our assemblies where Christ meets us are the true ending of Mark’s story of the resurrection. What a joy to continue to be part of the greatest story ever told, the greatest story ever enacted, right here, right now – for alleluia, Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.