The story has no end.
Most scholars believe that this is the original ending of Mark. After all those “and immediatelies” that we hear as Mark tells his story like a person in a hurry. We come to this: a non-ending ending., Oh, there are some verses that appear After this if you sere to open your Bibles, but they’re in brackets—and contain extra material. The earliest manuscripts of Mark do not include them, and so scholars distrust their authenticity.
The story has no end.
The women go to anoint a body that has already been dead for over 36 hours, hastily buried before the sun set and the Passover sabbath began, as recounted at the end of the Good Friday gospel—The body had simply been wrapped in linen and put in the tomb, with Mary Magdalene and the Mary Mother of Joses watching. The women must be incredibly numbed with grief—their errand isn’t going to do much good, and no one has thought about the practical matter of who is going to roll away the very large stone at the door of the tomb. But they still love and want to serve Jesus.
Once they arrive at daybreak at the tomb, however, not only do they find the stone rolled back and Jesus's body missing, but they find an angelic messenger waiting for them expectantly. The fact that he is seated, which was the posture of a leader or teacher, and moreover is seated on the right side, the side of prominence and strength, and wearing white are both signs of his authority in the ancient Mediterranean culture of Mark’s community. And Mark agrees with the other gospels that it was women who discovered the empty tomb—which legally is problematic, since women were not accepted as reliable witnesses in that culture.
The messenger tells them to go tell the disciples that Jesus is headed back to Galilee, the place where his public ministry began. They must go there if they want to see Jesus themselves.
We've been focusing over the last few days upon Jesus’s suffering, Suffering that is specifically demonstrated in his betrayal, arrest, beating, abandonment by his male followers, crucifixion, and death. Now however we see the vindication of Jesus's mission, and his confidence that all that he was going through would be to fulfill God's plan of salvation. At Jesus’s death in Mark’s telling, the first person to proclaim his true status as the son of God had been a centurion, foreshadowing the spread of the gospel beyond the people of Judea. All the gospels agree that all the male disciples of Jesus have run away before he breathes his last; only women were left, watching from a distance: in Mark this includes Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome, and who had remained with him all the way from Galilee. It is these same three women who arrive at the tomb in the early morning hours to continue to “care for Jesus’s needs” (Mark 15:40-41), as we were reminded twice in the last week.
Yet those women do have one thing in common with their male counterparts: since they are going to anoint a BODY, it is clear that they didn’t take Jesus’s claim that he would be resurrected seriously, either.
It is notable that already we see a sign of forgiveness even here in these brief verses. We all remember Peter, the first disciples to be called when he was known as Simon, steadfastly denying Jesus three times. And yet he is the one who is to be told, according to the angelic messenger’s instructions. In being the first, he will have the task of telling the others and maintaining his preeminent place among the apostles despite his wavering loyalty to Jesus during the Passion.
Yet despite the angelic reassurances, the women are absolutely still alarmed by the angelic visitor and the mystery of the missing body. Obviously, they eventually DO tell the apostles and other disciples, but not on Mark’s original stage. The last words it does leave us with is “for they were afraid.”
But this story has no ending. Instead, the women, just like us, are left in the in-between time that we proclaim together every time we have Eucharist. “Christ has died…” Yes. “Christ is risen…” Yes, again. “Christ will come again….” That will have to wait, just as we too are waiting for such a wondrous event.
These verses lead us to consider what it means to live in the interim, which is exactly where we are called to live. This very week, as we have told and retold the story of our Savior’s death by suffocation on the cross, we have watched again and again highlights of a trial 2000 years later in which another man had the breath crushed out of his body on an American street for nine minutes and 28 seconds. Don’t ever try to tell yourself that the gospel doesn’t have something to say to us in our time.
But it often doesn’t get as dramatic as that. Even before the advent of all the alluring technology that is designed to seize our attention with a vise-like grip, we have a natural tendency to live our lives in a walking dream. Too often, we may be trapped in the past, or we spend our lives planning for a future that may or may not arrive. Where we are and what we are doing right now slips by unnoticed while we are either remembering or planning. And yet, the wisest teacher all agree that the only thing we really have is NOW.
And the problem is that NOW is often unsatisfying, and even frustrating, as we have learned in the last 15 months especially. When we are in an unpleasant place, we want that unpleasantness and uncertainty in particular to be over immediately. And maybe this ending itself is a great example of that—maybe Mark had every intention of finishing the story satisfactorily—because after all, the meaning of “gospel” is “good News,” and you can hardly end good news with the only characters left on the stage cowering in fear and afraid to move.
And the easiest thing to have right now in this time of pandemic is grief: grief at the things we have lost, grief at the people dead and maimed because of this pandemic, grief at the ongoing violence in our streets committed out of hopelessness, and in some people’s telling of it, out of justifying claims of fear.
Those women went to the tomb to grieve. Yet I am convinced that, because we are sitting here today, they eventually let go of that and reached out for something infinitely more precious and infinitely harder to reach for. I am convinced they left eventually with a faint flickering candle of hope burning in their hearts and souls.
This story as we receive it has no end, and no sense of closure.
But perhaps it is meant to lead us to take up our own task: one of DIS-closure. Maybe the point here is that it is up to us now. It is up to us to go and tell who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. Resurrection can’t be hurried.
We are those women, confused, afraid, grieving, uncomprehending. And that’s the way many of us react to the tragedies of life. That’s only natural. Yet even here we get the hint of a resolution: when we feel lost, or afraid, go back to the beginning. Go back again to Galilee and meet Jesus anew.
This gospel IS good news for us 2000 years later, awash in a world in which being a disciples is often scorned and mocked just as it was then. We’ve come full circle. Yet these eight brief verses have three messages to impart to us:
1) Even Jesus closest friends and supporters could not wrap their heads around God’s power, and if they couldn’t then perhaps we can forgive ourselves our own doubts and faltering, our own fears and awe.
2) If there have been places where the gospel has not been shared in our own lives and in the lives of those around us—and we know there are—then we have an opportunity to take up this holy work. Joy shared is joy multiplied.
3) Failure is a necessary part of any practice, and failure only becomes a roadblock if we allow it to become an immovable object in our lives. Even in our deepest failures, there is always forgiveness from God—and encouragement to take up our work again, with joy and gladness.
Because it is not Mark’s last words that matter. It is the assurance that is given even there in the empty tomb that we can clutch to our hearts as we navigate the pain, the uncertainty, and the trials of life: Don’t be alarmed. Jesus is ahead of you, clearing the path and preparing the way for you just like the good shepherd that he is, just as he promised you repeatedly. His word is good. He is with you. And with me. Nothing can separate us from our Savior. Because he is here—in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts. Always.
He is risen—and we want to be risen too. Rowan Williams reminds us that “to speak of the resurrection of Jesus is to speak of one’s own humanity as healed, renewed, and restored, recentered in God.”
Just like those women, we stand uncertain and disoriented, but we have the promise of God, who is always faithful. God calls us to take hold of the radical, unsettling power of Easter. we need to believe in the power of resurrection—and take up our place within its realization. This pandemic has offered us a chance to not return to the things that aren’t working, but to live into our call as disciples of Jesus and turn aside from the ethical compromises we make in the name of expediency or hopelessness, We need to leave the tomb of our grief and set out in hope, in trust, in joy! As Sister Joan Chittister reminds us, “It is for us to put on the mind of God that it will take to bring the goodness of God to the evil in the world we see around us. It is up to us to bring resurrection out of suffering, to bring creativity to what is yet undeveloped.”
We are responsible for speaking into the silence. We can and will write the ending of the story. We are truly Jesus’s hands and feet and heart in the world. As we recommit ourselves to our baptismal covenant, we need to believe in the power of taking those values seriously-- —that’s how we finish the story. As we love and guide and care for this newest Christian, and all the ones in our care, that’s how we help finish the story. Because the story is one of new life in God. He is Risen!! Alleluia!
Amen.
A version of this sermon was preached at the Great Vigil of Easter on April 3, 2021 at 8 pm., and at the main Easter Day service on April 4 at 10:30 am as well as at our Outdoor Resurrection Day Eucharist at 12:30 pm at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
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