Sermon from March 24, 2002
The air of mystery that hangs heavily over the Gospel of Mark makes itself felt in an unexpected and perplexing way in its concluding chapter. The most ancient and best-known manuscripts of the Gospel end Mark's story of Jesus at Mark 16:8. Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

It seems like an awkward way to end a story. Other people thought so and they added a longer ending to the book that is more in keeping with the other Gospels. As a result, nearly every English version includes verse 9-20.

My own hunch is that the short ending is original. It seems more likely that people who revered the Gospels would hesitate to take something perfectly good out of Mark 16. They would more readily add something to them, which they thought would compensate for what seemed to be an embarrassing omission.

Frankly, whichever ending was original, the long one or the short one, Mark has understated his case. He spends more time in chapter five on the Gadarene demoniac than he does on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why this restraint? What's the point?

Consistent with my hunch, I will end this exposition of the Gospel of Mark with Mark 16:8 and with a suggestion about Mark's unseemly reserve in the face of the most astonishing reality in the history of the world. Consistent with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church throughout the ages, I will end this exposition of the Gospel of Mark with a reflection on the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. First, we set the context with Mark 15:40-47.

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there. I wish we knew more about them. We do not. We do know that chapter 16 gives three of them a place of high honor. I wish also that we knew more about Joseph of Arimathea, especially where he was the night the Sanhedrin Council found Jesus guilty of blasphemy and agreed to hand Him over to Pilate. Here is what we do know about him verses 42-46.

It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Josepth of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

From here on, let's read the rest of the story and then reflect on its meaning. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid. Women could perhaps watch the proceedings and draw less attention to themselves than men. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. C.E.B. Cranfield in his commentary on Mark makes a lovely comment on the women's action. "Love often prompts people to do what from a practical point of view is useless," (Cranfield, 464).

If the Sanhedrin got an early start on the previous Friday to deliver Jesus to Pilate, the women got an early start on Sunday to honor Jesus with their spices – very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise. Before we walk with them into the tomb of Jesus, let me bleat out a futile complaint about the translation of the NIV that I use. It says the women start out just after sunrise. 

The translators missed their chance to take advantage of one of the beautiful plays on words that English makes possible here. If they had only said, very early on the first day of the week, just after the sun had risen, they would have made the rotation of the earth and the homophones of English conspire to hearld the resurrection of Jesus; for the sun had risen right after the Son had risen. Perhaps I am being too subtle. It is a fault.

Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other in the manner of people who act before they think, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" And in the manner of people who obstinately refuse to be resonable and face the incontrovertible facts of life, they did not stop their mission or send one of their number back to get help; they just kept going in the same hopeless direction. An unexpected surprise awaited them at the end of their destination.

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. Mark, characteristically, offers no explanation. The women, characteristically, do a very brave thing: they enter the open tomb, and they got about the last shock they expected.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man (notice that Mark does not call him an angel, and notice that he is young!) dressed in a white robe (that's why we always picture angels in white) sitting on the right side, and they were (to put it mildly) alarmed. It is not the first time in the Gospel of Mark that signs of life have been more alarming than the signs of death. Remember the disciples' astonishment at Jesus after He rescued them from a storm at sea.

Then, this young man or angel, if he be angel, does his best to calm their fears. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified." We don't know if that calmed their fears, but it confirmed that they were in the right place, or at least they were talking about the same person. But the young man was not at all saying what the women expected.

"He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him." Part of that statement is pretty straightforward, part is not. When the young man says, "He is not here. See the place where they laid him," anyone can verify that independently. Just look over there. You can see the stone bed where a body should be, and you can see that nothing is there, except perhaps the linen strips Joseph had used to wrap the body, an action the women had witnessed.

But what are they to make of that first statement? It requires only one word in Greek, hvge,rqh. "He is risen!" It would have been clearer, if he had said, "Jesus is not really dead," but he says, "He is risen!" Equally incomprehensible but equally clear would have been, "Jesus is alive," but instead: "He is risen!"

That Greek word was used of rousing someone from sleep. A more literal rendering of that word here would be, "He was roused," but of course His was no ordinary sleep. The first evidence offered to support that claim is the empty stone bed. The second evidence is more telling.

If you have been roused from death, what do you do first? In keeping with His intimate relationship with His disciples and in keeping with the aboslutely heartbreaking events at cockcrow two days before, the young man tells the women what Jesus intends to do next. "But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'"

The young man issues an invitation that makes your heart hammer. Reunions can make your heart hammer, especially if it is a reunion with someone who was torn away from you; and it will be in the old, familiar haunts of Galilee. Jerusalem had not been kind to the disciples. They were at home around the blue waters and green hills of Galilee.

This particular reunion can break your heart, if you are Simon Peter. The last time Mark told us anything about Peter came at the end of chapter 14, after some infernal rooster had crowed a second time, and Peter had remembered how Jesus had said Peter would deny Him three times before that second cockcrow. Mark said simply, And he broke down and wept.

Mark mercifully shields Peter from any disclosure of what he had lived through since that awful moment. It is heartbreaking enough that the young man at the empty tomb says disciples and Peter, as though Peter were no longer one of the disciples. I don't doubt that Peter felt cut off from them, but this reminder of the separation would be painful. The Gospel of Mark comes to end with some doubt about whether the young man's message will ever be delivered.

Trembling and bewildered, the women went off and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. These women, who had been the most courageous of all for so long, give way before the eerie emptiness of the tomb and the mysterious message of the young man. Why does Mark end His Gospel like that?

Well, it is in keeping with his style all through this Gospel. Remember all those times that Jesus did not want someone to tell anyone about some event that everyone wanted to talk about? Why do that? Remember all the understatements of dramatic events that leave you wanting more? What was the name of the paralytic Jesus healed? What happened to the restored demoniac who went home to his family in the Decapolis? How does one solve the riddle of David's son, who is also David's lord?

Mark is the great whetter of appetites. He tells you just enough to make you want to know more. He tells you just enough to start you down any number of rabbit trails. Here at the end of his story about Jesus, I believe something else is going on.

The resurrection of Jesus means first and foremost that we have to go back and reread the entire Gospel in its light. Events that looked one way as they happened in the course of things have to be reevaluated in light of the resurrection. It surcharges all of them with new significance. I have chosen three events from Mark that I would like to look at with you in light of Jesus' resurrection.

The first one takes us back to the end of chapter three and the time when Jesus' mother and brothers interrupted His meeting. Someone in the crowd sitting around Him told Him that His family was outside asking for Him. Then, Mark tells us this. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

The resurrection means that doing God's will is inseparably and eternally bound up with a person's faith and obedience to Jesus Christ. The resurrection gives God's seal of approval on the Lord's life and teaching. We ignore Christ and HIs teaching at our peril. Our relationship with God hangs on our relationship with Jesus Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus bears on a second major action of Jesus, namely, his predictions about the temple. He had sharply criticized the temple authorities for harboring terrorists against Rome. He had told a parable anticipating the removal and replacement of Jewish leadership. Most startling, He had foretold the destruction of the temple with the implication that Jerusalem itself would be destroyed.

The resurrection of Jesus puts God's seal of approval on those prophetic words, and those who had ears to hear could still do something to forestall the coming catastrophe. Too few did, and within 40 years the words of Jesus came to frightening fulfillment, when the Roman armies under Titus looted, dismantled, and burned the temple as part of putting down Jewish rebellion against the Roman occupation of Israel.

After that, Jewish readers of the Gospel of Mark could still hear Jesus' words as an invitation to Israel to change direction and acknowledge the truth of Jesus' message and mission. It did not happen on any large scale, and the terrible chasm between church and synagogue grew wider and wider.

Finally, I noted two weeks ago, in chapters 14 & 15 that every episode drives home the utter helplessness of Jesus. From the moment that Judas betrays Him in Gethsemane strong arms seize Him and do not let Him go. The betrayal and abandonment by His inner circle, the machinations of the Sanhedrin, the imperial power of Roman law, the merciless hands of the soldiers, the nails, the taunting by the powerful, the taunting by the two men crucified alongside Him – all convey relentlessly the fact we wish to deny: no miracle is going to change any of this. There is no escape. Anyone can do anything to this Person with impunity. No band of desperate followers perishes with Him. No voice intercedes. He dies alone. He is a non-person.

It almost seems that these dark and bloody scenes capture something that is indispensable to the meaning of Jesus' human existence, perhaps indispensable to the meaning of all human existence. What did Mark and the first Christians see? Can we see it? Can we grasp why they came to think of the sufferings and crucifixion of Jesus as the wisest and most powerful thing God ever did? Here before the crucified Jesus humanity finds its ultimate negation or its ultimate hope. Which is it?

The resurrection confirms that before the crucified Jesus humanity finds its ultimate hope. The thing that will ultimately save humanity from its evil is not the power of power but the power of weakness, in particular His utter weakness.

The resurrection forced that idea upon the imaginations and minds of the early Christians, and they no longer saw His suffering and death as a tragedy. Instead, they saw them as an act of divine love that wakens each human being to its true dignity and worth. They saw them as the atonement for the sins of the world. They saw them as a reconciliation of God and man and of man and man. They saw them as the foundation of a new creation. They saw them as an example to be followed and as a path to communion with the risen Jesus.

That is the understanding of reality that has entered human life, and it shall never perish from the earth. It has endured and will endure the animosity of its enemies. It has endured and will endure the folly of its friends. It will endure until it remakes all humanity and all the natural order. At the cross of Christ and at the empty tomb humanity has turned the decisive corner in its long sojourn upon the earth.

If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Do you so believe and confess?