Easter: End of the Story?

 Fear or Faith?  Easter   Mark 16

 If you are looking for a satisfactory ending to a story, don’t read Mark 16:1-8.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.”  You have probably never heard that scripture reading on Easter Sunday.  The rest of the verses in Mark were added later by others who just couldn’t accept such an abrupt and disturbing ending.

photo by Evan Dennis (unsplash)

What was Mark thinking?  Obviously, at some point, the women did tell someone because we are here two thousand years later still reading their story.  

Perhaps Mark’s ending is the one we should be reading now—this unsatisfying, unorthodox, disturbing ending.  Mark’s first readers towards the end of the first century faced economic and political turmoil that caused drastic disruption and displacement in their lives.  Their cities destroyed, their homes raised, their leaders executed, the faith shaken to its foundations.  Mark proclaims the resurrection but gives us no proof, no appearances, no ascension.  Only a return to the beginning of the story, a return to Galilee and a return to the invitation to follow.  The ending of Mark at verse 8 is not an ending but the potential for a beginning.  It is a promise that Jesus will meet us, will go before us if we but follow. 

Just as answers are hard to find for Good Friday, so explanations are hard to come by for Easter Sunday.  If Good Friday is the world’s desperate “NO!” Easter is God’s confident “YES!”  Our 21^st century minds want to ask “did it happen” or “how did it happen.”  The ancient mind just confessed, “Jesus Lives!”  Whatever happened, Jesus’ followers believed that he lived again and that gave them the faith and confidence necessary to spread the Way of God, for which Jesus died, throughout the world.  That is the miracle.  Two thousand years later people around the world follow Jesus.  People living in the Way of God have brought a measure of peace and justice.  God’s rule is not yet complete—challenges, empires and evil remain—but the Way is clear.  The question is:  will you follow this Risen Lord? 

Our world, whether we are ready to admit it or not, is in the midst of radical disruption and displacement, facing economic, political and environmental upheaval such as we have never seen.  If there was ever a time when the world needed to hear the gospel of truth and love it is now.  I believe that God is counting on those of us who know it to figure out how to tell it and live it in our time and place.  Like the women at the tomb Mark’s gospel is a challenge to us to overcome our fear and reticence, to place our faith in Jesus and follow where he leads.