Easter Sunday: Following the Script
Jesus Brings Life
Mark 16:1-8
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. April 4th, 2021
On this most joyous of joyous days, we celebrate our Lord’s Resurrection. Not as fairy tale that happened once upon a time. Not as a good idea. Not as an event that happened in the bygone days of yore, not as a simple fact of history that we might hear about and move on. We celebrate, this day, that our Lord lives, and has triumphed over the power of the grave. We say “The Lord is risen, he is risen indeed.” Present tense, not past tense. On Easter we stare into the mystery and are overcome by the reality of the resurrection. He is Lord. He is alive forevermore. The victory he has won, he shares with us. And the life he has, he shares with all of us.
Easter has always been a season of great rejoicing. The fast is ended, the feast has begun. After the sorrows of Holy Week our tears reap songs of joy. We seek out our baskets. We hunt for our eggs. We eat our chocolates. We sing our praises. We celebrate. How can we do anything but celebrate? What can we say except alleluia?
And yet we are confronted with a strange scripture this morning, the ending of Mark’s Gospel. While we are celebrating, overcome with joy, the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection react in terror and amazement. When the sabbath was over, we are told, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices to prepare the body for burial. Jesus, having died on Friday evening, could not be properly prepared for burial but was instead laid in the tomb for the sabbath. Now that the sabbath had ended, Mary, Mary, and Salome could go about the agonizing task of burial.
Wanting to get the difficult task over with, the women arise as soon as the sun had risen and enter the garden. In their haste they don’t even think about who might roll away the massive stone for them. But when they get there, they see the stone has already been moved away and when they entered they saw a young man. Certainly the last thing they expected. No wonder they were alarmed.
And he said, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” But this does not seem to assuage their alarm. They don’t grasp what it means “he has been raised.” All they can grasp is “he is not here.” That is why they don’t so much walk out of the tomb but flee. That is why they do not tell Peter and the disciples as the man told them. Jesus was not in the tomb. And their first reaction was not joy, but terror. And that is where the gospel ends.
How? Why?
Mark means to startle us. He takes us into the terror of that easter morning when despair was safer than hope. When terror was easier than joy. He makes us feel the reaction of those first witnesses, who like the man on the road to Emmaus don’t know what any of this could mean, until he encounters the risen savior. The bare fact of an empty tomb is not the hope. Hope is found in encountering the risen Lord.
And we know they must have encountered the risen Lord. We know they must have spoken to Peter. And we know they must have gone to Galilee to see Jesus. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t have the book. But Mark wishes to put us in that moment of amazement and terror to draw us in. As the women are beckoned to go to Galilee, so are we. As the women need an encounter with the risen Lord to confirm their hope, and make sense of an empty tomb, so do we.
The bare fact of an empty tomb follows the “script” of the world. To use an image. It is only by encountering the risen Lord that we come to work off a different script.
The “script” of the world is a tragic script. In that story, as it is acted out by players without hope, might makes right. In that story the strong do as they can, and the weak do what they must. In that story death, like the house, always wins. And whoever wields the power of death holds absolute power. In that story there is no resurrection. What is lost will never come back. What dies will never return. It is a story of struggle, loss, and despair.
According to that script Jesus was a Jewish peasant who got some strange ideas. He could have been a little more tactful about them. Maybe he could have learned to express them in ways people could better understand. Maybe he could have avoided Jerusalem and played it safe. But instead he got himself into trouble, he made himself an enemy of the establishment. And he had to die for the sake of the order, which is always more important than any single person. He died, tragically, even unjustly. But such is the way of this world. People die tragically all the time.
In such a script an empty tomb is only a source of terror. We already lost him, now we must lose his body? He has been raised? What does this mean? I do not understand.
But Jesus would have us live by a different script. This script is what he calls the Kingdom of God. In his parables he called us to live by this script, to see the world in a new way. And in his resurrection he invites us into this new reality, that we might live by a new script.
If the script of the world is a tragedy, the script of the Kingdom is a comedy. Not in the sense that everything is funny, but in the sense that everything ultimately has a happy ending. It is not in death, that the story of this world ends, but in resurrection. It is not the powerful of this world who have real power, but those who follow the poor jewish peasant who stood before Pilate and didn’t speak a word. In such a world, it is love that wins. In such a world forgiveness reaps bountifully. In such a world we need not fear, in the end, because death has lost its power and its sway.
When we encounter the risen Lord, we are invited to share in this new script. We are invited to see the world not as a tragedy, but as a comedy. We are invited to do this because we are made partakers of his resurrection and his life. As he is risen so too we may be raised. As he lives forevermore so to we may know eternal life.
It is this reality, this present reality, the reception of this script, that we celebrate today. Jesus is alive, and in our midst. He calls us to live in the Kingdom of God. He empowers us through his Spirit. He enables all this through his resurrection.
So let us go, as the young man in the tomb beckoned us, back to Galilee. Let us walk with Jesus anew, hearing him teach on the mountainside. Let us receive anew his parables. Experience anew his