Saint Mark 15:1-8
Patricia Chaarte must have really been something. A force to reckon with people might have said.
She was a voracious reader, ace crossword puzzler, and heavyweight Scrabble player. She smoked constantly {Camels}, drank enthusiastically {Dewers with one ice cube}, and was in love with peanut butter {sometimes straight out of the jar}. She was profane. She had an irreverent streak.1
She was also a talented artist and illustrator whose most memorable creation got her fired from the greeting card company for which she worked.
The assignment for her and her colleagues was to design an Easter card with one of those pop out centers that appear like a jack-in-the-box when one opens them up.
The other creators opted for the obvious. So rabbits sprang forth when the card was opened as did eggs, tulips, and the obligatory lilies.
Not Patricia. Her card was a little too “in your face.” “Happy Easter” the cover of the card read benignly, but when the recipient opened it they were greeted by “a pop-up Jesus Christ inside, arms outstretched. “He is risen,” the card read. For some reason it was too much for the company and Patricia was summarily fired.
Her colleagues captured the trappings of Easter perfectly and so have we. Lilies, we’ve got them by the carload! Easter eggs, stick around after church for our annual Easter egg hunt which is more like a rugby scrum. There was even some talk last year of dressing someone up like a rabbit but I refused.
But Patricia captured the meaning of Easter and it proved to be just a little too much. A little too over the top. A little too surprising.
A clergy friend shared the article about Patricia with me when we were on vacation together this spring and we both laughed out loud when we read it. A risen Christ popping out of an Easter card is not what one would expect. Easter cards should have pop-up bunnies, and lilies, and coloured eggs, but not Jesus springing forth when the card is opened. An in your face Jesus with your Easter breakfast is too much of a surprise.
Someone once said that the only difference between a dead Jesus and a living Jesus is that a dead Jesus can’t surprise you.
The living Jesus was always surprising his followers. He was always doing something surprising! Not just the miracle stuff, that was amazing enough but with the way he treated people. He welcomed those who were unwelcomed. He crossed class, and race, and clan divisions. He talked to outsiders, people whom others might have considered infidels, heathens.
The only thing that may not have surprised anybody is that for all this barrier breaking he got himself killed. He was put to death by religious leaders who thought that their way alone was the only way to God. He was killed by paranoid government officials who were so afraid of losing their power that they would do anything to hold on to it. He was killed by people for simply not living up to their expectations; not being the kind of Saviour they wanted.
Jesus was full of surprises in his life but with his death it looked like that would be the end of this one man surprise factory.
For the woman, the surprise party was over.
All they wanted to do was pay their last respects, finish up the job of anointing Jesus’ body with oil and spices for burial that they were not able to do before the Sabaoth. Their concerns were pragmatic and only focused on the task at hand. How were they going to move the stone that stood between them and the body of their lifeless friend?
But there was one more surprise. When they arrived at the tomb, they discovered that he is not there! Where he once was is just a young man in a white robe and, as would be expected as such a scene, they are alarmed. Maybe even more alarmed when he tells them the entire Easter story in just four sentences.
"Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 2
There it is! Mark’s entire Easter story. You got all dolled up and put on your best Easter clothes, for four sentences. We spend hours yesterday decorating this church past anybody’s wildest expectations for four sentences. All this for four sentences!
The women weren’t satisfied either for the Good Book tells us that this lean, spare account concludes with: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”3
As Debi Thomas observed correctly:
We get no glimpses of the risen Jesus. Peter and the other disciples are nowhere to be seen. When a young man in a white robe tells Mary Magdalene and her two companions that Jesus has been raised from the dead, the women don’t cry out in joy; they respond with “alarm,” “terror,” and “amazement.” We witness no Easter proclamation, no narrative arc from hopelessness to certitude. Instead, we witness fear, flight, and silence.4
And some scholars believe that Marks account doesn’t even end with the words terror and amazement but only with the words, “they said nothing to anyone for...” Marks Gospel ends with an ellipsis, an incomplete sentence, “they said nothing to anyone for...”
Was a piece of the original scroll broken off and was there a more proper conclusion written by Mark to the story? Or was a proper conclusion added afterwards by some scribe who wasn’t satisfied the way the story ended. Maybe, because he was writing during a time of official persecution, soldiers came for him, burst into his study and carried him off in mid-sentence. (I like that one it is the most dramatic!)
If Mark’s ending creates discomfort and uncertainty, it is partly due to our knowledge of how the Easter story is told in the other Gospels. Easter is supposed to have post-resurrection appearances, joyful seaside meals, scenes of reconciliation and forgiveness, garden embraces of the risen Lord, and the disciples’ excited shout, “He is risen!” But Mark offers us none of these, choosing instead to end his story with frightened women fleeing from a cemetery in silence. That’s no way to run a resurrection.5
Still, somehow this news got to us. Somehow this news moved from a cemetery in the pre-dawn darkness to churches filled with people singing at the top of their lungs and shouting “Christ is risen!”
Something, someone helped them break their silence. Something, someone propelled their legs to take them to Galilee where they must have told what they had seen and heard at the empty tomb. Otherwise, we would not know this story. If those faithful women had just remained silent, we would not be here.
Friends, those women must have encountered Easter in that place. They must have run right into resurrection newness, into promise fulfilled. Something, someone larger than terror broke their silence. Something, someone larger than numbness pulled them up out of it. Something, someone larger than pain and confusion and heartache finally brought them through that valley of grief, that land of weeping. Something, someone put the stars back in their sky, one by one.6
That someone was no less that Jesus resurrected! That someone was no less than the resurrected Christ who is this day fulfilling for us the promise of that angel and is going ahead of us.
That is the surprising, good news of Easter. That Christ is going ahead of us.
For the woman that was Galilee where they lived, had families, where they worked and played. Christ was going ahead of them to their homes, in their daily routines.
That is where the risen Lord comes to us.
You might need to stop by this place or someplace like it to be reminded that Christ promises to be with us where we work and play. You may need a reminder every week or, at least, every once and awhile that “he is going ahead of you {into} your life – your future – there you will see him just as he told you.”7
You might need a reminder every so often to be able to remember that he is with you today, tomorrow, every day.
Watch for him. You’ll be able to see him in this place for sure and buoyed by that regular encounter you might be able to experience Christ alive in your everyday life as well. “He is still busy, still going ahead of us, blazing a trail for us to follow.”7
You might need a reminder every so often to be able to remember that he is with you today, tomorrow, everyday.
Watch for him. You’ll be able to see him in this place for sure and buoyed by that regular encounter you might be able to experience Christ alive in your everyday life as well. “He is still busy, still going ahead of us, blazing a trail for us to follow.”8
Who knows? You might even see him someday popping out of an Easter greeting card with arms outstretched and the words triumphantly proclaimed, “He is Risen.”
Risen for you! Risen for me! Risen for all of us!
What are we to do with this great news? Christ is risen! What for? “Christ is risen, ‘For...?’” Well, that part of the greeting will just have to be written by us, in our own hand, at the bottom of the card.
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1. Andrew Keh, “A Graveyard Mystery,” The Week, January 26, 2024. p. 36.
2. Saint Mark 8:6-7. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]
3. Saint Mark 8:8. (NRSVUE)
4. Debie Thomas, “Slow Easter,” Journey with Jesus, March 20, 2021, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2966-slow-easter.
5. Thomas G. Long, “Middle East Peace: Mark 16:1-8,” The Christian Century, April 4, 2006, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2006-04/middle-east-peace?code=BeohvnLiKLibtFAUzag5&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=c533d364cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2024-03-25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D.
6. Shannon Kershner, “Easter Promise.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 1 April 2018.
7. John M. Buchanan, “Life Ahead.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 23 April 2020.
8. Sam Wells, “He Is Risen! Mark 16: 1-8,” The Christian Century, April 12, 2000, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-10/he-risen?code=vZEqutKQLHrEJkuW3Wl2&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=c533d364cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_SCP_2024-03-25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-31c915c0b7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D.
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