Sermon: “He Has Been Raised”

Text: Mark 16:1-8

Easter Sunday (B)

April 12, 2009

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning is the story of Jesus’ resurrection as told in the Gospel according to Mark.  Although some of you may be accustomed to a longer version of the story, we’ll be reading only the first 8 verses of chapter 16.  After reviewing all the available manuscript and historical evidence, Bible scholars overwhelmingly agree that anything beyond our reading this morning was added years after the original version of Mark’s Gospel was written.  Two of our oldest and best manuscripts conclude the Gospel with verse 8.  Moreover, both Jerome and Eusebius, early Bible scholars in the Christian tradition, agree that the best manuscripts—and most manuscripts available to them at that time—ended with verse 8.  If you are interested in seeing the additional verses, you can find them on page 55 of the blue pew Bible, printed between double-brackets.

It’s not hard to see why someone might add some verses, for Mark omits many parts of the tradition told in the other gospels.  For example, Mark includes no stories of post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  Unlike the other gospels, which have upbeat and hopeful endings, Mark’s Gospel ends on a disappointing note.  In Mark, on Easter morning the women followers of Jesus, who until then have been unfailingly faithful and courageous, see the empty tomb and hear the angel’s pronouncement that Jesus has been raised.  They also receive from the angel the commission to go and report this news to the other disciples, who even then were cowering in fear.  But at the crucial moment, the women “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  And that is the end of Mark’s Gospel.  Why would he end the story this way?

Sermon.  Yesterday, while we were decorating the sanctuary for Easter morning, as we were nearing the end of our work and were admiring the flowers and the banners, as we were anticipating the joy that already has been ours this morning, someone said, “This is so beautiful; I wish we could do it every Sunday morning.”  Of course, that is the very thought that beats at the heart of Christian worship.  Paradoxically, since we have our roots in Jewish tradition, we do not worship on the sabbath, but rather on the first day of the week, Sunday, the day on which God raised Jesus from the dead.  That is why we call Sunday the “Lord’s Day.”  That is why, even during the Lenten season of introspection and self-denial, we remain joyful on Sundays.  Technically, in the church calendar, those Sundays are “in” Lent, but they are not “of” Lent.  Thus, on those Lenten Sundays we continue to celebrate our risen Lord, even as we recall the sad events that led to his execution.

I have strong and joyful memories of Easter when I was a child.  Thank goodness my parents were not persuaded by those who argued that Easter eggs were a pagan ritual.  I awoke every Easter morning to a basket overflowing with candy and other goodies—marshmallow chicks and bunnies; golden, foil-wrapped chocolate coins tied in a mesh bag; plastic eggs with jelly beans inside.  This was before the time of gourmet, “Jelly-Belly” beans.  These were good old drug-store jelly beans.  I even ate the licorice-flavored black ones.  Always, right in the middle of the basket, sitting on the green cellophane grass, was a large chocolate Easter bunny.  Dad would tease me by asking if he could eat the bunny’s head.  Of course, I refused, and only ate the bunny after the other candy had run out. 

Not long after the basket was opened, Mom would dress me in my new Easter outfit.  That was not always so fun, but I realized it was part of the drill and endured it.  Soon we were at church singing the hymns that are so familiar.  It’s my impression that among the various denominations the Easter hymns are remarkably similar.  I’ll bet that we Baptists sang the same hymns that you Presbyterians did.  I don’t remember the sermons, but I am sure they were good—pointing us to Christ’s sacrificial love for us and of the immense power of that love, stronger even than death.  Death was a stranger to me then, but I knew that death was sad.  On Easter God made the sadness go away, and everyone could be happy.  After church we would eat the pot roast that Mamma had put in the oven before we left for Sunday school.  And then, if it was a perfect Easter, my cousins would come over for an egg hunt in the back yard.  When the hunt was over, my basket always had the fewest eggs because, as I found them, I ate them.

These are treasured memories, and they are the childhood foundation for my current experience of Easter.  Of course I love Christmas, too, but Christmas is only the promise of God’s coming salvation.  Easter is the fulfillment and the evidence of that salvation.  God loved us so much that God was willing to become one of us, to show solidarity with us.  That’s the Christmas message—the Eternal Word and Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, becoming truly human and living among us.  The message of Good Friday is that this same God was willing to die for us—totally beyond any reasonable expectation, the Creator dying for the creature.   The empty tomb on Easter morning and the announcement of the angel, “He has been raised,” mean that “love is stronger than death”[1] and give us assurance that after we die God will “love us back to life,”[2] too.

Easter is our greatest sign of hope in the midst of trouble.  Each of us, no matter how blessed, has troubles.  And some of us seem to have more than their fair share.  As I look out over this congregation, I think how many of you are facing real and persistent troubles—grief, illness, injury, job loss, loneliness, financial reversal, mounting debts, concern about the welfare of family members.  Easter is God’s pledge that in the end, all will be well.  We are safely in God’s hands, and as the apostle Paul wrote, “If God is for us, who is against us?”  The troubles and threats that we face are real, but “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For [Paul writes] I am convinced that [nothing] in all creation, [not even death itself] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[3]

If Easter is God’s pledge of love and hope to us, then why, for goodness’ sake, did Mark end his Gospel so abruptly and on such an ambivalent note?  That is one of the most debated questions in New Testament scholarship, so of course there are many theories.  Some believe that the original copy of Mark’s Gospel was read so often and handled so much that the last page was damaged or simply wore out; so when scribes copied it for future generations, the last part of the Easter story was missing.  Many believe that the community of Christians for whom Mark’s Gospel was written suffered considerable persecution.  The theme of Mark is the importance of faithful discipleship even in the face of persecution.[4]  This had led a few to suggest that Mark may have been imprisoned or executed before he was able to finish the work. 

But most of the scholarly explanations[5] for the abrupt ending begin with the assumption that Mark intended it that way.  If the community for which he was writing the Gospel was indeed under persecution, they could certainly identify with the disciples who deserted Jesus as he was being arrested in Gethsemane.  They would be feeling the same pressures as Peter did when, three times, he denied being a disciple of Jesus.  And Mark’s audience would understand the women at the tomb: it was neither amazement at the missing body, nor temporary fear of the angel and his news of resurrection that caused them to keep silence, but rather they feared the persecution that would follow if they told the story.  The way Mark ends the story would have been a challenge to his original readers, who also faced persecution.  If the disciples do not tell the story, and if even the faithful women are afraid to tell it, then how will the Easter message of hope be heard?  The only remaining witnesses to the gospel message are the readers.  Professor Eugene Boring puts it best:

When the inner circle [of disciples] went to sleep in Gethsemane, oblivious to Jesus’ plea to watch with him one hour, the reader stayed awake and heard Jesus’ anguished prayer.  When the disciples fled and were absent at the cross, the reader was present.  When Jesus cried out to God in abandonment, the reader was still there.  Now, the readers stand at the brink of the incomplete narrative in which all have failed, and, with terrible restraint, the narrator breaks off the story and leaves the readers, who may have thought the story was about somebody else, with a decision to make. . . .[6]

Mark’s contemporary readers certainly knew the rest of the Easter story.  He wrote almost 40 years after Jesus’ earthly life, so surely they had heard about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples.  But each generation must decide what to do with the Easter story.  Each generation in its own time must decide whether, and how, to appropriate its message of God’s love and hope.  Bunnies and flowers and sweets and gorgeous music and family feasting—all of these on Easter are wonderful, for they help us express the joy that we feel.  Yet the way Mark tells, and ends, his Gospel emphasizes that the Easter story, overflowing with hope and joy, invites us to make that hope and joy real in our lives, and real for others.  By God’s grace, the story can change the way we live, the way we treat each other, and the way we understand the world.

We, the readers, have been with Jesus all along the way, but above the page.  The angel has told us that Jesus goes ahead of us and that we will see him.  Now it’s time for us to step into the story and follow.