Easter Vigil 2009
Mark 16: 1-8Good News without End
". . . and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid."
If you find that a strange way to conclude a work that begins, "The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," you are not alone. For centuries Christians have been squirming over this ending. At least some of them couldn’t stand the lack of closure, and wrote endings of their own.
Most Bible’s print these extra endings in italics. Called "the shorter ending" and "the longer ending," both resolve in one way or another the embarrassment of a Gospel that ends in terror, amazement, and silence. (They have their merits; the longer ending mentions snake handling, which opens up very interesting possibilities for next year’s vigil.)
When you think about it, however, Mark couldn’t have come up with a more honest ending. After all, the "two Marys" and Salome weren’t expecting to encounter an empty tomb, an angel, and news that would turn their world upside down. These are, to use the parlance of their day, "merely" women. Women weren’t allowed to be witnesses. Their job was to cook the meals, run the household, tend the children, wash and anoint the dead.
Women in Mark’s day were not thought trustworthy enough to do the big, official stuff. They were supposed to stay in the background, and indeed, that’s where they were on Good Friday, a little way off from the cross, weeping, watching, marking the place where Jesus was laid.
Now, all of a sudden they’re the first evangelists, given the task of dragging the male disciples out from under their beds and telling them to high-tail it back to Galilee, where Jesus would be waiting for them.
Suppose, all of your life, you were told you weren’t good enough to do anything really important, and all of a sudden you were given the most important job in the whole world? I’d find that scary, wouldn’t you?
Mark’s just telling he truth. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not to be trifled with. It’s the best – and for some, the worst – news the world has ever known.
For Pilate and the religious authorities, it is quite literally, terrible news – news that should strike terror right down deep in their hearts. They aren’t in control after all. God is. And that means that the kingdom of God which Jesus talked so much about is dawning is also on the way.
The power of the Roman Empire doesn’t mean squat if God has raised Jesus from the dead. What’s more, the Temple doesn’t house God’s Board of Directors. The Temple is finished. The veil between ordinary people and God has been ripped from top to bottom. There’s no sewing it back together, not if Jesus is alive.
Imagine being told by an angel to go up the State Capitol on Monday morning and tell both the House and the Senate that God expects them to re-orient their entire budget along the lines of the teachings of Jesus, who was raised on Sunday morning.
Start with the poor: Make sure they have complete medical coverage and decent housing.
Then take up the plight of the disabled: Fully fund the programs which help them live in dignity as people made in the image of God.
Children are next. We all know how Jesus welcomed them.
Keep on climbing up the social ladder until you get to the top, then turn the whole budget upside down. Put sky box owners and corporate lawyers on the bottom and put what used to be "the least of these" on the top. And if you don’t have enough money to do all that, try injecting a little justice into the tax system.
And, by the way, do it this year, not next year, because Jesus is coming back real soon to make sure you’ve done it right.
Just imagine how you would feel if you went to the graveyard expecting to pay your respects to your best friend, and instead met an angel who told you do all of that.
Would you do it? Would you be afraid? Would you be seized by terror and amazement and say nothing to anyone?
Maybe that’s why Mark ends his Gospel this way. He wants us to be shaking in our shoes at the Easter vigil. He wants us to feel the terror those first disciples felt, and with it the terrible joy.
Perhaps the point Mark is making is that everyone in his Gospel fails to live up to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. God, the very same God who raised Jesus, will have to finish the story.
Easter doesn’t depend on us. It’s God’s doing. God split open the heavens at Jesus’ baptism. God tore the curtain of the temple from top to bottom. God raised Jesus from the dead, and God transformed timid, stuttering, foolish disciples – males and females both – into the Church of Jesus Christ.
The story goes on because it’s the story of what God is doing in the world to bring God’s kingdom in. That kingdom will come, with or without us, but what a gift it is to be chosen by grace to live in it now.
This year we won’t be presenting any confirmands to be claim their baptismal vows. That’s O.K. Instead, we’ll remember our own baptisms, our own dying and rising with Christ, our own call to bear his good news into the world.
Tonight we remember that we are Easter people. This is God’s doing, and even though it’s scary, it is marvelous in our eyes.
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