Easter: What Now?

The four gospels tell the Easter story in different ways, and you may be surprised at the version in the gospel of Mark ..

What Now?

Isaiah 25:6-9 Mark 16:1-8

That didn’t really sound like the Easter story, did it? Carol read it for us with great skill, but many things were missing. There was no lightning, no rolling back of the stone by an angel dressed in dazzling white. There was no gardener who turned out to be Jesus himself. In fact, there was no appearance by Jesus at all. Instead of a grand ending, worthy of the Hallelujah Chorus we will sing later this morning, there is just a sentence about the women running away and saying “nothing to anyone.”

The Easter story in the gospel of Mark is so brief and lacking in familiar details that it is easy to focus only on what is missing. But Mark’s entire gospel is brief, breathless really, and we should not expect anything different in this final chapter. There is a reason for the terseness of this account of the life of Jesus: the author conveys to us the brevity of Jesus’ ministry, the speed with which he gathered the twelve disciples and the rest of his followers, the momentum built up in his last week in Jerusalem.

We have lost much of that sense of urgency, I think. We are so accustomed to hearing Jesus all year every year that we forget that his public ministry probably lasted only about three years. That’s about one-sixth of the time since I was ordained. We hear most of the events of his life many times during our own lives, and we hear the retelling of the stories he told more often than any of his original listeners would have. There doesn’t really seem to be anything to hurry up about.

That changes, of course, when a crisis comes into our lives: when we lose someone we love, when our financial situation suddenly worsens, when we are disappointed or betrayed, when we are beset by illness or injury in body or mind or spirit. When one of those things happens, then the sense of urgency appears in our own lives, and we can appreciate the Gospel of Mark and all of its forward momentum.

And we can appreciate the particular Easter messages to be found in this gospel: “Do not be alarmed …” and “…he is not here.”

The first of these is a familiar message. Nearly every time an angel appears in the New Testament, the first words spoken are “Fear not,” or “Do not be afraid,” or, as here, “Do not be alarmed.” Madeleine L’Engle, whose books have deepened faith for many of us, once wondered if this fact means that angels are particularly fearful looking. I suspect that the fearfulness does not lie in the appearance of the angels as much as it lies in the anxiety in our hearts.

I rather like this particular version of the reassurance: it does not mislead us about fear. There are, after all, plenty of events and persons that it is perfectly reasonable to be afraid of; the world is an uncertain place and our lives do not always (or even usually) unfold in the ways that we have planned. So we might not be much swayed by the words of an angel telling us not to be afraid.

“Do not be alarmed..” is a more helpful instruction; it acknowledges that some dangers are real while at the same time reminding us to keep a sense of perspective about them. Moreover, it reminds us that not every surprise that appears to be sad, disruptive, or dangerous really is that way. Some unexpected events are joyful, creative, and productive. The women who came on that first Easter morning had reason to be worried about the meaning of the empty tomb; it might have meant that the body had been stolen, adding more grief and confusion to what they had already experienced. For them, the words “Do not be alarmed” were a signal that death was not the last word.

If death is not the last word, then we, also, do not need to be alarmed, and we do not need to be afraid. If death is not the last word, then we have nothing to lose by living lives of integrity, generosity, mercy, and love. If death is not the last word, then the world has everything to gain by nurturing these virtues and sustaining these values. If death is not the last word, then we are saved – saved from futility and saved for service to one another and to God.

Which brings me to the other Easter lesson for this morning: “he is not here.” The young man in white spoke what was obvious to the women in the tomb: the body of Jesus was no longer there. It is an observation that we need to make for ourselves, too: Jesus is not in the tomb. Christ is alive and present with us in the world – calling us into the faith community we sometimes call the church, calling us to ministries of compassion and justice, calling us to lives of service and reconciliation, calling us to recognition of the miracles of healing and peace.

It would be more convenient, of course, if Jesus had stayed safely in the tomb. That way he wouldn’t make a claim on our everyday lives. That way we could remember him with nostalgia and appreciation, rather than living in relationship with him. That way we could turn our attention to doing good works instead of being faithful people. If Jesus had stayed in the tomb, our religion could be orderly, predictable, and tame.

But he is not there in the tomb; he is here. And because of that, we are called into a dynamic, living relationship with Christ. He is here, and because of that our religion is disorderly, unpredictable, and wild.

He is here, and of course I do not mean only in church or only on Sunday morning. Christ does not come to church because we invite him; our call to worship does not magically bring the holy presence among us. It is the other way around: we come to church because Christ invites us. Christ invites us into a community that sustains our faith and changes the world.

The brevity of Mark’s version of the Easter story leaves us wondering what will happen next. “What now?” We answer that question each time we share our congregation’s covenant, as we have been doing each Sunday during Lent, and as we do when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism and when we welcome new members into our congregation. In that covenant we commit ourselves to “explore the mystery of Christ.”

And so here it is, in front of us on this Easter morning: the mystery of Christ – the rich, disturbing, life-giving mystery that we are invited to meet and explore with joy, with hope, and without alarm.

That’s what’s now.