Mark 16:1-8 "Easter in Motion" Scott Hoezee

Computers are powerful tools. Most people under the age of 30 can't imagine what it was like back in the days of typewriters when every revision of a paper required re-typing the entire thing. Now we store our documents on disks and, even if we have already printed a copy, can easily make a few changes, and then re-print it without having to re-type.

One of the advantages of word processing is something called "global replacement." Let's say you had written an essay in which you used the word "society" a lot but when you finished you realized that you really should have used "culture." With global replacement you can tell the computer to find each place the word "society" appears and automatically change it to "culture." Even if you used "society" 200 times, the computer can change every one of them to "culture" in the blink of an eye.

Sometimes churches utilize this tool for documents that get used a lot. Some time ago I read about a church office which had stored onto its computer the standard funeral service. Each time a funeral had to be held the secretary would tell the computer to find the name of the deceased, replacing it each time with the correct name for this specific funeral. So one week Mary Smith passed away and the secretary had the computer put Mary's name into all the right spots, such as when the minister would say, "We remember our dear departed sister Mary" or "May the Lord now give Mary his eternal peace." The next week Edna Jones died and so the secretary made the appropriate switch of names. But it was quite a surprise at this particular funeral when, in the reciting of the Apostles' Creed, the congregation learned that Jesus had been "born of the virgin Edna"!

Well, that's a true story but if my telling of it just now struck you as humorous, it did so because, like a joke, this story concluded with a surprise ending that took you off guard. A few years ago I told you about a curious tradition of the Orthodox Church--each year on Easter Monday (tomorrow) they get together to exchange jokes. The idea is that since the Easter story has the ultimate surprise ending, they enter into the spirit of the season by exchanging other stories which also have surprise endings.

Indeed, the turn of events between Jesus' death on Friday and what we are here to celebrate this morning could not have come as more of a shock to the disciples. None of them had so much as a whisper of a doubt that Jesus had really died. They all knew what death looked like and Jesus was dead.

He got buried. His tomb was sealed with no thought of ever unsealing it again. He was gone. When one of our friends dies, we don't urge the funeral home folks to leave the lid of the coffin a little loose. We don't suggest that they not fill in the grave with dirt after all. What would be the point? And so with Jesus: when he was buried, no one was hedging their bets by skipping the embalming or leaving the stone ajar. Jesus was dead. End of story.

So in this sense the shock of the resurrection truly is history's ultimate surprise ending! The disciples, indeed the whole world, did not see this one coming! But that is just generally true of the Easter story. Mark, however, has another surprise for us. Last Sunday we saw how Mark created irony by presenting the so-called Triumphal Entry in a non-triumphant way. Today we see that Mark does the same thing with the resurrection.

The story is told in a very matter-of-fact way. What's even more striking, however, is that the only people who hear the news about Jesus' rising from the dead exhibit absolutely no joy! Instead Mark merely tells us that the women that first Easter morning trembled and felt bewildered. He informs us that they do not simply leave the tomb but that they "fled," a word used in situations of terror, not joy.

Suppose a grandfather calls his granddaughter over and says to her, "Sweetie, out on the back porch I have a special surprise for you: a new bike!" Upon hearing this news the little girl will probably quickly run out to see the bike. If so, you might describe her as sprinting away from her grandfather, maybe skipping out to the porch, or perhaps as dashing or bounding out with glee. You would not, however, say, "Upon hearing about the new bike the little girl fled from the presence of her grandpa."

But Mark tells us that the women fled. They ran away but not with a skip in their step. They were bewildered. They didn't even tell anyone a single, blessed thing because, Mark tells us in the end, they were flat out "afraid." And that is the last word in the gospel according to Mark: afraid. As we have mentioned before, and as is noted in your pew Bibles, there is now near-universal agreement among biblical scholars and commentators that the last seventeen verses of Mark 16 (verses 9-20) were not written by Mark but were added on later by someone who clearly believed Mark had not ended his gospel very appropriately.

But it does indeed appear that Mark concluded his gospel with the bewildered silence of women who were too afraid to speak. But why? Surely Mark knew what profoundly good news this was. Surely Mark knew that these women did not remain silent forever--if they had, how could he have even written verses 1-8? From the other gospels we know that Jesus would soon appear to these women and the other disciples and that when he did, fear would give way to joy, joy would one day lead to proclamation. So why end this way?

Let's assume that Mark had a reason, and a poignant one at that. And so let's examine these eight swiftly moving verses to see if we can discern what that reason might be. One of the most striking features of Mark's telling of Easter is how it is framed by motion. The women begin in verses 1-4 moving toward the tomb, and they end in verse 8 moving rapidly away from the tomb. Indeed, that last verse shows them almost exploding away from the tomb, hurtling outward like projectiles from the middle of an explosion. Verse 8 is almost like some freeze-frame which catches the women in mid-flight. Picture them with eyes wide in surprised terror, their arms outstretched like some sprinter racing for the finish line, their feet a blurry smudge of rapid motion. They flee the tomb, and Mark snaps a photo for us, freezing the action, showing the women in motion.

But in between this to-and-fro movement of the women is still more motion: Jesus is also on the go. The women arrive at the tomb and encounter a young man who says, "You are no doubt looking for Jesus." Yes, they were. Since he was, as the young man admits, "crucified," it made sense to seek Jesus in a cemetery. But he's not there. "You just missed him," the young man as much as says.

Why couldn't Jesus have waited!? Why do the women need to deal with a proxy, a stand-in, a substitute whose only purpose seems to be to tell the women that, indeed, they just missed Jesus. He's gone, on the road, moving right along to Galilee. "He's going ahead of you," the young man says. So if they want to see Jesus, they need to get going once again themselves. Because for some reason Jesus did not hang around to be encountered at the tomb. Easter morning, according to Mark, is not about running over to where we think Jesus is and then sitting down with him for coffee and conversation. Easter morning is not about throwing a party, it's about Jesus in motion. It's about our being in motion, too, if we hope to catch up with and so see him.

He was not at the tomb. "He's not here. He's going ahead of you to Galilee." Some time ago I told you of Thomas Long's clever interepretation of those words. Long thinks that Mark was about as highly skilled a writer as you could hope to find in the ancient world. And so for us readers of this gospel--for those of us who cannot and do not literally travel over to Galilee to see if we can find the risen Christ--this reference to Galilee may be a clever framing technique for Mark's gospel. Jesus is risen, and we are directed to Galilee. But in Mark's gospel where is Galilee? It's in Mark 1:14. John the Baptist gets imprisoned and so Jesus launches his own ministry by going to Galilee and there preaching that the kingdom of God was at hand.

So Mark 16:7 may be Mark's way of saying that as readers we now need to return to the beignning of the gospel and read the whole thing again. Now that we've been to the cross, now that we really understand what being the Messiah was all about for Jesus, we need to go back and read the gospel again. We need to hear Jesus' parables afresh, see the miracles anew. We need to re-consider Jesus' every word and act in the light of the cross and empty tomb. Because only then will we, by the Spirit, see and understand the nature of God's kingdom. And the nature of that kingdom is grace, grace, grace.

Now that we've seen Jesus take our place on the cross, descending to the derlict agonies of hell and death, now we understand that so long as we think we can make it on our own we'll never really "get it." No, having been to the cross, having seen what the world did to Jesus and what Jesus did for us; having seen what God the Father did for the dead Jesus by raising him, and having come to understand that just this gift of new life can, by grace alone, come also to us, we now run to catch up to Jesus.

Now we understand that Easter is about moving right along. We run to catch up with Jesus in Galilee because we need to learn and re-learn the message of sacrificial grace and mercy that Jesus embodied his whole life long. Of course, if you do that, if you re-read Mark's gospel in the light of the cross, you will eventually once again arrive at Mark 16:7 and so will once again be directed back to the Galilee of chapter 1.

It's like a never-ending cycle or loop! Every time you get to the end of Mark you get sent back to square one! We'll never be done running after Jesus. We'll never be finished following him. We'll never be finished with living out his message of grace in our own lives and, just as importantly, with declaring that message to the world.

Jesus was not there that morning because there was too much work to do! A dying world was in need of the renewing grace which only the resurrected Jesus could give. This was a task that could not wait. Jesus could not and would not hang out at a tomb he no longer needed just to greet his friends and have a little celebration. He had to go on up ahead of them, demanding that if they wanted to see him, they'd have to get moving, too.

In fact, the entire meaning and impact of the gospel is contained in Mark 16 in just two little words that come in verse 7: the words "and Peter." "Go tell his disciples, and Peter, that he is going ahead of you." And Peter. No disciple had failed Jesus as spectacularly as Peter. No one had fallen as far short of his lofty promises as did Peter. And so no one felt worse than Peter.

But the young man singles out this chief failure as a sign that all was forgiven. Grace had abounded to the worst of sinners and the slate was clean. Many scholars believe that Peter may well have been Mark's primary source of information in the writing of this gospel. If so, you can understand why this is the only one of the four gospels that includes those words "and Peter." As the target of grace, Peter did not want anyone to forget that he had been mentioned by name, singled out for grace! The whole gospel, and why it is so beautiful for every last one of us, is right there. Tell the world, and Peter. Just fill in your own name if you want to get the point. Tell the world, and Scott. Tell the world, and Joe. Tell the world, and Henrietta. Tell each and every last one of them that all is forgiven!

That is the message Jesus was in such a hurry to get proclaiming. That is the message which we learn and re-learn each time the Easter story directs us back to Mark 1 to re-live the entire ministry of Jesus. Jesus is always going up ahead of us. Our job is to follow. The whole point of Jesus' having to suffer so horribly is that this world is so tragically busted that this, this is what it took out of even God's own Son to save it. The whole point of the resurrection is that it worked. There is now hope for us in our broken condition. Death is no longer something only to mourn and weep over but also now something to see hope in.

So now let's come back to our question from earlier: why does Mark end so enigmatically? Why this puzzling final image of bewildered women, silent in their fear? Well, certainly fear was an appropriate thing for these women to feel. Not only did something totally unexpected take place, but this particular unexpected thing was fiercely cosmic. It shattered reality. It changed everything. Have we today become so accustomed to the notion that death is not the end of us that we fail to marvel in stunned wonder at Easter? We now have a real, tangible, flesh-and-blood future beyond the grave! What happened to Jesus on Easter morning was nothing less than our future occuring in the past. This changes everything, and the first people to ponder that mind-addling fact were right to feel a little afraid. Any other reaction would have been downright weird!

But what about Mark's leaving them that way? Why this snapshot of the flight in terror as Mark's final word? There may be two things to say about that. Mark has created some irony and some tension by keeping the women silent. This is a challenge for all of us. We see the women and exclaim, "But the gospel can't end in silence! There's just got to be more to the story than this!"

And you can almost see in your mind's eye the evangelist Mark, with a clever gleam in his eye, nodding his head and saying, "You bet there's more to it than this! You bet it cannot end in silence! So what are you doing to continue the story? What are you doing to break the silence? Are you running, every day, to catch up with Jesus and to tell other sinners like Peter the good news of grace that is just waiting for them? You're right," Mark might agree, "this can't be the end of the story. But it is you who have to finish it."

That is also why Jesus is in motion. That's why we have to follow him clear back to the beginning of the story and re-live and re-learn it again and again. You see, if you're one of those people who comes to church only on Easter Sunday--if your attitude toward faith is pretty casual most weeks except for this one--then there is a real sense in which the young man at the tomb in Mark 16 meets also you in this sanctuary this morning.

He sees you and says, "You've come looking for Jesus, haven't you? Well, he's not here. He's moving right along up ahead of you. If you want to find him, then you have to keep trotting along behind him every day. You've got to keep learning the whole gospel story and then live it and tell it every day. If you think Jesus is here at church on only this one Sunday a year, you're wrong. He's not here. There's too much work to do. There is a world quite literally dying to hear about the truth of God's grace. So get moving! Do his work! Tell his truth! And there you will see him." Indeed, we all will--we all will . In the almighty Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, all God's people said, "Amen!"