Easter Sunday 2024

Alleluia!  Christ has risen! 

The bells peel, the hallelujah ring out and the trumpet sounds ! (thank you Matthew!) 

Today is a day of feasting ! Of celebration and rejoicing.  Today we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the day that the son of God clothes himself once more in immortality and regains the splendor and divinity that was put aside to live for a time with humanity. 

Today we celebrate that Christ broke the chains of death that bound humanity to the consequences of sin and ensured that grace and eternal love would be the final word.

That is worth an alleluia or two. Alleluia!!

Yet, when we read the gospel of Mark we do not get that joy, that celebration, there is a definite lack of alleluias.  Rather in a very honest and relatable reaction we read that the women were full of anxiety and alarm.  Perhaps after celebrating Easter for millennia, we can often forget just how traumatic their situation was.

After all their last memory of Christ was taking him off the cross and giving him a hasty burial, they are still living the emotions of Good Friday.  Now, days later, they want to honour Jesus, Mary wants a proper burial for her son, so they come at dawn to enter the burial chamber and anoint him properly, lovingly, with reverence.

Anxiety and fear would be some of a number of very reasonable emotions.  The reality of the last few days would be foremost in mind, likely they feared entering the tomb, even if they would be able to find a way to enter.

What ever they had imagined, nothing could have prepared them for what they encountered when they reached Christ’s tomb.

No stone to roll away…and no Jesus…but not quite empty a young man, robed sitting on Jesus grave stone.   “do not be alarmed” he says.                            Alarmed would be putting it mildly.

So, I’m really not surprised that these women literally fled in terror and amazement.

 

What does surprise us is that Mark’s gospel ends there, it ends with Jesus’ nearest and dearest fleeing and saying nothing to anyone.

The other gospels tell what happens next, how the women acted as the first apostles of the resurrected Jesus, they tell of how Jesus appeared to the disciples and how they, even Thomas believed.

Mark’s gospel tells none of that, it simply ends.

Now I don’t like this …not knowing what happened next.  We know, after all we are here…with our alleluias, our trumpets and bells…but it irks me that Mark leaves us without all the information…I hate a mystery without an ending.  I like things nicely tied up and sorted, Poirot would not have left thing so un tidy!

It seems like I’m not alone in this. If you were to open your bible to Mark 16 you’d see that after the ending of the gospel there are two additions;  the shorter ending of Mark, and the longer or lost ending of Mark.  These were added some 300 years after Mark was written and tell us what happened next, although clearly not in Mark’s words or style of writing.

                It seems like the editors we like me and really didn’t like how Mark’s gospel left us hanging….so they decided to fix it.   Fix the gospel….rather a bold choice!

They just couldn’t bear the mystery.

                We are much the same.  There are dozens of shows and books that try to logic out how Jesus was raised, try to find a scientific or reasonable explanation for the miracles throughout the bible.  It seems we must have answers.

                Now I get it, Poirot and I are much alike.  I planted bulbs in pots for inside the house some weeks ago.  The tulips are blooming, the crocus’ are sprouted…but the daffodils are a no show.

Why.  The others are up. Why not the dafs?  Are the bulbs dead?  Did I overwater and they rotted?

Why are they not up yet?!  Mysteries suck.  So like a 6  year old child, I dug one up…just to check.

YEP it’s alive~!!! Of course I gently tucked it back in and pretended …nothing happened here.

                Why must we keep digging?  Why are we not content in the unknown?

Now I have been gardening for years.  I stored those bulbs well, right temp, right humidity.  There is no real reason they’d fail, I just had to be patient.  I had to rely on my experience and wait for their time to emerge…I had to have faith.   But it’s hard and I’m impatient.

                Perhaps this is why Mark’s gospel is so fantastic.  It spends it’s time rushing about, full of works like immediately and right away, events happen so quickly in Mark…Jesus rushing about from town to town, miracle to miracle, then it stops.   It stops and we are forced to rely on faith and experience.

                We have scripture, including four unique gospels, different perspectives that tell us all we need to know.  We have tradition, thousands of years of the church telling us that Jesus did rise for all of Mark’s lack of proof.  We have our experience, the lifetime of relationship we have built with Christ and the experience of his presence with us in good times and bad.  And if our faith is still budding, we have reason that tells us that even if we don’t understand…the body of scripture bear scrutiny, the millions of Christians over thousands of years must have known something and our relationships with those around us who know Christ are trustworthy.

                We don’t need proof, we may prefer it, but what we need is faith.

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth…he has been raised; he is not here…he is going ahead of you,… just as he told you.”

                Jesus is not in the empty tomb.  It is a tomb, a place for the dead and Jesus is alive!  I know this, you know this, millions over millennia know this…the absence of Jesus in the tomb might be un nerving, but only if we look for the living among the dead.

                Instead, we need to look for Jesus among the living.

Mark’s longer ended tells us how Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene.  Then two the disciples walking to Emmaus.  Then to the eleven disciples (minus Judas) and commanded them to go our and proclaim the good news.   Jesus is not in the tomb.  The tomb is empty, but the mystery is solved…Jesus isn’t there, because he is here!

                Jesus is among us.  Walking with us wherever we are on our faith journey.  Reflected in our faces as we reflect the divine that created us.

Jesus is here when we pray for one another.   Jesus is here when we care for each other, friend and stranger.  Jesus is here when we put his mission above our comfort and the status quo.  Jesus is here when we prioritize justice and reconciliation.  Jesus is here when we share our faith with others, by word and deed.

                Jesus is here when we feel that peace beyond understanding, when we find the strength to take one more step, when we make the choice to put down the bottle and pick up the phone.

Jesus is here when we answer, and listen, and comfort and pray.

Jesus is here, now, as we gather in community, the church throughout the world.  Joining voices in languages familiar and foreign to praise God, and celebrate the victory of Christ over death and the grave.

                Jesus is here as the bells peel out, the hallelujah ring and the trumpet sounds !

Alleluia the lord is risen!   The rock is rolled away.  The tomb is empty.  The miracle is complete.

The mystery is solved.  Christ is not there…his is risen and he is here.

                God bless us all this holy and fantastic Resurrection day!