Sunday, April 12
Easter

Focus Theme
Now What?

Weekly Prayer
Love divine, in raising Christ to new life you opened the path of salvation to all peoples. Send us out, with the joy of Mary Magdalene, to proclaim that we have seen the Lord, so that all the world may celebrate with you the banquet of your peace. Amen.

Focus Reading
Mark 16:1-8

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

All Readings For This Sunday
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 25:6-9 with Psalm 118:1-2,14-24 and
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or Acts 10:34-43 and
John 20:1-18 or Mark 16:1-8

Reflection and Focus Questions
by Kate Huey

Focus Questions 1. When have you seen life out of death? 2. How do you respond to the suggestion that the women felt relief mixed with their grief? 3. How well does your faith commitment today measure up to your earliest commitment to God? 4. Have you ever been so focused on your task (like the women coming to the tomb) that you missed a great wonder unfolding before your eyes? 5. What do you think the women were doing one hour after they fled the tomb? Text for Meditation ”You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. / He has been raised.” For ideas on how to meditate with the Bible, read our article on Praying With the Bible

The high point of the church year is upon us, no matter the state of the world around us, personally or communally. And yet our Gospel text from Mark is short and even mysterious, leaving us with no appearance of a risen Jesus to put a nice, happy ending to a story of suffering and death. Don't we prefer an ending that's satisfying when it ties up loose ends, answers our questions, and leaves just about everyone happy? (For example, in the world of television series, contrast the popular last episode of "Friends" with the controversial final episode of "The Sopranos," where everything was left unresolved.) However, as Douglas Hare puts it, "Mark's story of Jesus' ministry, passion, and resurrection terminates abruptly with fear, flight, and silence." Or does it? The story of the resurrection of Jesus, Hare says, is not primarily about Jesus but about a God who is powerful enough to raise Jesus up. "Seen in this light, the resurrection of Jesus must be regarded as God's comment on the crucifixion."

Our text from the prophet Jeremiah two weeks ago claimed that desolation was not God's last word, or "comment," on the people of Israel. Instead, God spoke a new word, a word of hope and new life in a new covenant written on their hearts. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate this God's "comment" on the death of Jesus, the assurance that God's final word is not death and despair but resurrection and new life. If we accept this spare account, just eight verses, as the authentic ending to Mark's Gospel, we're challenged to take a long, long look at that comment rather than simply wish that we could preach on a text full of riveting stories of post-resurrection appearances.

Scholars have many comments of their own to offer on this text, and they often agree: they connect the women at the tomb with the woman who anointed Jesus at the beginning of last week's passion narrative; they suggest a connection between the young man in white sitting in the tomb with the young man whose linen cloth was torn off in the garden as he ran away from the scene of Jesus' arrest (was it Mark himself, they ask?); certainly, they observe that the lack of a nice, neat ending may be just the thing we need to get us moving out into the world, proclaiming the good news, doing a better job at being faithful than the first disciples did; most of all, they remind us that, at the heart of the Gospel of Mark is the way of the cross.

In fact, Fred Craddock suggests that Mark's "accent" on the cross is the very reason that he didn't include resurrection appearances that might pull focus away from it as the meaning of discipleship: "For Mark, the resurrection served the cross; Easter did not eradicate but vindicated Good Friday." In all of our Easter finery, in our celebration and our Alleluias, in flowers and white cloths, it jars our sensibilities to be reminded of Good Friday, to think that we worship an "executed God": Mark Lewis Taylor has written that "To follow the executed God today is to let die the god of religious respectability." At the heart of the Gospel of Mark is the way of the cross.

The women come to do "women's work"

Once again, a passage begins with the quiet appearance of women, coming from the sidelines of the story to tend to what needs to be done, caring for Jesus' body even after death. Craddock finds this appropriate in a "Gospel in which insiders become outsiders and outsiders do the work of insiders." We can only imagine how they planned to accomplish their task, and what drew them back to a place of loss and pain in order to perform an act of tender care. Serene Jones has written a beautiful meditation on the state these women were in, where their hearts and minds might have been, overwhelmed by grief and fear: "Imagine too the raw determination that must have driven them there--that time of day, that time in history, in that season of unrelenting violence. To these women, Jesus' body still matters. The remaining physicality of his life still has a claim on their hearts." As it so often goes, these "outsiders" make their way to the center of what's happening (although they think everything is over, done and buried) to do what has to be done, the work others often don't want to do. The tomb turns out to be one of those "spaces where so much of life unfolds," Jones writes, "the hard work of loving, of being present, the grit that allows human life to keep going in the very moments that it encounters the reality of violence and relentless march of death." She claims that God is there, even in the places of death where we are "broken by violence and by love and by the sheer exhaustion of the labor it takes to go on."

We hear the story today, long after this astounding event, just as Mark's community heard it so long ago. But these women were there, in that moment and in that place, and it's clear that they run away from it. It's that running away that prompts an interesting conversation among the scholars. Most commonly, they conclude that the women's fear, and their silence, even disobedience, make them just like the other disciples who have, throughout the Gospel, feared and run and disobeyed. As David J. Schlafer observes, "Conspicuously absent as they run is joy (Matt. 28:8), rekindled memory (Luke 24:8), or belief (John 20:8)."

"Traumatized and determined"

Who can blame them for running away? Today we might say that they suffered from post-traumatic stress (Jones calls them not only "determined" but also "traumatized"). Their world was dramatically, suddenly thrown from a course they grieved, but at least it was one that fit into their understanding of how things work. How things work include both the finality of death and the immovability of large stones, so they had approached the tomb not only filled with grief but also with certain assumptions and concerns. The text tells us that they were sure they were going to encounter an obstacle to the completion of their task when they faced that stone, more massive than anything they could move on their own. Perhaps they brought even more, something we might be surprised to consider: relief. D. Cameron Murchison reminds us that even in grief there can be a measure of relief, for many reasons that may include a sense of closure: "in this case closure was closure not just upon an important personal relationship, but also closure on a world-embracing dream." And it's that closure that brought the relief, Murchison writes: "They had approached the tomb with a reverent grief, masking a deep relief that they were no longer burdened with the challenge of costly discipleship." Instead of being "off the hook," they discovered, "to their terror and amazement--the challenge still before them." If the dream is in fact not dead, if the reign of God is at hand, then there is work to be done and risks to be taken, dangers to be faced. No wonder they ran!

That stone is worth some of our time in reflection, too. As a metaphor for everything that keeps us from faithfulness, it seems immovable and makes faith (especially as trust) seem impossible. For the women, the other disciples, Mark's community, and for us today, the call is to Galilee and a new beginning, setting out on the way again, following Jesus faithfully, this time with the terrible knowledge of his suffering and death but also with the world-changing awareness of his resurrection. However, Megan McKenna draws on the work of Eugene LaVerdiere to describe the difficulty of that path of following Jesus once again, for "the stone is a symbol for everything that blocks the way. It may be different for each, but for everyone it is a very large stone." McKenna says that we may not want to see certain things, but all "disciples need to revisit the gospel and see themselves as they were--more often than not as failures, deserters, those who followed at a safe distance, or those who don't see and don't hear and don't understand." We may think we know this story because it is so familiar, so central to the life of the church and the life of faith, but somehow we've lost the passion of our youthful enthusiasm for God, no matter what age we became Christians. Mark, McKenna writes, "summons us to return to the intensity of our first commitments."

If we've grown old and tired and perhaps cynical in our faith, steeped in doubt and burdened by technical questions, Mark comes through for us, then, too. One commentary calls Mark's ending "theologically profound" because, "[i]nstead of recording that the disciples saw Jesus and believed, he ends with a promise that if they believe they will see. He challenges us to do the same: if we believe Jesus' word and follow him, we too will see him. Mark insists that we must finish the story for ourselves, by setting out on the way of discipleship." One more voice calling us back to the way of discipleship, to following Jesus, and to a faith that is trust.

A different perspective on terror and amazement

As mentioned before, many scholars compare the silence, disobedience, and fear of the women at the tomb to the fear and flight of the other disciples when Jesus was arrested. Are they like those disciples when they can't seem to comprehend what the young man is saying? Gail R. O'Day's commentary is most helpful and provides a different way of reading this text, as she urges us to a "direct and immediate encounter with the cosmic transformation that is the resurrection." Of course, this isn't a simple or easy thing to do, but Mark's words about fleeing and terror and amazement are "the necessary beginning point of any Easter proclamation. They express awe at what God has done in the life and death of Jesus." O'Day writes that the women know who has the power to do such a thing as raise Jesus from the dead. "It is God who has raised Jesus; it is God who has altered the rules of their known world. In the face of theophany, silence is not a failed or inadequate response. Silence is a wholly appropriate response, because the women's silence creates a space for the voice and presence of God to resound." It's one thing just to be afraid or even to have your world turned upside down, but it's an entirely different thing to have an encounter, an experience, with God's power and presence. Terror and amazement are an appropriate response, but so is awe at what God has done in raising up Jesus. On this point, all the scholars agree, because this is a story about God at work, about the power of God, not about us or our doubts and questions. It is a story about God.

Terror, amazement, awe. God at work in our lives and in the life of the world. Our questions in this case can lead to amazement once again, and also to Easter hope. After all, as Charles Campbell asks, "If stones are rolled away without human effort, if Jesus really is raised from the dead, what other human assumptions about wisdom and folly, power and weakness, will likewise be proved false? If the very power of death has been overcome, what other kinds of power and domination will likewise be overthrown?" Setting out on the path of discipleship, perhaps a little more conscious of the cost of that discipleship after our Lenten observance, we do not travel alone. We have one another, we have and are the Body of Christ, the church in the world, and we have a call. Things may never be the same, our assumptions may never be safe, but we are not alone. Campbell has said it beautifully: "Jesus is loose in the world. He is not in our present as a lifeless corpse or in our past as a distant memory. Rather, he goes ahead of us into the future to meet us there and claim us, not on our terms, but on his. We can no longer deal with Jesus as a dead body, safely buried in a tomb, but now we encounter him as a living reality. There is no escaping him, no containing him, no forgetting him."

For Further Reflection

Carl Sandburg, 20th century
I was born in the morning of the world
so I know how morning looks.
Morning looks like people look
like a sea waiting for ships
like a cornfield waiting for corn.
Morning looks like any strong beautiful wanting.
There is your morning, my morning, everybody's morning.

Carolyn Heilbrun, 20th century
Power consists in deciding which story shall be told.

Richard W. Swanson, 21st century
The task on Easter (which is every Sunday for an Easter-based faith) is to tell stories about resurrection in a world where everyone dies.

Weekly Seeds is a source for meditation and prayer based on the readings of the "Lectionary," a plan for weekly Bible readings used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others. We invite you to continue the conversation on our "Opening the Bible" forum at http://i.ucc.org.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.