Easter Vigil ~
Mark 16: 1-8
When
the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary,
the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint
him.
Very early when the sun had risen,
on the first day of the week, they came to the
tomb.
They were saying to one another,
“Who will roll back the stone for us
from the entrance to the tomb?”
When they looked up,
they saw that the stone had been rolled back;
it was very large.
On entering the tomb they saw a young man
sitting on the right side, clothed in a white
robe,
and they were utterly amazed.
He said to them, “Do not be amazed!
You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here.
Behold the place where they laid him.
But go and tell his disciples and Peter,
‘He is going before you to Galilee;
there you will see him, as he told you.’”
Sin of Lying
A minister told his
congregation, "Next week I plan to preach about the
sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read
Mark Chapter17.”
The following Sunday, as he prepared to deliver his sermon,
the minister asked for a
show of hands.
He wanted to know how many
had read Mark Chapter 17.
Every hand went up. The minister smiled and said, "Mark has only16 Chapters.
I will now proceed with my
sermon on the sin of lying."
Well, it’s no lie – the Gospel reading tonight is from Mark –
Chapter 16 –the last Chapter of Mark’s Gospel. In fact, scholars
believe these are the final eight lines of his original manuscript.
Mark does not offer any further post Resurrection
appearance
stories. Mark simply has this wonderful Gospel
that we have
just heard proclaimed ~ and this is all part of
Mark’s purpose
and plan, so as to tell us who Jesus is and how, as
a spiritual
presence, he
paves the way ahead of us and is alive in our lives.
Now, if we were to reflect on the Resurrection accounts of all four
Gospels, we would discover that there is great discrepancy
among the writers in their efforts to tell the story of this
glorious mystery. Despite these
discrepancies, these accounts
were not only what they remembered, but also how this event
affected them and how they reacted to what had happened –
each one perceiving, discerning, and sharing a unique perspective
from a shared and miraculous experience.
They were trying to let us know that it was totally extraordinary,
beyond anything in their human experience. They wanted us to
realize how powerful this God is who raised Jesus from the dead.
Our Gospel tells us that on the first day of the week three women
came to the tomb with heavy hearts not to seek a risen Jesus,
but to anoint the dead, crucified body of Jesus, whom they had
loved and lost.
Possibly after a sleepless night, probably tossing and turning in
anguish at the dreadful memory of Jesus' agony and death, they
expected nothing more than a corpse, the remains of one who
had been so dear to them.
And the men followers, fearful for their lives, did not even venture
outside the locked room where they were hiding. After all that Jesus
had said and done, after miracles and prophecies foretelling his
death and resurrection, they did not consider it a possibility.
They had no hope that he would rise from the dead, not even enough
faith to check out the tomb on the third day to see if he really
meant what he foretold.
But it was no lie. These women came to the tomb to
grieve,
but they left with a message that would change the
world.
The Resurrection was so contrary to their
expectations
that after the angel proclaimed the good news to
the
three women, he commissioned them to go to the
other
disciples and tell them that Jesus had been raised
just as he
said and is going ahead of them to Galilee.
They fled from the tomb for
"terror and amazement had seized them."
They said nothing to anyone, for they
were afraid.
Mark's Gospel ends in silence, and
Jesus never appears.
However, the women must have told
somebody or Mark
would never have known the story.
What if Mark wanted
to end with silence? Surely, he knew
the story.
He had heard the story passed down
from those
who knew Jesus to those in his
community who now
gathered in Jesus' name.
Mark wrote his narrative so the story would live beyond
that generation of eye-witnesses. Mark wrote in a time of
trauma,
shortly after Roman armies had squashed a Jewish
rebellion,
destroying the temple and much of Jerusalem.
Jews were killed by the thousands and
those who followed
Jesus from Nazareth were increasingly
persecuted.
Mark wrote this Gospel for those who
had never seen Jesus
nor heard him speak. Mark's silence
is for them, a silence
that honored their present trauma.
Of all the Easter Gospels, Mark's
story invites us to stand
where those first trembling witnesses
stood. Those three
women didn't see Jesus. Neither do
we.
They didn't hear Jesus call their
names. Neither have we.
They weren't invited to touch his
wounded hands.
We haven't touched Jesus' hands
either. Mary Magdalen,
Mary the mother of James and Salome
are our silent sisters.
In their silence they remind us that the life of faith is
shaped
by trauma and ecstasy, trembling and amazement.
The silence at the end of Mark's
gospel is always waiting to
be filled in by people of every
generation, waiting now for you
and for me. The narrative is left for us, the readers, to complete.
And so Mark is telling us, his readers, that Jesus goes
ahead of us to prepare the way.
·
Jesus goes ahead of us in every situation, urging
us
to come to our own inner rising, moving stones of
fear,
selfishness, or pride that block our paths, and confronting
our own locked minds and anxious spirits.
·
Jesus goes ahead of us and commissions us to be
salt, and bread,
and light, “for the least, the last, and the lost,”
and this will
demand imagination, vision, commitment, and trust
in the one
who calls.
It’s no lie - we all
stand with the women at the empty tomb –
and in a "sometimes-Good
Friday world," we are challenged in our
resurrection belief
to declare that true resurrection faith does
not arise from seeing and believing in an empty
tomb,
but from meeting God in the breaking of the Bread,
in breaking
open the Word, and sharing in the Cup in our
everyday lives
with eyes open to surprise, with hearts receptive
to the unexpected,
with minds willing to surrender to mystery, and
with spirits
longing for inner freedom, hope and truth.
In closing, I share how author
and poet, Irene Zimmerman, OSF,
gives poetic voice to
this story of the empty tomb:
“None of the men
had offered to go, so the women had set out
in haste alone to
straighten twisted feet and fingers,
comb black blood
from matted hair, anoint the precious
body with spices.
‘But who will roll
away the stone?’ They whispered again
as they neared the
tomb. When they looked up, they saw
that the stone had
already been rolled back.
From inside they
heard – He has been raised, he is not here.
Fleeing from the
tomb, intent on telling no one,
they tripped
pell-mell over terror and amazement.
After the telling,
they set out in haste together this time,
a community of
equals, to roll away stones, straighten crooked paths,
comb the far countries
and anoint the precious world with Good News.”
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