But there are other reasons why I think this ending of the gospel we heard today is what Mark intended. And that is the language or terror and awe, of amazement, astonishment and fear. Right through the gospel we find that in peoples’ and in the demons’ reaction to Jesus. You will remember Jesus preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. We are told his listeners were first astounded at his teaching; then that the demons possessing a man cried out in fear at Jesus’ presence and finally having cast out the demons the crowd was amazed at all this. The pattern I see in Mark is that in the presence of Jesus, who Mark has already said is the Son of God, the human and indeed the demonic response is wonder and awe and amazement and astonishment with a good dose of terror and fear. Complete strangers fall down and worship Jesus; devils cry out; and rightly so because the Son of God is in their midst.

So we come to the gospel for today: Mark’s account of Easter morning. The verses which precede this gospel have made it abundantly clear that Jesus is dead and buried. We repeat the fact in the Creed Sunday by Sunday. This is not some cover up; some acted out, faked up death scene. No Christian tradition is quite clear on that. In any case the women mentioned in the Easter Gospel are the same women more or less as those who witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. These faithful Marys and their companions had watched and waited and agonized and witnessed what went on with their beloved Jesus. While the male disciples had “all forsook him and fled”, the women had remained faithful in the midst of all the horror of a tortuous death and its aftermath. The place of the women is clear in the Stations of the Cross which have been at the center of our Lent devotions. The text elaborates the burial process in a rock tomb with a rolling stone door. Today in Jerusalem and in other parts of the Holy Land you can see rock tombs galore. The soft limestone of much of the country lends itself to carving out such tombs. In Nazareth I viewed an almost perfect rolling stone tomb in the archeological excavations beneath the Sisters of Nazareth’s House. The rolling stone entrance was fitted on a groove but was huge and very heavy. In today’s passage the women repeat the problem of the stone door. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” highlighting the reality of burial. Without some human help they could not achieve their task of bringing spices to place in the tomb. In other words the text makes it clear that their task is an impossible one without some aid, human or divine.

But in the end the whole event is taken out of their hands. Not only has the stone been rolled back but they encounter a young man in white, presumably an angel, who not only announces the resurrection but points to the very empty tomb. It is the empty tomb that is central to the resurrection narratives and on which all the gospels agree. From our perspective an empty tomb does not seem a very positive fact. But for the first Christians it was tremendously important in establishing the bodily nature of the Resurrection of Jesus. However you try and theorize on resurrection the fact is that the gospels repeat again and again that the tomb was physically empty and that Jesus appeared in recognizable and bodily form to some of his disciples. Furthermore the young man who drew their attention to the empty tomb gave them instructions to go and tell the other disciples that Jesus was going ahead of them to Galilee. It is then that they fled in terror overcome with amazement at all that had occurred. At this point even the faithful, loyal women could cope no longer. They were faced with something beyond human understanding and all they could do was flee. It was only as the Risen Christ disclosed himself to them, as he took the initiative, that one by one these men and women who followed Jesus would slowly begin to grasp the reality of what had occurred.

What is going on here? To me Mark is saying in a somewhat different way what Peter said in his sermon in Caesarea, one of the early statements of Christian faith, “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day…” Mark is equally clear that this resurrection thing is entirely God’s doing; there is no human element to it at all. So it is appropriate that the women flee in terror and that they are overcome by amazement and fear because what they had witnessed was the power of God at work. What had taken place was beyond their wildest imaginings; it was beyond rationality and reason; there was no human category for it. This resurrection business was entirely of the realm of God and the appropriate human response is awe and wonder and amazement. That God loves us so much that he gives us his Son in order that we might gain eternal life is extraordinary. It is why some disciples like Thomas doubted; or Mary Magdalene supposed him to be the gardener or for others it was a like a gradual awakening.

But Mark does not in fact leave us hanging with the fear of the women. The angelic figure had already given clues to what lies ahead and that is to the whole thrust of the mission of the church. The Risen Christ “will go ahead of you to Galilee”; in other words the journey of faith will continue in company with the Spirit of the Risen Christ. And the direction will be from Jerusalem to Galilee that is to the Gentile world something achieved in a remarkably short time as the lesson from Acts evidences. Peter spoke those words at the occasion of the baptism of the gentile, Cornelius.

Today we rejoice in God’s activity on our behalf in Raising Jesus from the Dead which gives us new direction and hope in ordering our lives; and we recommit ourselves to “seeking and setting our minds on the things that are above”, where Christ our leader in fact has lead the way.   Amen

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