He has been raised; he is not here

#ThinkAheadThursday

Open up to Mark 16.

Seriously…go grab a Bible, or look it up online. Mark 16.

I’ll wait.

Got it?

Good. Check out Mark 16:1-8, our text for Easter Sunday. Let me know when you finish verse 8.

See anything different?

According to the most ancient manuscripts of Mark that we have, this is likely where the original Gospel of Mark finished. That means that after verse 8, the rest of the chapter was added at a different date. You see, when the gospel was written, it stood by itself. In fact, Mark is the oldest of the four gospels. It was not until much later that Christians put Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together. When they’re placed together, the ending of Mark seems unsatisfactory compared to the other three, which is why we find manuscripts that have these two additions to the ending.

On Easter Sunday, I’ll stop at verse 8. “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.”

I’ll stop here on Easter Sunday because of the emotion. Sometimes the good news of resurrection bumps up against our fear. In the case of the women at the tomb, their fear was probably from a combination of things: seeing an angel, grieving Jesus’s death, seeing the empty tomb and having their minds race of what happened to Christ’s body, etc. Perhaps they, like the other disciples, were in fear of the Roman and Jewish authorities. They put Jesus to death, what would they do to his followers?

Today, the good news of resurrection bumps up against a different sort of fear. This Easter, we may not experience the extremes of “terror and amazement,” but I do think we’ll experience opposite emotions in quick succession. As followers of Jesus, like the women at the empty tomb, we may experience Resurrection Sunday with anxiety and relief, fear and hope, anger and joy, apathy and focus, dread and cheer.

Like I said in last week’s sermon, that’s okay. The first people who encountered Resurrection Sunday did so with amazement and terror. Be gentle and graceful with yourself – this will be an Easter Sunday unlike any you’ve likely experienced.