After the death of Jesus on a Roman cross, Joseph of Arimathea – a member of the Jewish Council, The Sanhedrin – asks Pilate for the body. John’s gospel tells us that he was assisted by another Judean disciple of Jesus, Nicodemus. These men carefully wash the blood and dirt from Jesus’ body and wrap him in a linen shroud. His body would remain on the stone shelf for a year and a day after which time, the tomb would be opened. Jesus’ bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary – a stone bone box – to be carried north to his family in Nazareth to be entombed in their family grave. As the sun sinks marking the start of the Sabbath, the men quickly seal the tomb with its heavy stone disc and hurrying away, they do not see Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of Joses who had discreetly followed them.
The next night, after sunset, Mary and two other women go to the marketplace to buy burial ointment: olive oil scented with myrrh and aloes. In the morning, as the sun is rising, these women make their way to Joseph’s tomb to do the last best thing for their friend – to anoint his tortured body. As they make their way, they worry about finding someone to roll away the tomb’s seal, for Jesus’ male disciples are all in hiding. They were hoping later in this day or the next, to quietly slip into one of the caravans heading north and escape the fate which had befallen their Rabbi. As the three women approach the grave, they discover the stone rolled away. The women are furious. They presume that Jesus’ enemies had committed some great indignity on the corpse. They rush inside.
There they see a man dressed all in white. Later gospels will say it plain: it’s an angel, who tells them to not be alarmed. Jesus is not here. You are looking for Jesus who was executed by the Romans; you won’t find him in a tomb, even a tomb sealed with a huge stone. Luke’s language is more poetic – why do you look for the living amongst the dead?
The messenger then gives the women a promise and a commission. The commission: tell Jesus’ male disciples to go back to the Galilee. The promise: he has gone ahead of you, there you will see him.
The women flee the tomb, filled with amazement and awe but they tell no one because they were afraid. And so, in just eight short verses, Mark’s Easter story ends. The ending is so abrupt and so disturbing that a 2nd Century scribe will create a more satisfying ending. But Mark’s tale ends with those words: “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
There are no resurrection appearances in Mark. We find those in the other three gospels. Those stories reveal that Jesus is profoundly changed. He is no longer a figure of flesh and blood as we know it. He is no longer confined to time or space. He enters locked rooms. He walks the road with his friends but is to them a stranger. At supper time, Jesus breaks the bread and as he does so, they recognize that this stranger is in fact Jesus – and he vanished from their sight. He is seen in Jerusalem and yet also in the Galilee apparently at the same time. And he is seen by Paul, who self describes himself as someone “untimely born” for he never knew Jesus in the flesh but will experience Jesus alive – after which he will declare that Jesus is Lord.
In other words, the presence his disciples had known before the cross continued to be experienced afterwards. The message to us on this Easter Sunday morning is just this: The Jesus who lived – who walked and talked and healed, who broke bread and wept and suffered – and who died a violent death on Calvary’s hill, is not to be sought in the Palestinian Province circa 33 C.E. He has been raised and is a present reality. And he is experienced by his followers to this day.
Mark’s gospel ends abruptly with the women running away in fear and telling no one. Obviously, they eventually find their voices but their initial fear feels very human. Perhaps they feared the scorn of the male disciples. We get it. We are all reluctant to share such precious experiences lest those we tell, treat such tender stories with ridicule in this most cynical age.
Scholars wonder aloud if the original ending of Mark’s gospel was somehow lost. But I would argue that just maybe it was intentional. Mark’s gospel is “unfinished” because the story of Jesus is always unfinished. It is a continuing story. It ends with an unwritten page, left blank to be filled in by you.
Rumi, the 13th Century Sufi mystic said it this way:
“I called through your door
The mystics are gathering in the streets
Come out! But you said:
Leave me alone, I’m sick!
I don’t care if you’re dead. Jesus is here
And he wants to resurrect somebody!
That somebody is you.