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. (Mark 16:1-8)
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“God is holy mystery.” Those are the opening words of “A Song Of Faith,” which is the United Church’s most recent expression of what it is that we believe as a denomination. Somehow, those words seem appropriate. Early morning is always a mysterious time. It’s the beginning of a day. We don’t know what the day will bring. As it unfolds, it’s a mystery. It was probably like that for Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome as well. Every day starts out as a bit of a mystery. And it was about to get even more mysterious for them. He has been raised; He is not here.
Those are not the words you expect to hear when you arrive at someone’s tomb. You expect to find - well - a tomb. And a body if, for whatever reason, you wanted to go into the tomb. But the only thing that greeted the women was an angel saying "He has been raised; He is not here." And I give lots of credit to Mark, or whoever it was who wrote this Gospel. He leaves it at that. No big accounts of what Jesus did post-resurrection. There were a few verses added by someone later, but Mark leaves it at that. He has been raised; He is not here. And terror and amazement had seized the women; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
We don’t always confront mystery very well. Generally speaking, we’ve been conditioned to want answers. You say the Lord is risen? OK. Tell me how! Because dead people don’t come back to life. So he must have been in shock, or a coma. Or something like that. Because dead people don’t come back. And probably the same objections were raised 2000 years ago as well. Dead people don’t come back. And what I like about Mark - and the other Gospel writers, although they paid much more attention to what the risen Jesus did, is that he realizes that he’ll never satisfy the skeptics. He’ll never find any evidence to convince the unbelievers, because he doesn’t know any more than anyone else. The truth is that even the Gospel writers didn’t fully understand the resurrection, and so basically they ignored it. Yes. They ignored it. They shared with us the experiences of the disciples who encountered the risen Jesus, but they offered no explanation as to how Jesus was resurrected, or even precisely when Jesus was resurrected. Most likely, they simply didn’t know. All they knew was that they experienced Him. All Mark knows, just like those women, is that "He has been raised; He is not here." And today, reflecting on the women arriving at the tomb, we’re confronted by those same mysterious words: "He has been raised; He is not here."
Maybe like Mark and the other Gospel writers, we shouldn’t worry about “how” it happened. They were satisfied with sharing only "that" it happened, and that it represented for them hope, a victory of life over death, which emboldened them to share the story. And so, from the very beginning of our faith, the resurrection of Jesus (the central event of our faith) has not been something to be understood – it has been something to be proclaimed. And so, proclaim it we do. We are an Easter people – which doesn’t mean that we’re Christians only on Easter Sunday, but that our faith and our lives are on a daily basis centred on the great Easter event – the resurrection of Jesus, and what it promises us.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
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