Easter 2012 mark 16;1-8, Is. 25:6-9

Easter 2012
Mark’s gospel ends in such an odd way for ....Yet, It seems to me to fit our stunned reaction to our view of how things work getting pulled out from under us that life ,not death, has the last word. Many religious people in the time of Jesus and most before believed that dead was dead, the finish. The very notion of resurrection was a developing well into the time of Jesus and beyond. We catch some sight of it in our little piece from Isaiah’s glimpse into an decidedly new inbreaking future. A big part of me likes the careful way Mark writes the close to his gospel. We sing and pray such bold things this morning, especially about the defeat of Death. However-I don’t know about you, but for a defeated power, Death still packs quite a wallop. Mark leaves it uncertain and open, but how would one know how to close a story such as this?

The women were afraid of a looming obstacle to be able to honor the slain body of Jesus. A large stone would block their way in. When they arrive the blockage was removed, and they were able to peer into a tomb that had become the womb of new life. Instead of the awful silence of the grave,a they heard words: “he is not here; he has been raised.” In the end, they are truly blocked from anointing the body of Jesus, for how do you anoint the absent?

I like to see Mark’s open ending as an open invitation to Easter life. The ellipsis, for... is filled by our life as Easter agents.Is is an open invitation to living life in the awe, the reverence of living in
Easter dawn. It has a Easter light shine through an open window every day of our lives.William Placher was a theologian who spent a career at Wabash College in Indiana. His last published work was a commentary on the gospel of Mark that e did not live to edit fully. He liked the ending of Mark , as he said, “Mark throws the ball to us...it is up to live out the story and to keep it alive” (248).

Our other reading in Is. 25:6-9 imagines a big funeral mercy dinner, but it is a huge Easter celebration. As Patricia Tull notes (384) , “God plans and serves the menu.” Now as the people are dining, Death is on the menu for God. Death was usually portrayed as swallowing up life, but now its maw is forever closed, as it is swallowed up by the Creator of life. The Destroyer will be destroyed. The reason for a funeral will disappear. Then can true lasting comfort come, so not only will tears be dried away, but the very cause of tears will be eliminated. Every Easter dinner is a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, as we once again read of Jesus being raised, being lifted out of the abode of death into the abode of eternal life. Communion is set up as an Easter spiritual banquet.

In the face of seeing Death brought low in the face of life, Mark has an open ending. Maybe it was deliberate. He tells us to read the gospel again in Easter light. It tells us that we can turn a page, or better, God will turn a page in our life. We live our lives in Easter light too, even if it seems we are in the dark as the women were on Easter morning, before the dawn. God offer us Easter life in the face of death, in this world and the next. Far too often we live as if imprisoned, keeping life and love at bay as if a large rock was rolled against the entrance. It is rolled away, why seek the living one in the abode of death? No final curtain for us, no living death either:Christ is alive; we are alive in Christ.