Sermon - Easter 2024 (Mark 16:1-8)

Prince and the Revolution. Queen. The Beatles. AC/DC. There’s just a certain kind of music that whenever I hear it, it fills me with awe and joy.  

Like the other day when Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy came on. Beginning to end—and oh that epic ending—that song is just absolutely incredible. I dare you to not love it. My wife and I were talking about how they must have all known on that first day of recording that they had a smash hit on their hands. I mean, what sound tech would have had the guts to say “Uh, that was pretty good---but can we run it again, it’s missing something.”

The First Easter Story

I wonder, did the Gospel of Mark’s author knew he had a smash hit on his hands, too? Did Mark sense that what he’d just written would ignite a worldwide religious transformation? Matthew, Luke, and John are pretty awesome too, but without Mark to work with—and they most certainly did--- there’s no guarantee they would have achieved the same as what Mark’s Gospel accomplished. Mark’s Gospel may be the first written and the shortest of the four, but what gets most recognized about Mark is that his Gospel is not only the only Gospel without a birth narrative—but Mark is also the only Gospel missing a resurrection—and for a religion whose foundational claims rely heavily on Jesus’s miraculous beginning and ending, those are quite the omissions.

But I wonder, is Mark’s ending truly missing something? Let’s take another look at that cliffhanger. The last verse was, “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.” The End. (Side note, some of your Bibles might have additional verses, but those were tacked on later by someone other than Mark who found his ending unsatisfactory---probably afraid it might send the wrong message. However, the original manuscript had no such double ending.) For they were afraid. That’s actually how the first saga about Jesus ended. Talk about abrupt. Are we really to believe that the women disciples were so afraid that day that their fear literally got the last word?

We Are the Champions…of the World.

Yes…and no. It’s not that Mark was lying, but there’s something to be said about not saying “the something” that we all wanted to be said. That verse catches the author part of me and suggests that this story isn’t over. There’s a “to be continued” or “choose your own ending” principle going on here in Mark’s Gospel that I don’t think ever gets fully appreciated. Sure, we all love the interaction between Mary and Jesus in the garden, and the way Jesus hangs out with the boys on the beach eating broiled fish or him messing with Thomas a week after appearing to the others. But what I love about how Mark tells the story is that he breaks down the third wall a little—you know, like when actors acknowledge their audience by looking into the camera? It’s like this ending is meant as this cosmic invitation for the curious and faithful disciple. Go on—tell Mark’s readers how it ends! It’s like one long open ended Mad Libs where we get to fill in the blanks ourselves.

Let me give you an example from the musical world. Now, I’ve never had the chance to see Queen perform live—neither with Freddie Mercury nor Adam Lambert on vocals. But I am willing to bet Shohei Ohtani’s money that when Queen performs the hit “We Are the Champions,” that on the very last line, when for some god-forsaken reason Freddie ends the song after that last [sing] “We Are the Champions,” I bet the house that at every single live concert, the audience members finish for them those words “of the world!”  

Obviously, the women said something to someone at some point or we wouldn’t be talking about Jesus having done the impossible to this day. The other resurrection stories are epic, but Mark is the writer who best delivered what Jesus wanted all along: audience participation! 

Fear as a Catalyst

Perhaps the women’s pilgrimage of silent terror allowed them the time they needed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Everyone hearing about Jesus would knew that their fear didn’t stick around long term—which gave our writer Mark the opportunity to do something special and let that final notes go unresolved so that that fear could become a catalyst for readers and listeners like us to resonate with their fear and then overcome it by sharing the Gospel in whatever time and place we find ourselves.

As for the editor who stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and tacked on those additional verses to Mark’s ending? He made an incorrect assumption that Mark didn’t know what he was doing and that something had gone extraordinarily wrong. I argue that Mark knew exactly what he was doing. For him, the Good News wasn’t missing—it was just happening in real time! The Risen Jesus wasn’t left out. He is Risen! And in typical Jesus fashion, he doesn’t stick around waiting for things to resolve, but goes out ahead, wondrously transforming endings into beginnings. In other words, Jesus was not gone, he just wasn’t where they last saw him, praise be to God.

So thanks to Mark, we get to finish the story for him. We get to ask the questions that flooded the women’s minds and hearts. Questions like: Was Jesus really back? Yes! So we tell others to keep going, we tell them that Jesus is out of sight but not out of reach! To tell people what has not happened—that Jesus is not dead but alive! That not even crucifixion could keep our Lord Jesus down!

Conclusion

Maybe that level of audience participation still frightens you, but you should know that we are every much as powerful as the one who defeated death because Jesus’s whereabouts are out ahead and in each one of us.  

As one commentator wrote, “In Mark, the resurrected Jesus…is “going ahead of you.” Ahead of you in death, ahead of you to strip pain, sorrow, and the unknown of their power. There is nothing Jesus’ followers will endure, no place they can go, that Jesus has not already gone nor overcome.

But how can Jesus be ahead, beyond, beside, and within and somehow, all at the same time? Because according to Mark, the way of Jesus is a way of mystery and paradox. God’s Messiah is crucified … and yet he lives. Terror and amazement silence the women … and yet somehow (somehow!) the good news is proclaimed. The disciples are nowhere to be found … and yet they carry the ministry of Jesus to Galilee and beyond.”

It's time for another new beginning for we are the champions in, with, and for the world and in Jesus, we’ve got a smash hit forever in our hearts and minds. And with a little bit of crazy trust, there’s no telling how far Christ’s death-defying love takes us. For He is Risen, Risen Indeed! Hallelujah. Amen.