Delivered on March 31st – Easter Sunday
The end of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:1-8) is very mysterious. In most of the old manuscripts the book finishes with a very brief account of three women visiting the tomb and a young man dressed in white telling them that Jesus had risen. It then says: ‘So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement have seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’. The rest of the chapter comes in different versions and consists mostly of brief summaries of stories in the other Gospels. It looks as if several people made attempts to bring the book to a more satisfactory conclusion.
Why does the book end in this strange way? Perhaps when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke became widely used, Mark was neglected, and the only copy left was one with the last page missing. Perhaps the writer never got to finish it, maybe because he died. Or did Mark deliberately finish it in that open-ended way? Whatever the explanation, I feel there is something very significant about the way Mark’s Gospel ends. The resurrection itself is a mysterious, disturbing, and unfinished story.
The way we understand it is still an unfinished story. People still discuss the question: what really happened? The stories contradict each other. How many women went to the tomb, and who were they? What did they see – a young man, two young men, an angel, or two angels? And why does Paul (in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8), written before any of the Gospels, summarise the account of the Resurrection handed down to him without mentioning the women or the empty tomb at all?
Then there is the much bigger discrepancy about what happened afterwards. Matthew and Mark say the disciples were told to go to Galilee. According to Matthew, Jesus appeared to them on a mountain in Galilee and gave them his farewell message. According to Luke he appeared to them only in and around Jerusalem and gave his farewell message before ascending from the Mount of Olives, specifically telling them to stay in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit.
There are other puzzles too. Why did they sometimes not recognise him? Why does Matthew say that when he appeared to them on the mountain in Galilee, ‘some doubted’? And why does John, telling the story of Jesus having breakfast with them on the shores of Lake Galilee, say, ‘None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord’?
Was it literally a bodily resurrection, or was it a spiritual one? Were the appearances visions? Or did the disciples from time to time have a life-changing encounter and realise on looking back that they had met the risen Jesus? The history tells us that something very big must have happened to change the disciples so drastically. The science tells us that vital parts of the body begin to decompose as soon as death takes place, and it’s just impossible for a dead body to come back to life after three days. In previous generations the story of a bodily resurrection helped people to believe that Jesus was the Son of God: for our modern scientific minds it puts a problem in the way.
I am torn about it. If the story of the resurrection is spiritual and symbolic, that doesn’t in any way affect my faith in Jesus and in the love of God. But I have no wish to pour cold water on anyone’s faith, and if God really is God, all things are possible. Our God is a God of surprises. So, I prefer to just think of the resurrection as a glorious mystery, a story we will never finish thinking about and working out its meaning.
In other senses too it is an unfinished story. Our faith tells us we will share the resurrection. For us, death is not the end but beyond it there is everlasting life. The resurrection is not the end of the story – it is a promise waiting to be fulfilled. And it is still an ongoing process in our life and in the world. When someone who is in despair begins to find hope… when hurt people find healing… when those who have lost a loved one find there is still love in the world… when enemies find a way of forgiveness and reconciliation… when a seemingly impossible dead-end situation, like the troubles in Northern Ireland or apartheid in South Africa, begins to be resolved… when an individual whose life is in a mess finds a second chance and a new life… there is resurrection. It is happening all the time.
Where is the body now? The Creed says that Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God. With our present-day knowledge of the universe, where is that?
The New Testament writers already had a different way of answering that question: the company of believers is the Body of Christ. That’s where the body is now. In the words of St Teresa of Avila: ‘Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
yours are the eyes, you are his body.’
I believe this applies not just to the Christian Church but to all the people in the world who, whatever their culture or belief, truly follow the ways of Jesus. The resurrection means that Jesus is no longer stuck in Palestine two thousand years ago: he is let loose in the world. You and I are called to the privilege – the rather frightening privilege – of carrying on the unfinished story.
Ray Vincent, St David’s Uniting Church, Pontypridd, Easter 2024