Easter B
Mark 16:1-8
April 8, 2012
They Were Afraid
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
“And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” What an odd text for Easter! What an odd text, period. These are the very last words of the Mark's gospel. “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Actually the original has a double negative so it reads, “They said nothing to nobody.” The sentence structure puts the emphasis on the “nothing” and the “nobody”, not on the “they said.” “They said absolutely nothing to absolutely nobody.”
This can't be right—“They said nothing to anyone.” With all due respect for the Bible, I have to say that this statement is patently false. Somebody said something to someone, or we wouldn't be here. There would be no community of faith that calls First United Methodist Church home. There would be no building here. There would be no Easter morning congregation gathered to celebrate.
But here we are. So, somebody must have said something to someone. There must have been a leak somewhere, some time, from someone.
So why does Mark's gospel—which calls itself “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”—end the way it does, with silence and fear?
Some people decided that it needs a better ending. Some have said that it originally had a better ending, but the ending got lost somewhere along the line. Others decided that, whether it had a better ending or not, it was going to get one if they had to write it themselves, so they did. I refer you to the footnotes in your Bibles for further details.
More and more people—myself among them—are convinced that Mark's gospel really does end this way, and we're left making sense of the ending in silence and fear, and on Easter Sunday morning, no less. If I’m going to fall on my face, I might as well do it with an audience!
So let's back up and review. The women go to the market after sundown on Saturday to buy embalming spices. At dawn the next day they hurry to the cemetery, worrying about how they are going to get into the tomb. They arrive and discover that the stone is rolled away and that there is a mysterious, unnamed young man (or is it angel?), who identifies them as followers of Jesus, tells them that Jesus has been raised and is no longer there. And he gives them instructions to go and tell his disciples (and Peter) that he would meet them in Galilee.
Go and tell. So they go. But they don't tell.
As I reflect back on the Gospel of Mark, I recall that episodes involving going and telling have happened before. The first is a healing story, the cleansing of a leper. When he is healed, Jesus instructs him: "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest.” So what did the cleansed leper do? “He went out and began to proclaim it freely.” Go; don't tell. So he went and told.
It happened again when Jesus healed a deaf man. After Jesus healed that man and others, “he ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.” Don't tell. So they told.
In both cases the text makes clear that when the leper and the deaf man tell, ministry becomes harder for Jesus. Maybe that's why Jesus told them not to tell. But it doesn't matter what Jesus has told them; they cannot possibly keep quiet about what has happened to them. “Go; don't tell” is a command that they must break, that they cannot not break. They will tell, no matter what, even if they have to disobey Jesus himself.
These ordinary folk, not a part of Jesus' inner circle, or even counted among his followers as near as we can tell, these ordinary folk understand something about good news—it can't be good news unless it's news, and it can’t be news unless it’s told. Telling is part of the good news.
There are also a couple of episodes that involve the disciples and telling or not telling. The first comes when Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is. Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” And Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.” Don't tell, Jesus says. And from the two stories we have heard, we expect them to tell anyway. After all, they have the biggest news and Jesus tells them to sit on it. We expect them to tell, but they don't.
It happens again just a few days later, after the Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John come back down the mountain having been frightened out of their wits by the vision of Jesus that they have seen. Jesus “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Again, this is really big news. But Jesus says, “Don't tell,” so they don't.
By the time we get to chapter sixteen and the women at the tomb the theme of telling or not telling is well-established. And so, too, is our expectation that outsiders will tell, even when they are told not to. Insiders will not tell. The disciples won’t tellAnd the women,even though they are braver than the men,are disciples.
The disciples are all afraid. And the disciples don't tell. They sit on the biggest news since Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. They are afraid. That's Mark's portrait of the followers of Jesus. They are afraid. Even the women. And they don't tell. Even the women.
I think that's how Mark draws the portrait of the followers of Jesus, because that's what it was like for Mark's church. They were afraid. And so they stopped telling the news. And that's why Mark has written his gospel the way he has—to show his own church what it looked like. Instead of trying to tell them to find some courage and start talking about Jesus' life among them, a life that has continued in spite of Jesus' death at the hands of the Empire, and since Jesus is still living among them there is nothing that anyone can do that will harm them, not even if they are killed, too. Instead of trying to tell them that, he shows them. He shows them that even the outsiders know you can't sit on good news. He shows them how foolish the disciples look when they don't tell what they know out of fear. He shows them how impossible it is for a story that starts with the words, “the beginning of the good news,” to end in silence and fear.
Of course Mark's gospel doesn't end there. The ending itself points beyond the ending. Jesus will meet the disciples in Galilee, where it all began, where—I suspect—Mark's community of Christians lived. The risen Christ will meet the disciples in Galilee. The risen Christ will live in and through Mark's people. The news will go out. Someone will tell it, at some time, to some one. That's why this whole story is only “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.”
But as the last eight verses show so poignantly, the continuation of the good news is continually up for grabs. At every point it will depend on someone willing to tell. On someone who overcomes their fear. And so it comes, in our turn, to us.
We came today because we expect to hear good news. “Jesus is alive” is at the top of the list. And because he alive, his teaching is vindicated. At the core of the teaching, according to Mark's gospel, is this statement, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus said it and then he went out and demonstrated the kingdom's nearness by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and confronting the powerful. He demonstrated that the forces that destroy life are not invincible. The final word is not disease, exploitation, hunger, hatred, oppression, violence and death. Those things have all been defeated.
Oh, they're still around, but our struggle with them is only a mopping up operation and we cannot lose. Jesus has already borne the brunt of their attack and absorbed it into his own body. He took it all, even to the point of death, and God has vindicated him by raising him from the dead.
Now he lives among us gathered here and in us and through us. Joined to his death in our baptism we are also joined to his life. As we continue his struggle against “evil, injustice and oppression” he struggles through us. Those who believe that violence and hard-heartedness are necessary to get along in this world are mistaken. Violence and hard-heartedness are not just wrong; they are losing strategies. Love and justice and peace are on the winning side. The God who vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, will vindicate us as well. This is a fight we cannot lose. Nothing can harm us. Nothing can stop us. The time is fulfilled. The reign of God is at hand.
Is that the good news you came to hear? I hope so, because it's the good news that we have to offer.
But hearing isn't all that we're about in the Jesus movement. We're about doing, too. We're about doing justice and mercy in our personal dealings. We're about insisting that our community, state and national leaders do justice and mercy, too. But we're not just about doing, either. Good news isn't good until it's news. Good news isn’t news until it’s told.It isn't the Easter proclamation until Easter is proclaimed. It's not just doing; it's telling, too, that we're about in the Jesus movement.
Yes, we have good news, and a challenge to answer, too, the challenge that Mark has laid down for us in his gospel with its unsatisfactory ending. This gospel is just the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, says Mark. He dares us to finish it, to finish in a better way than he did. To overcome our fear, to overcome our reticence. To announce—right here in our own community—that Easter is more than a day or a season. To say that Easter means the victory of Jesus' vision for the world, that it means hope for the desperate, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, meaningful work for the unemployed, freedom from commercial exploitation for children, basic health care for all, and peace for the victims of war, including the warriors who have to fight them.
Go and tell. Tell it to each other. Tell it in Sunday school classrooms. Tell it at home. Go, tell it on the mountain. Better yet, tell it downtown and in Des Moines. Jesus is alive. We are the people who believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead. So we'll no longer constrain our thought within the limits of reality. We'll no longer believe that justice and peace are impossible. We'll no longer accept that poverty and disease are inevitable. We give no more credence to the idea that greed and violence are necessary.
We just won't believe it. Jesus is alive. And so are we. He is risen from the dead. And so are we. He is at work in the world. And so are we. And afraid or not, we cannot—we will not—stay silent any longer.
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