Who will roll away the stone for us? The three women were on the way to the cemetery. They wanted to anoint the body of Jesus who had to be buried with haste late on Friday, since it was the day before the sabbath. Everything had to happen quickly, and it wasn’t the kind of burial they wanted him to have. Thankfully, Joseph of Arimathea had asked for the body and bought a linen cloth to wrap it in; and thankfully there was a tomb available, but it all felt rushed. The last thing the women remembered was that kind and generous man closing the tomb by rolling the heavy stone in front of the entrance. Now they were back; they had bought spices and oil. After all the violence and abuse Jesus had suffered, they wanted to touch his body one last time with care and gentleness. “Who will roll away the stone for us?” they wondered. If need be, they’d put their own hands and shoulders against it and push. They wouldn’t let that rock get between them and the body of Jesus.
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, huge as it was, had been rolled back already. Inside they encountered this angelic messenger who told them not to be alarmed and that Jesus wasn’t there; he had been raised, and he had better things to do than wait around at a tomb. “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.”
Now we’ve heard our share of Easter stories, but this one is just so different. For just when we get to the moment when we would expect the women to dash out, carried on wings of joy, and run to proclaim the good news — the story, and with it the entire Gospel, ends rather oddly,
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 …
Terror, amazement, fear, and silence—that’s hardly a shout of victory over death. Some would say, that’s no way to end a gospel. John does such a nice job with the woman in the garden and the breakfast on the beach, and Luke has the wonderful scene with the stranger on the road to Emmaus—what happened in Mark? Did the last page get lost? Or is the story meant to end this way?
Early Christian scribes who copied Mark’s Gospel weren’t sure either, and they tinkered with the ending. One added just a couple of sentences, indicating that the women did as they had been told.[1] Another scribe borrowed a few details from Matthew and Luke to compose a conclusion that would leave readers reassured that things were wrapped up nicely at the end of the story.[2] But what if this strange ending is exactly how Mark wants to tell this story? What if this gospel has this unfinished feel on purpose, and not because parts went missing? What if this gospel wants to leave us hanging in midsentence with a puzzled look on our faces?
They fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Now everyone has fled—no one in the story who has been with Jesus is willing to carry the message and continue the mission. Is there anyone else who might after all be a faithful disciple? The narrator has permitted us to be with Jesus the whole time. We heard the voice of God declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, when no one else heard it. We were present with Jesus in the wilderness, tested by Satan, when no one else was there. When his family rejected him, we witnessed the scene and we stuck with him. When religious leaders, crowds, and disciples misunderstood and abandoned Jesus, we stood by him. When the inner circle went to sleep in Gethsemane, we were awake and heard Jesus’ anguished prayer. When the disciples fled and were to be found nowhere near the cross, we were there. When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we were there. And now we stand at the brink of this story in which all have failed, and the narrator leaves the hearers and readers, you and me, who may have thought the story was about somebody else, with a decision to make.[3] It’s like Mark is saying, “This is the story. You take if from here.”
Three times Jesus had told his followers about his death and resurrection, and he had told them — and we heard it! — “After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”[4] And this morning we heard the mysterious young man in the tomb say, “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So the decision we have to make is, Will we trust the promise and go to Galilee? Will we follow Jesus on the way, living and proclaiming the good news of God’s reign? Not going is an option, as is silence. We can deny the whole thing, act as though it never happened, and continue to live in the Friday world where Jesus is in the tomb. Esau McCaulley wrote on Friday,
The women did not go to the tomb looking for hope. They were searching for a place to grieve. … We know what to do with grief and despair. We have a place for it. We have rituals that surround it. … For the women, the only thing more terrifying than a world with Jesus dead was one in which he was alive. … [And] God called these women to return to the same world that crucified Jesus with a very dangerous gift: hope in the power of God.[5]
The women fled from the tomb, trembling with amazement. If Jesus had been raised by a mighty act of God, and if by raising Jesus from the dead God had indeed changed everything – who would they be? How would they live in this new creation? Little wonder they were terrified. Jesus crucified, dead, and buried – the cruelty and injustice of it may break your heart, but it’s also what you’ve come to expect from the world. It’s a familiar plot, a sad confirmation of what you suspected all along. Real justice is hard to come by, and the systems rarely work in favor of the poor or the ones who tell truths the powerful would rather not hear or be heard on the streets. But Jesus raised from the dead, Jesus going ahead of his followers to Galilee, Jesus on the loose in the world, his kingdom mission continuing amid the world’s kingdoms and empires — that changes everything, because now not even death can keep our hope in the tomb.
The disciples who first followed Jesus were Peter, James, and John, and the three who stayed with him the longest, were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome — and all of them fled, overwhelmed by fear. But Jesus didn’t choose a new team. God raised Jesus from the dead, and God lifted up those frightened men and women to live as witnesses of the living Christ.
Mark doesn’t tell us that, but we wouldn’t be reading Mark if it hadn’t been so. And it continues to be so. Bill Sloan Coffin wrote in his little book, Credo, “Not only Peter but all the apostles after Jesus’ death were ten times the people they were before; that’s irrefutable.” And then he added a very personal note, saying, “I believe passionately in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because in my own life I have experienced Christ not as memory, but as presence.”[6] Not memory, but presence. I think I know what he means. Glimpses of the Risen One on the streets of Galilee and wherever the kingdom of God and its nearness is being proclaimed by his followers. Comforting presence when the human capacity for cruelty and foolishness threatens to overwhelm me. Challenging presence when I tell myself there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. Christ experienced not as memory, but as presence — in a friend, a stranger, in prayer, in sharing food. Jürgen Moltmann says,
The raising of Christ is proved by our courage to rise against death. That is not just a play on words. We show our hope for the life that defeats death in our protest against the manifold forms of death in the midst of life. It is only in the passion for life and our giving of ourselves for its liberation that we entrust ourselves utterly to the God who raises the dead.[7]
We show our hope by questioning why people go hungry and even starve when there’s plenty of food to go around. We raise our hands and voices when our legislators further criminalize sleeping in public spaces while doing nothing to assist the construction of homes that families can afford to rent or buy. We rise and sing the resurrection, we stand up, we speak up, we persist in the name of Jesus.
The first words in the gospel according to Mark are, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The written text is the beginning. The story we hear and read is the beginning. And it continues to unfold with us as participants who entrust ourselves to the God who raises the dead.
The last words from the lips of Jesus’ followers in the gospel of Mark are a question: Who will roll away the stone for us? This is the stone designed to keep Jesus safely entombed. It is the stone we perceive as separating us from the life and the love Jesus embodies. It is the stone too big for us. And Mark says, “Look again and see. The stone has already been rolled back.”
[1] Mk 16:8b “The Shorter Ending”
[2] Mk 16:9-20 “The Longer Ending”
[3] See Eugene Boring, Mark (Interpretation), 449.
[4] Mark 14:28
[5] Esau McCaulley, The Unsettling Power of Easter https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opinion/easter-celebration.html
[6] William Sloan Coffin, Credo, 28; my emphases.
[7] Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 32.