Good News, Fear, Terror, and Amazement | Easter Sunday 2024

Christ is risen! In Mark’s gospel, the Easter story ends with fear and uncertainty, but the cliffhanger ending invites us into the story. God is doing something new in our world, even today. Christ is risen!

This year’s Easter Gospel is Mark 16:1-8, and this message is lightly updated from my 2021 Easter sermon on Mark, for which I found helpful Jim Somerville’s Easter sermon here and Anna Tew’s reflection at Modern Metanoia. I also appreciated Debbie Thomas’ 2021 reflection on this reading, Slow Easter.

Here’s the service from Christ the King and the sermon podcast audio.

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Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed.
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!

One of the beautiful things about the Bible is that we have four different Gospels, four different versions of Jesus’ life.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the story of Jesus, but they do it from four different angles, with different emphases. John includes more of Jesus’ teaching, Matthew points out how Jesus fulfills prophecies, Luke includes more of the miracles and healings.

Easter, of course, is the most important story, so it’s in all four Gospels, but each writer highlights different aspects of what’s going on.
The most familiar Easter story is probably John’s version, with Mary Magdalene finding the tomb empty and running to tell Peter and another disciple that someone’s taken Jesus’ body and she doesn’t know where they’ve put it.

As she stands outside the tomb crying, Jesus himself comes up to her, but she mistakes him for the gardener until he greets her by name, and then she believes. John includes some beautiful details in his telling.

The version I just read comes from Mark. It’s the same story: Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb early in the morning, although Mark tells us there were two other women are with her, another Mary—this one the mother of James—and Salome.

Back on Friday when Jesus died, these women had been there watching, following all the way to the tomb, but with the Sabbath beginning, there was no time to do anything but quickly wrap his body up and lay it in the tomb.

Then Saturday was the Sabbath day of rest, so Sunday morning’s the first chance they have to anoint Jesus’ body, to honor their friend and teacher by giving him a proper burial. But when they get to the tomb, not only has the stone has been rolled away, there’s a white-robed angel sitting there to greet them.

And so, Mark tells us, they were alarmed. Makes sense—this is not at all what they expected! These women have spent the last 36 hours or so coming to terms with the idea that all their time with Jesus was for nothing. This guy they thought would be the savior of the world is dead and gone, and now when they’ve come to give him one last gift by tending to his body, it’s gone. So yes, they’re alarmed!

The angel tells them, as angels usually do, “Do not be alarmed. (easier said than done, right?) Do not be alarmed. Jesus has been raised.” He gives them some instructions: Go and tell his disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead to Galilee, and you’ll see him there.

Mark says nothing about anyone chatting with Jesus in a garden. In fact, he doesn’t even mention the women passing on the message to Peter or John or anyone else.

Instead, Mark ends his story—not just his Easter story, but his entire book, the entire story he’s been telling about Jesus—with this fascinating line:

“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.” That’s it. That’s the end of Mark’s gospel.

Now, if you look in your Bible, you’ll see there are a few more verses there. Most likely, there will be a label for “The shorter ending to Mark” and “The longer ending to Mark.” I realize precisely none of you came to church on Easter Sunday to hear about Biblical source text criticism, but bear with me for a few seconds. The oldest copies we have of the book, the ones written down closest to the actual events of Easter, end with “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

But as Mark’s gospel was copied and passed around, some people felt it needed a more complete ending, a bow tied onto the story. Terror, amazement, and fear didn’t seem like how Easter should end.

So if you look in your Bible when you get home, you can read a few more paragraphs, and they have a very different tone than the rest of the book, with Jesus lecturing the disciples for abandoning him and then promising them they can handle snakes and drink poison without being hurt. People just weren’t satisfied with the ending Mark actually wrote.

Here’s the thing: Mark’s cliffhanger ending is not a mistake; he’s doing something intentional.

You know what a cliffhanger is, right? When the story ends in the middle?

One of my favorite movies, Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back is a great example. At the end of the movie, one of the main characters has been captured. It looks like the evil empire has won. But the rebel heroes are working on a rescue mission….and then the credits roll.

Lots of TV shows end each week with cliffhangers, especially with streaming, because they want you to keep watching the next episode. You need to keep going to see how the story turns out.

The longer endings to Mark aren’t a director’s cut or something; Mark knew what he was doing. He ends his story with a cliffhanger: The first witnesses to the resurrection overcome by terror and amazement, not saying anything to anyone.

And yet, obviously they got over their fear. They eventually said something, because we have this story. With this cliffhanger, Mark is saying the story of Jesus isn’t over. He’s giving us a call to take up the story. We, God’s people, the church, are living the sequel, the rest of the story.

Pastor Jim Somerville tells a story about composer Franz Liszt. Apparently, his wife would get him out of bed in the morning by playing the first seven notes of a scale on a piano downstairs: do re mi fa so la ti…and then she’d go back to the kitchen to finish cooking breakfast.

Poor Franz would be so bothered by the missing final note that he couldn’t help himself – he’d have to get out of bed, stumble down the stairs, and play that last note: do!
There’s something in all of us that craves resolution, completion, that wants to put the final note on. That’s what Mark’s doing: He’s telling the story of Easter with the ending left off, so we can’t help but tumble out of bed on Easter morning and finish it.

You and I are called to look for the living Jesus, and to tell others about him. Fear and amazement are understandable, even rational, but the truth is, the tomb is empty and that’s really, really good news that absolutely must be told!

The women who fled in terror and amazement did not stay silent. They passed the story on. As Debie Thomas writes, “Their alarm subsided, their courage deepened, their trauma healed, and their amazement grew. They learned how to choose hope. They learned how to make the story their own, and as they did, the story blossomed and grew.

Joy came. Faith came. Peace came. Love came….[the story] changed them, and as they changed, the world around them changed, too.”

This good news has been passed down to us. Paul writes, “Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand.”

Because this good news of Jesus’ resurrection is good news for us. Death doesn’t win. The tomb is empty. Easter is God’s announcement to the world—God’s good news for you—that the story isn’t over, and Mark entrusts the story to us.

We get to proclaim the good news that crucifixion and oppressive human empires and violence don’t win the day. Disease and loss and sickness and all the other junk that comes with life in a sinful, fallen world are temporary, not permanent.

Because of Easter, we know Jesus is who he said he is, not just some good moral teacher, not some hopeless optimist babbling about peace and love; he was and is God in the flesh, the one the prophets testified to, God with us.

As we saw in that video, God has transformed the cross from an instrument of torture into a sign of life. The cross is no longer the symbol of God’s defeat; it is the testimony of Jesus’ victory over sin and death.

It is the evidence that the last word is not fear, but joy; not hate, but love. The cross is the means by which God has redeemed the world.

Hear Easter’s promise of good news: Whatever you might be going through today, whatever pain or grief you’re bearing, whatever sin or shame you’re carrying, Jesus has taken it and put it to death on the cross. It’s dead and buried.

But God’s not done, because Jesus doesn’t stay dead. Resurrection means new life is possible. For every Friday, a Sunday is coming.

In Christ, you are transformed and made new. You are forgiven, you are set free to live for eternity with the One who has laid down his life for you.

Terror and amazement indeed, because Easter means God is doing something new. God is on the move. Jesus is out of the tomb. Go and share the good news:

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!