Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Easter Sunday, 31^st of March, 2024

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 5:6b-8
Mark 16:1-8

I wonder whether, amid their sorrow, and their horror at the cruelty of Jesus’ death, the women coming to anoint his body feel some relief. They are on their way to do their very last service for the one they have followed and provided for since his ministry began in Galilee. Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome had been among the many women who had come with Jesus to Jerusalem. They had stood at a distance watching as he died and as his body was quickly laid in a tomb before the Sabbath began. They had shown themselves to be true disciples, in comparison with Peter and James and John who could not even stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane. Unable to care for his body on the Sabbath, the three women now bring spices to anoint him. After the body has been so long in the tomb the spices will not do much to ameliorate the smell of decay, but they come anyway, because this is the last thing they can do for someone they have loved.

These women may have been better disciples than the men who fled and betrayed Jesus, but like the men, they have obviously not believed Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection. They are prepared to care for a dead body, not to be confronted by new life. Maybe, as I suggested, the women even feel relief that this is the end of their journey with Jesus. Jesus had not restored the Davidic kingdom or expelled the Roman authorities. He had died, which suggests that he had meant it when he had told the crowd in Caesarea Philippi, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ (Mark 8:34) Are these women ready to lose their lives for his sake? Or are they ready to return to their ordinary, pre-Jesus, lives after serving him one last time?

Illustration by Stefano Vitale from The Story of Easter by Aileen Fisher.

The male disciples have shown themselves incapable of taking up their crosses. When Jesus first predicted his death, after Peter had correctly identified him as the Messiah for the first time, Peter had taken him aside and rebuked him. Jesus had then rebuked Peter, saying ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ (Mark 8:33) On the night that he was betrayed, when Jesus told the Twelve that all of them would desert him, Peter declared ‘Even though all become deserters, I will not.’ (Mark 14:28) Simon Peter then went on to deny Jesus three times before dawn. (Mark 14:66-72) It was another Simon, Simon of Cyrene, who had carried Jesus’ cross, not Simon son of Zebedee, the very first disciple Jesus had called in Galilee. (Mark 1:16) Jesus had said ‘Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8:38) Is Simon Peter now also, amid his sorrow, the slightest bit relieved that Jesus is dead and cannot be ashamed of him?

As the women walk they wonder about the stone that had been rolled over the entrance of the tomb, a stone too large for three women to move by themselves. But when they arrive at the tomb they find that the stone has already been rolled back. By whom? Entering the tomb they find a young man, a heavenly messenger, who tells them that Jesus has been raised. Again, by whom? Another actor has entered the drama, someone who rolls away stones and raises the dead. On the cross, Jesus had cried out his abandonment by God. (Mark 15:34) Now we learn that God has not abandoned him. The young man’s white robe reveals that he comes from heaven; that he is seated on the right shows that he speaks with authority. The women are encountering the divine, and the divine messenger tells them that God has rewritten a story that would otherwise be about betrayal and abandonment and death. The stone has been rolled away and Jesus has been raised; he is not here.

The young man tells the women, ‘But 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.’ It is not true that the Son of Man is ashamed of those who were ashamed of him. Instead, he is going to see his disciples again in the place where they first encountered him, and there is a special message for Peter, the one who promised the most and betrayed the most. The gospel story, which seemed to have ended, is returning to the beginning and starting again. It was in Galilee that Jesus called his first disciples. Now he is going to call them again, but this time they will answer the call to discipleship knowing everything that has happened, that the Son of Man underwent great suffering, and was rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and killed, and now, after three days, has risen again. Are they willing to answer the call to discipleship now they know where it will lead?

The women have been given a message to pass on to the other disciples, and yet we are told that because of their ‘terror and amazement’ they did not say anything to anyone. Is this simply an appropriate response to the explosion of the divine into the human world? Or are they afraid that they will not be believed? After all, in the Gospel according to Luke we are told that when the women brought the message to the apostles it ‘seemed to them an idle tale’. (Luke 24:11) Or are the women finally, like the men, failing to live out their call to discipleship?

If the last supposition is the right one, then one of the messages of Mark’s version of the Easter story is that this failure does not matter. Human beings may fail, all of us do fail, but God does not. Despite the women’s fear and flight and silence, their story was told. The gospel itself does not tell us that the women overcame their fear and passed on the young man’s message. It does not show us the disciples returning to Galilee and meeting the risen Christ. But it does not need to. Just as there is no need to say who had rolled away the stone and raised Jesus from the dead, we do not need to see the disciples being recommissioned in the same place that they were first called. These things must have happened, or the gospel would never have been written. The story does not end with the end of the written gospel. The story continues in the lives of everyone who reads it.

As the gospel story continues, it continues to change. In today’s reading from the Book of Acts we hear Peter summarising the good news of Jesus Christ. At the beginning of his sermon he says, ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’ Peter, the observant Jew, is speaking to the household of Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, after a vision in which Peter was shown that ‘what God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ (Acts 10:1-16) Peter now finds himself part of a community that will include Gentiles as well as Jews, because the good news of Jesus Christ is for everyone. The new community God is creating will be whatever God calls it to be and include whomever God wants to include. Jesus Christ is Lord of all, not only of those like Peter, and the peace he preaches includes peace between those of different faiths and nations. From this moment on, if the church is to truly be the body of Christ, then its doors must be flung open, and everyone must be allowed to stream in. As the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth, through Christ everything has been made new: ‘Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’

‘This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ Jesus’ resurrection is celebrated every Sunday, not simply Easter Sunday. The Gospel according to Mark has no end, its telling of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is circular, because neither Jesus’ crucifixion nor his resurrection ended his story. That story continued down until our day, and continues with us, as we carry it into the future. We, too, like his first disciples, are called to share the good news and to look for Jesus who is always going ahead of us. As we follow we, like Peter preaching to a Gentile household, may be greatly puzzled and astounded by the new things God does, but that will be even more reason for us to ‘recount the deeds of the Lord’ and to ‘give thanks to the Lord for he is good,’ today and always.

‘There Was No’ by Stewart Henderson

There was no grave grave enough
to ground me
to mound me
I broke the balm then slit the shroud
wound round me
that bound me

There was no death dead enough
to dull me
to cull me
I snapped the snake and waned his war
to lull me
to null me

There was no cross cross enough
to nil me
to still me
I hung as gold that bled, and bloomed
A rose that rose and prised the tomb
away from Satan’s wilful doom
There was no cross, death, grave
or room
to hold me.