The Gospel Lectionary is Mark 16:1-8.

Mark’s story of Easter Sunday is one rarely told in the church, but it may be the one best suited to a time such as our own. Mark famously omits any appearance of the resurrected Jesus. Rather, a young man dressed in white appears to the three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. He instructs them,

Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. (16:7)

The Gospel concludes by telling us that the women “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (16:8).

While most Bibles printed today continue on with both a “shorter” and “longer” ending to Mark (16:9-20), our best manuscript evidence makes clear that these were not originally part of the Gospel text. Later scribes added these endings to soften the disturbing experience of an Easter without Jesus.

With Mark, we never see Jesus resurrected. We never receive definitive proof that Jesus has in fact risen from the dead. All we have is an empty tomb, a young man dressed in white, and a promise that Jesus will be in Galilee when we get there.

A Second-Hand Resurrection

While it is far less dramatic than John’s telling of Jesus’s garden encounter with Mary Magdalene (John 20:1-18), which many churches will preach this Easter Sunday, I think Mark’s telling of Easter may be more true to the lived reality of those who stake our lives on the resurrection day in and day out. We do not see the resurrected Jesus with our own eyes. He does not whisper our names in the garden gaze into our tear-filled eyes. Like the women in Mark’s Gospel, we have but a second-hand telling and a promise that Jesus will meet us somewhere down the road—if only we have the courage to walk it.

It comes as no surprise that the three women fled from the tomb seized by both terror and amazement. Everything now depended on them. The men who followed Jesus had long since abandoned him. Judas betraying him (14:43-49). Peter denie him (14:66-72). The rest fled so quickly that some of them lost their clothes (14:50-51). By contrast, these three women, along with an untold number of other women disciples, had remained with him to the very end, watching as he was crucified (15:40-41) and buried (15:47).

When Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome arrived at the tomb on Easter morning, they didn’t expect Jesus to be resurrected. They thought death had already won the day—they had seen it with their own eyes. They had come to the tomb not to encounter their resurrected lord, but to anoint his body, sending him to the dead in proper fashion.

Yet instead they encountered a young, unassuming man, who spoke impossible words to them: “He has been raised; he is not here.” Presumably this young man is an angel, but Mark doesn’t describe him as such. He is but “a young man, dressed in a white robe” (16:5).

The announcement of Jesus’s resurrection could have been announced with great heavenly fanfare. At his birth, the whole heavenly host had appeared with Gabriel, filling the sky with song (Luke 2:8-20). Yet when Jesus defeats death, and the whole world is turned upside down, there is but a young man in a white robe saying, “Trust me.”

If it were true, the world would be shaken to its core. If it were true, death would have lost its sting. If it were true, the Empire, which knew only how to wield power by threat of force, would have been defeated.

Yet it all depended on the words of this young man in a white robe. There was no verifiable evidence. There was no resurrected Jesus to behold with their own eyes. The women had but a lone testimony of an impossible reality and a command to live their lives as though it were true: “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (16:8).

The women fled in terror, saying nothing to anyone. You can’t blame them. They had seen what the Empire had done to Jesus, how it had hung him from a cross for sedition against the state. They knew that proclaiming his resurrection was a political act, which threatened the Empire’s stranglehold on the world. They knew that an Empire that traded in death could not tolerate those who dared speak of new life.

The women faced a great threat with a very tiny promise. They faced the wrath of Caesar with nothing but the words of a young man clothed in white. They would have been foolish to stake their lives on a claim they could not verify. They would have been foolish to speak the promises of resurrection life in a world that knew only the overwhelming power of death. They would have been foolish to threaten Caesar with but a whispered rumor of the resurrection.

Overconfident Easter

I wonder sometimes if it is wise to celebrate Easter with such great fanfare as we do. In Mark’s telling, Easter wasn’t bold and confident, but quiet and frightening. Easter didn’t come with the bold fanfare of a trumpet voluntary but with the impossible words of a stranger whispered in the early morning light.

When we celebrate Easter, it too often feels like we think we have accomplished something. Christ is risen! Death is defeated! But when we look around, death is everywhere. Suffering is everywhere. Nothing is changed.

It is disingenuous, I think, for the church to proclaim the victory of life over death when death so clearly still has its day. It means we have forgotten that Easter portends the demise of the Empire, the final triumph of life over death, and the promise of abundant life for all. When we declare the victory of the resurrection too loudly, as though everything were already accomplished, we reveal that we are satisfied with the world as it is. We admit that we are comfortable enough with the reign of death in the world. We concede that we are not, after all, a resurrection people.

Risking Our Lives for Resurrection

Better, I think, is to celebrate Easter with Mark’s telling. For Mark, the evidence of the resurrection lingers yet in the future. If we wish to see, we must go to Galilee. Like the women in Mark’s story, we must stake our lives on the impossible rumor of the triumph of life over death. We must live our lives as though it were true, even though all we have is the whispered rumor of those who came before us. “Christ is risen!,” we proclaim. But we must go to Galilee to see for sure.

When they left the tomb, the women were afraid. Such, I think, is the proper response to Easter. Easter asks us to stake our lives on a rumor of resurrection. It calls us to stand on the side of life over and against all those powers that wield death. It demands that we name the contingency of all earthly powers in the face of the God whose name is Love.

No wonder the women were afraid.

But they must have said something to someone, lest we would not be here. That is our task, too: To be afraid. To speak our truth. To stake our lives on rumors of the ressurection.