Mark 16:1-8
And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Can you imagine if the Bible had ended here? For some early listeners, it apparently did. The oldest authorities we have end the story here, with the first half of verse 8. Later versions extend the story by three more verses, and even later versions extend the story by another 10 verses. But for the first listeners of the oldest Gospel, the book ends with silence, amazement, and fear. Can you imagine if that was the end of the story of Jesus and his followers?
We would not be here, on this beautiful and joyful Easter morning, if the story was over. We would not be Christians, there would be no Church, if the women never broke their terrified silence. The resurrected Jesus would have found an empty room, instead of a room full of grieving disciples in Galilee, if nobody had ever gotten the message to go and encounter him there. If the story had ended in silence, the story would not exist. Stories are meant to be told, and the greatest story of all is the one we tell today.
So 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.
We cannot blame them for their fear. The empty tomb and the defeat of empire are more than a little scary, even now. The Easter morning begins with grieving women, going in search of solace and some semblance of control, going to do women’s work, to do what they could to honor their fallen friend. Perhaps they were already a little afraid, nervous about encountering the soldiers guarding the tomb or dreading the sight of a body that had endured such violence. Where they expect to find grief, they instead find a glorious emptiness, an absence that promises presence. The stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, the proof of their loss is gone. In its place is an angelic messenger, and the reminder of a promise. “Go to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” I wonder if they checked again, if they scoured the tomb for any sign of foul play or a message that explained the impossible. I wonder if any of them sat down to relieve weak knees, too stunned to speak and too afraid to break the fragile spell of possibility. I wonder if any of them knelt down in worship right then and there, praising God for this spark of hope, however small. I wonder if their fear was for themselves, or for their friends, or for Jesus. I wonder if their silence came from fear of the unbelief of others, or fear of the terrible consequences that might come if the story they shared was just false hope. I wonder what bravery it took to speak up, to tell the next part of the story when the powerful had already decided to close the book on Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder if anyone ever thanked them for going to the tomb in the first place.
We know that the women did not keep silent. We know that the empty tomb and the resurrection of the dead were proclaimed, and the disciples listened with no small degree of disbelief, and Jesus showed up to prove to them that even death cannot separate God from us. We know that the amazement and the joy overcame the fear, the light flared brightly in the darkness of doubt. We know that the women told a story that would never end, and the death of death has been proclaimed ever since. We know the story of Jesus as more than just a blip in the timeline of Empire because some terrified women believed this story was worth telling, was worth every risk. We have Easter because someone told a story, and someone listened. And now that we have listened, it is our turn to tell the story that death could not end. The current and future generations of the world will only know the impossible story of God’s love if we tell it. If we say nothing to anyone, either out of fear or apathy or because we just don’t feel confident in our storytelling, our children will not know what happened next. We must tell them that sin holds no power over them, that death is not the end and that life is not a meaningless loop from ashes to ashes. We must tell them that they are free. We cannot keep silent, even when amazement or fear seizes us. Jesus has been raised. The tomb could not hold him, and because of this we know that the tomb cannot hold us either. And so we tell the story, we open the book and when we reach its end we start again, a circle of life and death and resurrection that will never be broken. We baptize our children and we tell them about Jesus, just as our elders did for us and as their elders did for them, all the way back to a band of imperfect young men and women in the Middle East who saw God with their own eyes and lived to tell about it. There is no stopping that story, no silencing that miracle, no breaking that chain that preexists us and promises to outlive us all.
Today we welcome a new generation into the resurrected life. And so the love story continues. Alleluia Alleluia!
Mother A Writes 