NewCreation

Homily for Easter Sunday (2021)

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for Easter Sunday. This year we have the wonderful Markan account of the resurrection, very short, the final verses of his Gospel. There are, according to the people who study this professionally — there's a longer version which was added later, but the original ending of St. Mark's Gospel are these eight verses, and they are cram-packed with allusions and references. We'll look at some of them. The first thing I want to bring out is that this is a tremendously odd way to end a story. And that, I think, is something absolutely key that Mark is bringing out. Typically, when we imagine the story of Jesus, we tell a story of how he preached and did good works and got into trouble with the authorities, and eventually they crucified him and killed him, and that was ghastly. But then there's a happy ending: he resurrects, he rises from the dead, and all is well, and if we believe and know this, then, if you like, we know that there is a happy ending. I want to suggest that that was not how they understood it — which I don't mean there isn't a happy ending, but that it's not an ending at all. That, if you like, the most astounding thing about the resurrection is that it's the eruption of the beginning into the midst of history, and that is what is so shocking about it. If you like, it completely destabilizes everything, including all our capacity to tell story. And this is not only hinted at but made pretty explicit by Mark. It's on the first day, just at the time that light was coming; the Sabbath is over, so we're finally having the beginning of the new creation. And when they come to the tomb, Mark refers not to a tomb but a tomb structure — he's actually referring to something, you know, the more pompous version of tomb. That's empty, and the young man who's there makes it perfectly clear that there's no there there: there's nothing here, he's gone away, he's not here. Let's remember that the tomb is our earliest sign. The sign that there are humans is when people are buried. And here is the most primordial sign made null, made unimportant. And reasonably enough, the three women who have come to anoint the corpse of someone they loved — they are utterly thrown by this. They just don't know what to say. It says that they're frightened: first of all, they're amazed, and then they're frightened, and then they're dumbstruck; they don't have anything to say. They're told to go and say something, but they can't, at least initially. And this is something central to understanding The resurrection. Our capacity to tell stories depends on death. Life has a beginning and an end. We know how to fit into the sort of story that has a beginning and an end. We don't know, we can't know how to tell a story where the apparent end isn't really an end, where there is something that is not run by death, that is part not only of the story but part of our story, turning us into something. We don't have the recipe for dealing with that. There is not an obvious storyline opening up for us. We actually just don't know what it's going to be like to tell that sort of story. Mark not only brings that out by the way in which he actually has the three women not being able to talk, but there are some beautiful little references to what's going on. First of all, just the taking away of the stone. That goes back to the story of Jacob by the well in Genesis, where Jacob and others were able to take away the stone so as to enable the shepherds to give water to the sheep. It was the taking away of the stone that enabled water to be given, life to be given — those are the sheep — that's referred to here. And then there is the strange business of the women when they arrive, looking up. Of course, looking up is what Abraham did on his way to Mount Moriah, where he nearly sacrificed Isaac, and leaving — that is, before getting there — he left behind his young men. And then after the failed sacrifice, or the sacrifice of Isaac, he went back by himself to the young men. Well, here we have the second young man who's appeared in the story of Mark. The first ran away in the garden of Gethsemane, leaving his shroud, his sheet, his tunic behind. And here we have the second young man, now seated, able to point out that it's happened. That which the young men of Abraham had been told would be completed has been completed. That's the reason why the young man is sitting at the right of the tomb. People would have picked up that this was the reference to the ascension, the enthronement of the king having been completed. In St. Luke's Gospel, St. John's Gospel, the matter of the ascension is dealt with in a different way. In each of the Gospels it's dealt with in a different way. But the ascension is essentially the enthronement, right, whereby the king is finally enthroned at the right hand of God and is worshipped as God. So here we have the young man as a sign that that has already happened. And he's not the place — he's just the sign on earth that that's already happened. Nothing here; he's already in heaven. And how are they to find him, to meet him? Well, "he's gone before you to Galilee," just as the prophet Isaiah said that he would go before you. And what does that mean? They've got to go back to the beginning. They've got to go back… to the small, humble, unimportant place where it all started. That's where they will learn what Jesus has really been doing and what he's going to do amidst, amongst and for them. And it's going to be a story such as has never ever been told before, an unimaginable story, people who are no longer run by death, whose capacity to begin to tell stories is not a death-laden one. Each little moment here has a meaning. For instance, at the very end: "they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them." The same sort of terror and amazement that those who were with Daniel when he saw his vision of the Son of Man — they fled in amazement and terror, they left him alone to have his vision. And "they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" — quoting Sarah, who was afraid after she had heard the promise that she would become a mother. At first she laughed, then she was afraid, because it meant that the world was opening up, something new was going to happen. There isn't an obvious way forward here. And this is what we celebrate on the Feast of the Resurrection: the arrival, finally, in the midst of our history, as the completion of what Jesus had been about — the opening up to us of a beginning, a new beginning, the opening up of creation, the first day of creation, such that we find ourselves on the inside of it, starting to make a sense that we aren't yet aware of, and which each of us has to find our way into and bring alive. That's what being a daughter or son of God is: finding our way into this fullness of creation that has been opened up to us, in which all the usual storytelling signs have been turned on their head. That, if you like, is for me the genius of Mark's resurrection account. He knows that it's not an ending, it's not even a proper story — it's the condition of possibility of an unimagined story being born, birthed in our midst by one who has done something for us and is going to be alongside us and with us as we learn to take that forward. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.