Readings:
Isaiah 25:6-9;
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;
Acts 10:34-43;
Mark 16:1-8

Collect:
Most glorious God,
who on this day delivered us
by the mighty resurrection of your Son, Jesus Christ,
and made your whole creation new:
grant that we who celebrate with joy his rising from the dead
may be raised with the death of sin to the life of righteousness;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen

Reflection

That’s such a strange way to finish a gospel and to read this on Easter Sunday. That’s such a strange way to finish a gospel. Most often when I’m called upon to reflect on the last eight verses of Mark’s gospel, it is an exercise of memory and imagination to recall when I was so afraid that I might die. Half a life-time ago, a doctor in Scotland told me that what I had might be fatal and that I needed to go to hospital. It was clearly not fatal at the time, but I was only reasonably assured of that four weeks later when I was allowed to make my still very poorly way back to Cape Town with Celeste, needing further treatment.

Turns out, the Easter story is as much about death as it is about life. All four gospel stories tell us of the trauma of crucifixion and the deep sorrow of burial. All four gospel stories tell us of Jesus’ followers making sure his body is treated with dignity and respect – buried, later to be embalmed with appropriate spices. All four gospel stories tell us the tomb is empty and about the confusion in which the followers are left. In three gospels, this confusion and fear is resolved. In Mark it is not. We are left at the end with these haunting words: “Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mk 16:8). Other ancient copyists were not best pleased with this ending and longer, more positive endings were written. But they are clearly additions. At the end of Mark’s gospel, we are left afraid.

I think this last year of fear and frustration may give us a personal insight into how we might usefully approach this difficult reading – it is a difficult reading. A lot of people have died unexpectedly in this pandemic, people all over the world. These deaths have touched very many families. If loved ones dying were not bad enough, many deaths were in isolation from friends and family, and in the company of extraordinarily brave, but unknown people, rightfully protected behind PPE. The pain of family. The pain of carers. The pain of dying in strangers’ company. There has been a lot of pain, and not only associated with death. Pain of abuse suffered and impossible to escape, of financial hardship, of hunger, of medical issues left unresolved, of separation from people we love.

Easter is not the time to downplay or look past the pain of this pandemic. Nor is it the time to mete out platitudes about joy and peace to come, as much as we want joy and peace. It is the time to stop and recognize just how hard all this has been and still is for a lot of people. A time to honestly reflect and say: “It’s been hard, and we’ve felt the loneliness and the harshness of it all.”

This Easter, and the whole of last year, is as much about death as it is about new life. Yet we proclaim that even in the midst of fear and dread and death, new life appears before us. This new life emerges when we find that it is true – God really does know what we’ve been through and what we’re going through. God is no impassive bystander and observer, but a participant in this pain, this struggle … and in this death. Only when this dawns on us, then Easter morning becomes for us that new creation of which the Collect for today speaks, Isaiah hopes and the psalmist offers praise. New creation is taking place, just as is all creation, in the presence of God, embodied in the love of those who continue to give of themselves so others may live. True love, given and received from the depths of our being, is testimony that death truly has lost its sting. Our fear is unmasked and can no longer hold us. Now we realize fear is the desperate attempt to separate us from each other and from God. A separation thwarted by Jesus’ resurrection, which surely Mark’s gospel knows, but does not write about. Perhaps this is why the presence of their fleeing fear is so readily recognized in this reading, because all its power is gone. Those who heard and read these words knew that Jesus’ new life is among them and within them. So too may we – know in our hearts and lives that he is risen. He is risen, indeed!

Barry Lotz