ACTS 10:34-43

PSALM 118:14-29

COLOSSIANS 2:1-4

MARK 16:1-8

“He has been raised; he is not here.”

“Terror and amazement had seized them and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Not what we expect to hear on Easter morning, is it? A strange way to end what scholars usually consider to be the first of the four Gospels to have been written down – though scholars will add that the original Greek reads as though a final page is missing. But this is what we have in the earliest existing manuscripts of Mark.

“They were afraid.” But these were courageous women. Unlike the male disciples, they were willing to be publicly identified as devoted followers of someone who had just been executed by the Roman Empire on the charge of being a violent revolutionary. The men, when they gathered at all, gathered behind locked doors, afraid (with reason) that they might be swept up next in a Roman dragnet. But the women had the courage to show up at the tomb.

And they had the devotion to come with spices, to carefully anoint the dead body in accordance with First Century Palestinian Jewish burial customs. They did forget that they themselves were not strong enough to move the stone slab covering the tomb.

Courageous, devoted, forgetful, then terrified. Not the “spin” their agent would have put on their story. But the women, like the rest of the disciples, had no “agent.” They, like the men, simply told the truth, even – especially – when it didn’t reflect well on them.

How do we get from their initial terrified reaction to their also authenticated witness to the empty tomb to the men, to Mary Magdalene’s later personal experience of the risen Christ, to the personal experiences of the male disciples – including even Thomas, a week later – and to the personal experiences of the risen Christ of over 500 believers (according to St. Paul)?

Well, the women stopped being terrified.

And so, eventually, did the men.

They all stopped being terrified of news so good that it turned their worlds upside down. They were, after all, used to people who had died staying dead. We can forgive them if they were a little “shook” by the news that Jesus was alive – not in some vague “spiritual” sense but so alive that there was no body left in the tomb. He was so alive that he could also instantly appear in Galilee, 75 miles away by air or by whatever means the resurrected Jesus traveled, without anyone seeing how he got there.

I would have been terrified, too, had I been one of them.

But let’s think some more about what “the young man” – Mark doesn’t refer to him as an angel as the later Gospels do – told the women. “Go to Galilee, there you will see him.”

Galilee, you see, is where they were all from – Jesus’ closest disciples, male and female alike. The message of “the young man” was: first, “Jesus has been raised,” second, “He is not here,” and third, “You will see him in Galilee,” back home where you lived your regular lives until you went on pilgrimage with Jesus to Jerusalem.

We are given the same message.

Jesus has been raised. There is nothing dead about him. Archeologists will never find his body. He is experiencing life², for he has defeated sin and defeated death itself, as we may by his power be able to do also!

He is not here. Don’t hang around the tomb. Don’t look for souvenirs. Don’t loiter at your pilgrimage spot. Don’t, dare I say, become a “churchaholic” and ignore the wide world, its people and its needs.

Go home, and there you will see him. We all have our “Galilees” where we will see Christ if we go there and look for him with the eyes of faith.

He may be there when we sit in our homes, at our work places, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, with and in our neighbors – local neighbors and neighbors who are thousands of miles away. He is there wherever we are, wherever he wants to be.

Christ is alive. He is not restricted to church buildings at all!

And Christ’s resurrection life is not restricted just to Easter – even to The Great Fifty Days of Easter Season which are just beginning now (even while the stores think Easter ends tonight). Christ’s resurrection life pervades the whole year, even when lilies are no longer blooming.

Oppressive, sweltering July nights? Christ is risen. Christ is present. Ice storms? Christ is risen. Christ is present. Miles from any church? Christ is risen. Christ is present. Far from any thought of church – or of Christian behavior? Christ is risen. Christ is present.

Christ is risen, whether we experience layoffs or promotions, Ivy League College acceptances or “alternative school,” intense chemotherapy or blissful good health, peace and quiet or unspeakable terror.

Christ is risen. Christ is present. Christ is loving, forgiving, guiding, empowering, leading; Christ is offering new life now and the path to eternal life.

Christ is not in some museum or someplace long ago and far away. Christ is where we are, whatever we are doing, to say, “I will be with you always.”

So the question of the day is: given that, are we terrified? Or filled with joy and deeper purpose?

Perhaps Deacon Barbara’s dismissal today should be: “He is not here. He has been raised. Go out and find him wherever you go.”

Thanks be to God. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church