I went to dinner at my daughter’s home last evening. As I stepped out of my car I was enfolded by the fragrant smell of the blossoms on the tree in her front yard. The scent brought back a faint memory that I cannot yet place. It was intoxicating and the tree was beautiful to behold. There is something about scent that that can touch us very deeply. Holy week is filled with scent e.g. perfumed water, incense, sacred fire, and chrism oil. These scents can move us deeply, lodging in our memories, calling to us in the future.
Because we are in the year of Mark, which I have previously confessed is my favorite of the Gospel narratives, I have been reflecting on Mark’s version of “Easter” which is read at the Easter Vigil Services this Easter weekend. (Mark 16:1-7). On Easter Sunday morning the Gospel will be from John 20:1-9. But I will be considering Mark.
Mark’s narrative of Jesus has always been very problematic, particularly because it ends abruptly on a controversial note. Over the years there were addenda to Mark’s Gospel with the goal perhaps, of finishing or fixing the narrative. I concur with Ched Myers. (Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Pgs. 396-404). Mark had good reason for ending the narrative where he does, which is after verse 8 which is not read at Easter!
In the end, after Jesus was crucified, only the women disciples remained. Sometimes watching from afar, and as in Mark’s narrative, going to the makeshift tomb to give Jesus’ body a proper burial. Although Joseph of Arimathea wrapped Jesus in a linen cloth and laid him in an as yet unused tomb, Joseph did not give Jesus a proper burial. In accordance with tradition the women were bringing perfumed oils to anoint Jesus’ body. The women were watching to see where Joseph laid Jesus, so that they could come back and tend to him. Throughout the Gospel, the women were the ones who served, who fed Jesus, who tended to him, washed and anointed his feet, and prepared him for burial.
Ched Myers makes note of the ministry of the women writing that “they are the true disciples.” And that “given the highly structured gender roles of the time” this example of Mark’s narrative, which subverts the social order of the day, “is surely the most radical.” Throughout the Gospel, Mark emphasizes how the teaching of Jesus is overturning the power systems of his time. In the new community the first will be last and last become the first. The women stand for the lowly members of society who are the ones “entrusted with the resurrection message.” This message is wonderful to hear, it amounts to the kind of triumphal ending to the Jesus narrative that his followers wanted. But then there is verse 8.
In their moment of ‘triumph’ when the women enter the empty tomb and are confronted with a divine figure, a young man sitting on the right side of the tomb, - the position that the disciples had previously argued to achieve (Mark 10:37) and which the men crucified with Jesus had ‘achieved’, - the women are afraid. They are told that Jesus is not there, that he has gone ahead of them into Galilee, and they should tell the others, and yet, they are afraid. “They made their way out and fled from the tomb bewildered and trembling; and because of their great fear, they said nothing to anyone.” (Mark 16: 8) This is where Mark ended the story. There is no sighting of Jesus, no vision of the one they had followed, only the message from the ‘young man’ in white telling them what to say, and what to do. “He is going ahead of you to Galilee, where you will see him just as he told you.”
Throughout the Gospel of Mark, the disciples are portrayed as rather thick headed. They don’t understand, they don’t get the point of what Jesus is doing, but the readers of Mark’s Gospel, down through the ages and including those who bother to read it today, can feel enlightened, smarter perhaps than those original disciples, because we know how the story goes. We know it from the other Gospels and from the addendum to Mark. We can proclaim the triumph of Jesus, risen from the dead, in a way that the disciples of Mark’s narrative could not do – at least not yet. And certainly not on the third day after his crucifixion.
On the third day there was confusion, grief, and fear. The disciples did not understand what had happened, why their Rabbi, Lord, and Savior had succumbed to death on the cross. In time they did come to understand, and they added on to the narrative and wrote other narratives that spelled everything out for future generations – but it was over time, months and years, not in a day or two.
How did they finally come to belief? Because they did what the messenger told them to do: they went back to Galilee. Galilee is where the story began. Not in Bethlehem where he was born, but in Galilee where Jesus went after coming out of the desert, after John the Baptist was arrested, and where Jesus began to call his followers. The disciples retraced the footsteps of Jesus – not in the sense of performance, but in the manner of imitating what Jesus had done, how he had served, how he upset the social order, how he had loved, and how he had been faithful throughout his ministry even unto death. That is the way to find Jesus today, by following him. And just as the messenger told the women, Jesus will be ahead of us, always on the horizon, beckoning us to follow.
Jesus is Risen from the dead! Alleluia!
He goes before us.
May we be blessed with the courage to follow him back to Galilee and beyond.
Blessed Easter!