The Great Vigil of Easter(B): Mark’s Slant on the Easter Proclamation

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By: The Rev. Dr. Daniel London

On the Great Vigil of Easter, Episcopalians gather by a fire to tell stories. We light the Paschal Candle, from which we then light our own individual candles, and listen to the deacon chant the ancient words of the Exsultet. As we try to avoid spilling hot candle wax on ourselves and the furniture, we become gradually dazzled by the meta-narrative of God’s creative power as told through the mythopoetic language of Genesis, the lyrics of the Psalms, the prophecies of Isaiah, the wisdom of Proverbs, the visions of Ezekiel, and ultimately, through the Gospel account of the resurrection. This year, as parish leaders discern the safest way to celebrate this Queen of Feasts, we hear the proclamation of the resurrection as told by St. Mark the Evangelist, whose version of the story often leaves readers befuddled.

In fact, readers have been so perplexed by Mark’s open-endednon-conclusion over the centuries that ancient copyists apparently decided to try tying up the loose ends themselves by adding verses 9 – 20 to Mark’s final chapter. The earliest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel end abruptly at verse 16:8: “So [Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” So, in Mark’s Gospel, fear literally has the last word.[1] To make matters worse, these female disciples (who are often portrayed by Mark as more faithful than the men) are doing precisely what the heavenly messenger explicitly told them not to do. The white-robed man urged them not to be afraid and then charged them to go tell the other disciples that the Risen Christ had gone ahead of them to Galilee (16:6-7), but they seem to let their fear get the best of them, so they tell no one. And that’s where the Gospel ends.

This is Mark’s unique and cryptic way of declaring the great Easter proclamation that Jesus Christ is indeed risen. Mark seems to be following the wisdom of Emily Dickinson who famously said, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.”[2] The truth of Christ’s Resurrection is proclaimed by Mark, but his exceptional slant gives us permission to be confused, to ask questions, to contemplate our own conclusions, and to ultimately be dazzled by Truth’s “superb surprise.”[3]

We may ask ourselves why the women disciples were so overwhelmed and initially silenced by their fear. In asking this question, we are invited to put ourselves in their shoes. Obviously, they have just experienced an event far beyond the realm of everyday life: the empty tomb of their beloved rabbi whose brutal crucifixion they had just recently witnessed; and a mysterious, white-robed man informing them that said rabbi is now waiting for them 75 miles away in Galilee. This is reason enough for anyone to be petrified by fear, shock, and amazement—not to mention, utter disbelief. Or they may have been afraid of potential punishment by the Roman authorities who might feel threatened by rumors of a crucified bandit’s supposed resurrection. Or they may have felt afraid for the disciples who had abandoned their teacher in his most desperate hour; and thought that the risen Jesus was returning to Galilee to severely chastise the disciples for their cowardice and reprimand Peter for his spineless denials. Their fear may have been a potent cocktail of all these concerns or perhaps their fear was not based upon any reason at all. Either way, they were afraid, even terrified; and being told by a mysterious, white-robed man to not be afraid was not going to help them calm their nerves.

Whenever I’m seized with fear, I personally do not find great solace in someone simply telling me not to be afraid. Although I appreciate the charming sentiment that the phrase “Do not be afraid” occurs 365 times in the Bible (one for every day of the year), I have found that letting go of fear is certainly easier said than done. And what I find so encouraging about Mark’s unique slant on the Easter proclamation is the fact that even when we are afraid and even when that fear might get the best of us, God’s life-giving truth will still win the day.

In her book Maverick Mark: The Untamed First Gospel, Bonnie Thurston writes, “I think the very odd ending of Mark’s gospel at 16:8 is his intended one … there is a word of promise, and there is the failure of the human disciples. But the word of promise predominates. If the disciples and witnesses fail (and they do), the message and the cause is not lost.”[4] The very existence of Mark’s Gospel “bears witness to the fact that in spite of terror, and fear,” the women disciples eventually do share their experience of the empty tomb.[5] I imagine the women exhibited the kind of courage Martin Luther King Jr. defined as the “inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations,” in spite of overwhelming fear.[6]

The Easter proclamation of Christ’s resurrection urges us all to not be afraid: since Christ has trampled down death by death, we ultimately have no reason to fear. However, Mark’s slant on the Easter proclamation assures us that even when we do feelafraid—for whatever reason or for no clear reason at all—we still know that God’s life-giving truth ultimately prevails.

COVID-19 has given us all plenty of reason to be afraid and even terrified as it uncovers deep social ills, heightens political division, and prevents us from gathering in healthy ways to be renewed by our faith community. I imagine all of us are plagued with fear to some extent right now, whether or not we are conscious of its grip on our lives. While the Easter promise invites us to let go of our fear, Mark reminds us that even if our fear causes us to fail, the Easter promise still speaks to us. Even if our fear leads us to deny Christ like Peter or even become complicit in violence like the Roman soldiers, Christ returns from the grave to say, “I forgive you. Let’s try again to let go of that fear, but if you’re still afraid, that’s ok, because my love is always stronger.” Mark’s slant on the Easter Promise invites us all to be gradually dazzled by the light that overcomes the darkness, the life that destroys death, and the superb surprise that God’s love will triumph even when we are afraid.

[1] In a strictly literal sense, the last Greek word is gar (“for”)as in ephobounto gar (“for they were afraid”).

[2] Emily Dickinson, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56824/tell-all-the-truth-but-tell-it-slant-1263. I’m grateful to my parishioner Laura Rose for sharing these words with me while I was contemplating Mark’s Easter account.

[4] Bonnie Thurston, Maverick Mark: The Untamed First Gospel (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 80 – 81.

[5] Bonnie Thurston, Maverick Mark, 13.

[6] Martin Luther King Jr., A Gift of Love: Sermons from “Strength to Love” and Other Preachings (Boston MA: Beacon Press, 2012), 120. This year, Easter Sunday happens to fall on April 4, the feast day of the pastor and martyr Martin Luther King Jr.

The Rev. Daniel London, PhD is the Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka, California. He is an Associate of the Order of the Holy Cross as well as the Community of the Transfiguration. He lives with his wife, Dr. Ashley London Bacchi in the Transfiguration House, where he live-streamed Holy Week and Easter services last year (as pictured above). He recently finished walking the virtual Camino de Santiago and looks forward to walking the real Camino in northern Spain in the not-too-distant future.

Easter Vigil (A): Where We Need Him Most

Easter Vigil (A): Where We Need Him Most

Matthew 28:1-10

By: The Rev. Leah Lyman Waldron

For many of us, Easter worship this year will look dramatically different than it has in years past. I know I am grieving that we won’t be packing into a sanctuary adorned with spring flowers, raising our voices as the swell of the organ and brass carries the sound of our joy, celebrating Christ’s resurrection with all the glory and gusto we can manage.

Recognizing that loss, I’ve heard pastors say that when we can gather together again, in person, with our people—that will be Easter. And it will—it will be a marvelous rebirth of our community after a long (much too long) dormant period.

Yet in some ways, I think this Easter will be much closer to what Easter originally felt like to the disciples. For them there was no glory or gusto. Instead, as they peered into the tomb at dawn, there was emptiness and gloom; confusion and contradiction; fear and doubt. No one began Easter morning dressed in new spring finery and no one gathered with special instruments to sing songs of praise, because on Easter morning the disciples were still in mourning, still lost and heartsick over devastating loss, still trying to grapple with a breath-taking new reality they had hoped never to experience.

Sound familiar?

For me, Easter Vigil (and Easter sunrise service) comes a little closer to this reality than the traditional Sunday morning pomp-and-circumstance celebration in the sanctuary. Of course, we still know the outcome, but there is a hush in the air; a sense of humility as we gather in plainer clothes and simpler circumstances. We are here to meet Jesus, not in the sanctuary, but in a cemetery.

And isn’t that the point? Jesus doesn’t wait for the moment of triumph. Instead, he meets us in the midnight hour, in the darkness before dawn, in the hopelessness of our lives and the brokenness of our world. This year—and every year—that will most definitely preach.

The first time I attended an Easter Vigil service was in college, at the UCC church just a mile from my campus. The thing I remember most about it was gathering outside and kindling a fire while the sun set and ancient words were read. It felt very elemental, and I remember feeling pleasantly surprised that such a primal-feeling service was part of my tradition.

The second time was a few years later at the Catholic cathedral where I sang in the choir during my year studying abroad in the south of France. We gathered before midnight to watch our friend Emanuel, a catechumen robed in white, be baptized into the church. When the clock rolled over to midnight, we broke our Lenten fast with platters of langoustines and profiteroles. Again, it felt ancient; sacred—like we were let in on a secret hours before anyone else would know the good news that Christ was risen…risen indeed!

In the lectionary readings for this service—famous for their quantity—there are the primal accounts of creation and the flood; stories of our foundational covenant with God and God’s making good on that promise by bringing the people out of bondage; pronouncements and praise and promise; zombie army performance art (thank you Ezekiel); good old Pauline exposition; and finally—finally—the Story; the good news that death has not triumphed! Love has!

I think each of these scriptures has the two pieces I felt at the vigil services I’ve attended: something elemental, fundamental, pointing to ancient forces playing off of each other in the oldest dynamic there is—light and dark, death and life, fire and flood, ancient wisdom, divinity and humanity. And good news that reads almost like a secret passed from person to person, people to nation, whispered in gardens and shouted from rooftops.

The Gospel reading, for instance, begins with an earthquake, an angel whose appearance recalls lightning and snow, and guards who faint at this blinding apparition. And then there is the message shared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (identified in Mark and Luke as Mary the mother of James, and likely the same Mary as the mother of James and Joseph who watched the crucifixion in Matthew 27:56): He is not here, he is raised; go and tell the others. (vv. 6-7)

Did you notice that even though the angel also tells the women not to be afraid, the Marys run off to share the news with a mixture of “fear and great joy” (v. 8)? (Maybe you’ve been there before, afraid to believe that what you could barely allow yourself to hope for has actually come to pass, your pulse racing and your stomach dropping even as your heart fills to bursting.) It doesn’t say so, but I imagine that the women’s fear only subsides when they actually meet Jesus, discovering for themselves that the angel’s good news is true.

This Easter, may we and our people encounter Jesus not just by hearsay, but for ourselves: in the midst of our fear and our joy, in the middle of the humility of our circumstances and in the celebration we manage to pull together anyway. In other words, may we meet him this year—and every year—where we need him most.

The Rev. Leah Lyman Waldron

The Rev. Leah Lyman Waldron serves as the pastor of Park Avenue Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Arlington, Massachusetts. A self-proclaimed thriftvangelist, her ideal day involves some good thrift shopping, a nice long walk, and a dance party with her two young kids and her pastor husband, Chris.

Easter Vigil (C): The Mysterious Night

Easter Vigil (C): The Mysterious Night

John 20:1-18

By: The Rev. Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram

The challenge of preaching during Holy Week and on Easter is that once again, only a year after we’ve told this story, it’s time to tell this story again.

Don’t get me wrong: as far as stories go, it’s a good one. It’s actually the main one for Christians. Christ died, buried, and risen again.

But when you’re a preacher tasked with inviting people into the story year after year anew, almost as if they’ve never heard it before, it’s easy to be intimidated.

It’s in these moments that having multiple versions of the story comes in handy. The lectionary rotates the stories around each year, changing up when we read one passage for Easter Vigil and when we read a different passage for Easter Day. We keep it rotating, and though the changes may seem small, they always provide us with particular lenses through which we can tell the new, old story.

This time around, the Johannine version of the story is reserved for Easter Vigil, which is delightful since the passage begins, “while it was still dark.” Because there is an aura of mystery in the night, there is rich imagery to explore in the mystery of the night, the mystery of the Easter story, and the mystery of faith in the resurrection.

There is mystery in the night simply because we cannot see as clearly in the dark as we can see when the sun is out. This sense of mystery and healthy fear would be embedded in us as animals from generations, dating way before we had electricity and ways to light up entire rooms efficiently. We honor this mystery in a couple different evening services in the life of the church: Easter Vigil and Christmas Eve are two most common, and both of those are connected to the mysterious incarnation of Christ.

There is mystery embedded in the story. Mary Magdalene arrives to the tomb first, and she is shocked and confused to find the stone rolled away. She thinks the body has been stolen, which is a sentiment that seems mysterious to current readers of the text. There is a mystery about who she goes to—Simon Peter and “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.” And they do not know more than she does, in fact, the story tells us that they did not understand the scripture.

It is only when Mary Magdalene speaks with the angels and Jesus in the tomb that she realizes that Jesus is not dead, but alive. At first Mary Magdalene did not recognize him—though it is unclear whether that’s because she was so upset and unexpectant or because his post-resurrection self was hard to recognize. Either way, there is mystery surrounding the whole encounter, from the presence of angels to the recognition of Jesus.

Just as Mary Magdalene could not figure out where they took her Lord and just as the disciples “did not understand the scripture,” so it might be with the people of God gathered for Easter Vigil. People come to our churches on Easter for a variety of reasons: tradition, obligation, devotion, or any mix of the three. There are many who will be with us for Easter Vigil and Easter Day that are not sure how to make sense of the Easter story. It is full of mystery, not just for the followers of Jesus who found an empty tomb, but for those of us who read the story today.

Perhaps it is of great comfort for those who have a harder time making sense of the Easter story and the resurrection to hear that they are not alone in the mystery. Just as making one’s way through the dark is scarier alone than with other people, feeling like the only one in the room who can’t make sense of the mysteries of faith is scarier than knowing that there is room in the church for uncertainty. There was room for Mary Magdalene, there was room for Simon Peter and “the other one,” and there is room for all who are ready to embrace the mystery of our Christian faith.

And if we’re lucky, when we embrace the mystery of our Christian faith in the darkened setting of Easter Vigil, we can say that “We have seen the Lord.”

Hannah_Adams_Ingram_15 — The Rev. Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram

The Rev. Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram serves as the Director of Religious Life and Chaplain of Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. She grew up in non-denominational evangelical land and is now an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She earned a BA from Anderson University, a Master of Theological Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and a PhD in Religion and Psychological Studies from the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. Her areas of interest include education, practical theology, and escaping overthinking by baking, crafting, and watching TV.

Easter Vigil: It’s All a Joke!

Easter Vigil: It’s All a Joke!

Mark 16:1-8

By: Kristen Leigh Mitchell

There’s a Korean joke that asks, “What noise does a toaster make?” The answer is the Korean word for bread. Hilarious, right? How about this one from Japan: “There is a mandarin orange on an aluminum can.” ROFL? No?

Humor doesn’t translate very well across languages and cultures. Comedy is grounded in breaking expectations, so in order to even pick up on the fact that something funny is happening, you have to have a pretty good handle on the cultural assumptions and linguistic norms of a given context. You need to know what is expected in order to recognize when something unexpected has occurred.

Many people, Christians especially, are surprised to learn that the Bible—and Gospels in particular—are actually filled with humor, wit, irony, satire, and even jokes. I had a professor in seminary who said that most of Jesus’ parables would have been hilarious to their ancient hearers, but since we have lost so much of the context, most of the time, we just don’t get it.

Christians in general also have a tendency to take the Bible very seriously…. perhaps a little too seriously. Whether we are part of sola Scriptura traditions that interpret the Bible literally, or liturgical traditions that parade heavily-ornamented Gospel books around during worship, most Christians tend to approach the Bible with an attitude of solemnity, and an expectation for rational, moral instruction. There is nothing wrong with a little reverence, but when we approach Scripture with these kinds of expectations, we potentially miss out on important layers of meaning in the text that are communicated through its creativity and its sense of humor.

Mark’s resurrection story is probably my favorite example of this. Perhaps no story in the Bible is approached by Christians with more seriousness than Jesus’ resurrection, since our entire faith hinges on it. People have been arguing for two millennia about whether to take this story seriously or not. Mark’s version of the story is the earliest, with many scholars dating the text to about 40 years after the events it describes, so one might expect it to be taken the most seriously out of all the Gospel accounts.

But many people have come to think of Mark’s resurrection story as something like a “first draft” –it provides basic information, but it seems to end rather abruptly, with nobody having seen the resurrected Jesus and nobody spreading the good news. The last verse in our excerpt today is the original ending of Mark; verses 8b and 9-20 are not in the original manuscripts, and they are understood to have been added much later since neither Origen nor Clement of Alexandria seem to have any knowledge of them.

Most Christians deal with this seemingly incoherent conclusion by either ignoring Mark’s account entirely or by drawing from Matthew, Luke, and John to fill in the rest of the details. However, I think that Mark’s version of the resurrection is the most compelling by far, and that we must take it on its own terms, and in its original format. Besides, otherwise we miss the joke.

In the very first chapter of Mark, we read about Jesus healing a leper. Afterwards, he sternly warns the man, saying, “See that you say nothing to anyone.” But the man goes out and begins to proclaim it freely (Mark 1:40-45.) A few chapters later, Jesus raises the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead, but strictly orders them that no one should know about it (Mark 5:43.) Nevertheless, the news of Jesus and his healing powers spreads, and a couple of chapters later, the crowd brings him a man who is deaf and mute. Jesus pulls him away from the crowd to heal him, and then tells everyone gathered not to say anything about it. But the text says that “the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it” (Mark 7:36.)

At the end of the book, the women go to the tomb after Jesus’ death to offer him a proper burial, only to find an empty tomb, and a man sitting there dressed in white. He instructs them to go and tell everyone what they have seen: that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

So what do they do? They run away and say nothing to anyone.

Get it? They finally listened to Jesus! I think it’s hilarious.

Especially when you consider the fact that the Gospel of Mark was written during a time when the first generation of disciples and eyewitnesses to the mission of Jesus had recently died or been killed, it is all the more remarkable that the text does not depict them in a more honorable light, as the mighty heroes of the one, true, pure faith. Instead, they are shown to be a bumbling group of fearful and incompetent witnesses, who always did the exact opposite of what Jesus told them to do, all the way up until the very end when they were finally supposed to do the opposite, at which point they turn around and finally follow the original instruction.

The depiction of Jesus’ original followers is indeed very funny, but its function is not merely comedic. Through this humor we are offered a resurrection story that demands our presence and participation. The Gospel of Mark is not about recounting the facts of something that happened in a distant time and place. And it’s not about glorifying people from the past, or comparing our experiences to theirs. Later accounts of the resurrection would fill in some of the post-resurrection details with stories of how it happened to Mary, and Peter, and John, and Thomas. Those stories seem to offer us a more satisfying conclusion by giving us something clear that we can hang our hats on. But they also maintain a kind of distance between ourselves and the resurrection reality. Those other people from the past, they had these miraculous encounters with Jesus after his death, and that’s what this is all about.

The Gospel of Mark does not give us the option of making Jesus’ story into a story about the past, or the story of other people. Its ending requires us to show up and fill in the rest ourselves. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, it leaves it up to the reader what will happen next. Will the women eventually go and tell the rest of the disciples about what they have seen and heard? Will the disciples listen and go to Galilee? Will they see Jesus there? Will you? If you want to know the end of the story, you have to live it yourself.

Mark’s original resurrection story is not simply a first draft. It is a literary masterpiece that calls forth new generations of Christians continually to take up their crosses and resume the mission of Jesus. The foibles and failures of the previous generation of disciples become our call to action. Instead of simply being asked to simply respect the heroes of the past, we are invited to take their place, to succeed where they failed, to pick up their slack, to seek the resurrected Jesus in our own lives in new and unexpected ways and to proclaim the good news of his resurrection based on our own experiences, not simply by reporting the vicarious witness of others.

Mark’s story leads us to the threshold of faith and then leaves us to stand there, asking ourselves whether we will cross. Will a new generation of disciples go and tell what they have seen and heard? Will they open themselves to encountering the resurrected Jesus? Will you?

kristenlsouthworth — Kristen Leigh Southworth

Kristen Leigh Mitchell is a freelance writer, theologian, and indie folk singer-songwriter with a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she studied cultural theology, Biblical interpretation, theological aesthetics, and ecumenical worship. She is currently living in Asheboro, North Carolina, where she works as a freelance writer, musician, and teacher.