‘And they were afraid’: encountering the God of Easter

At the early Eucharist, Easter Day 2024

Mark 16:8

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

It seems an odd - even inappropriate - ending for the Gospel of Easter Day. The women run away from the empty tomb; terrified, amazed, struck silent.

Why not straightforward joy? Why not lots of words, expounding at length to the disciples (and everyone else) about what had happened? Why not raucous laughter and celebration? Is this not what human beings do when we experience a joyful event?

Of course it is. Birthdays, marriages, a sporting team winning a trophy, a national celebration: these experiences are marked by straightforward joy and celebration; by many words; by laughter.

They are events and experiences we quite easily understand; they are known quantities; they are the stuff of ordinary human experience.

That first Easter is different - radically different. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not easily understood; it is not a known quantity; it is not the stuff of ordinary human experience.

What the women encountered at the empty tomb was a sign of something radically different to any human experience. They knew what to expect: the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth, which they would anoint in the burial ritual.

What they encountered was an empty tomb, the stone rolled back, and an angelic vision, hearing the proclamation “He has been raised”.

If we were told in Mark’s Gospel of straightforward joy, lots of words, laughter and celebration at the empty tomb, it would reduce it to the stuff of human experience: and an empty tomb easily understood, easily grasped - that would not be Resurrection, that would not be mighty working of the God who is eternal light and life.

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said: “When we celebrate Easter, we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang’, a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and intense as the very beginning of the universe” [1].

What might be the response of those who were witnesses to the immediate aftermath of such an explosion of divine life and energy?

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

The response of the women at the tomb on that first Easter Day points us to mighty, glorious, saving truth: that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the working of God - eternal and almighty Light and Life - reaching into the very depths of our humanity and making all things new.

This occurs at a tomb, the place of death, of disintegration, of darkness: and there, there, God is revealed, renewing and restoring, drawing us into the Light and Life eternal.

This is the God of Easter present in prayer, scripture, and sacraments; the God of Easter proclaimed in the creed; the God of Easter who is our hope all the days of this life and for the life of the world to come.

So may we, with the women at the empty tomb, be those who behold with awe and reverence the mighty workings of the God of Easter, of whose Light and Life we partake in the Risen Christ.

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[1] Rowan Williams Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (2007), p.95.

The painting is Caspar David Friedrich 'Easter Morning' (1828-35).

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After a break for Easter Week, laudable Practice will return on 8th April. A happy and blessed Easter to all readers.

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