Terror and Amazement
Mark 16:1-8
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/31/24
Easter 2024
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”
4When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.
8So 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. (NRSV)
The women “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them.”
I tried to remember the last time I felt genuinely seized by spiritual terror andamazement. And I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve been hearing the Easter story for 61 years. And I’ve been preaching it for fifteen days shy of 28 years. And when trying to come up with yet another Easter sermon, I identify far more with the women as they approach the tomb than when they run away from it.
Approaching this familiar story, I wonder who will roll away the stone of my increasingly unexpectant heart—a heart that often feels like it’s trying only to freshen up a corpse, trying to put spices on an old, old story entombed in an old, old book.
According to the ancient custom, women bore primary responsibility for swaddling the bodies of the dead with spices to fend off the stench of decomposition. And according to Mark, the three women tasked with washing and embalming Jesus’ body knew that they couldn’t get in the tomb on their own. So, why didn’t they bring someone to help them?
Well, embalming a body may have been a routine practice, but given the women’s love for Jesus, given their weariness from grief, and given the condition of Jesus’ body when he died, (I mean, Friday was a bad day, wasn’t it?) maybe they really wanted not to get inside.
Perhaps more pastors than will admit it approach the beloved texts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost with a similar weariness. Trying to preach these same stories year after year can be depleting. One possible problem, though, especially at Easter, is that we keep trying to say something inspiring, comforting, and “uplifting.” And what if we’re missing the point? What if a good Easter sermon actually causes “terror and amazement”?
Now, there are more than enough preachers who terrorize with condemnation. It seems to me, though, that being terrified not to believe in Jesus, for fear of going to hell, is as far from the terror Mark refers to as the love one claims to have for their favorite pizza place is far from God’s eternal love for the Creation.
Mark helps us to understand the terror the women feel by adding amazement into the mix. The women’s terror and amazement well up from the same place. It’s not a selfish terror. It’s not a fear for their own lives or property. It’s the ecstatic terror of realizing that the Creation—even in all of its agony—is, nonetheless, saturated with the beauty, the holiness, and the feral creativity of God.
Perhaps the terror and amazement of the women on that first Easter morning accurately illustrates the truest and deepest sense of the word joy. Joy is so much more than mere happiness. And it is light years beyond feelings of personal comfort and satisfaction. While joy can be expressed in our shouts of Alleluia, it can also be expressed in the grief and tears of those who mourn for the world because deep in their hearts they trust that violence, hatred, apathy, poverty, and all other forms of suffering run counter to the loving justice and righteousness God reveals in Jesus. These very real evils must be confronted and defied. And, in the big picture, they can also be survived because, ultimately, they will be defeated. In his profound eloquence, Martin Luther King, Jr. affirmed this when he said, “Right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
In that same vein, Resurrection declares that death is no ending. Indeed, death heralds the new thing God begins while defeating evil. Maybe that is what should terrify and amaze us: All that stuff Jesus said
about the kingdom of God having drawn near,
about forgiveness,
about losing one’s life to find it,
about feeding the hungry,
about clothing the naked,
about encountering greatness through humble service,
about loving God, neighbor, and enemy,
Jesus meant all of that! And that means that his disciples are to embody it in their lives. And Resurrection empowers us for living that truth.
So, the terrifying and amazing thing about Easter isn’t the resurrection itself, but the implications of Resurrection. If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then we really can, as Paul says, “walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4c) If we take Easter seriously, terror and amazement will seize us with joy because we are freed, here and now, to live a new and different life, a life of full kinship with Christ. A life of discipleship in which we fearlessly confront the daunting tasks of facing down all the violent Caesars who traffic in Creation-diminishing greed, waste, prejudice, and in the shameless and self-serving use of violent power—and the shameless and self-serving use of faith traditions! Resurrection life opens us to the holiness in ourselves, in the people around us, and in the natural world. It opens us to the hope of seeing the Creation transformed through the regenerating love of God.
We carry around with us all manner of “spices:” Our sanctuaries and furniture, suits and ties, theological degrees and doctrines, vestments and investments, policies and protocols. And how much of that stuff is just burial spice? How much of our attention do those things divert from the people Jesus cares for and calls us to care for? And when we enter worship, is there some stone that we secretly hope is still blocking the tomb? Still keeping a kingdom life at bay so we can remain comfortable and, frankly, un-amazed?
Brothers and Sisters, I hope this terrifies us: Whether we like it or not, the stone has been moved for us. Life is not what it was. It’s not measured in years. It doesn’t end in death. We won’t experience satisfaction, much less wholeness, by owning, dominating, or even knowing anything. When we follow Jesus, all of our “spices” are, ultimately, useless.
And let this amaze us, as well: There is nothing to fear. Come what may—tears and laughter, feast and famine, summer and winter—our lives are defined by joy. They’re defined by faith, hope, and love. They’re defined by what we share, not what we keep. God gives us our identities and purposes by calling us to follow the Risen Jesus. And wherever we go next, whatever changes we encounter, he’s already there, “just as he told [us].”
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