Resurrection of the Lord

Acts 10:34-43

As the Lukan playwright presents it, Peter announces to Cornelius in this text that Jesus as the Risen Christ has been appointed by God to be the judge of both those who are living and of those who have died and that everyone who believes in Jesus as the Risen Christ receives forgiveness of sins through Christ’s name. Peter and all of us are to be eyewitnesses of this and to share the message as eyewitnesses.

Isaiah 25:6-9

The reading of this very significant expression of Jewish hope has become traditional for us as Christians on Easter Day. We realize, of course, that the expression of hope in Isaiah 25:6-9 is still largely futuristic for Jews, for us as Christians also, for Muslims, and for others. They wait. We wait. Must we have animosity toward each other as we wait? Is our animosity pleasing to God? What can we do together as we wait? Dare we include questions such as these within our Easter message this year? Perhaps we can no longer afford not to include them.

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

This beautiful, extensive “individual hymn of praise” used by the Israelites as the last in the collection of Hallel psalms (Psalms 113-118) in the Psalter has its decisive futuristic element in 118:17, “I am not going to die — because I am going to live! And I am going to declare the deeds of the Lord.” In its original setting this meant that “I am going to live longer in this present life as I know this life here and now” because the Lord God has rescued me from death and has given to me a new lease on life. Later, for Jews within apocalyptic circles and for Christians, this “I am going to live!” became “I am going to live eternally!” The future growing out of the present became the future after life and death here.

Second Reading

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

The Easter message is stated clearly and unequivocally within each of the four New Testament texts selected here for the second reading and the Gospel on Easter Day. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:4 wrote that Jesus as the Christ “was raised from the dead on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” The Lukan playwright in Acts 10:40 has Peter proclaim to Cornelius that “God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day as the Christ, and gave the Risen Christ the ability to become visible to whomever the Risen Christ wished.” The writer of the Gospel According to Mark in Mark 16:6, speaking through the words of the neaniskos (young man) in the empty tomb says, “Do not be astounded. I know that you are looking for Jesus, the man from Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised from the dead! He is not here. See the place where they placed him.” The writers of the Gospel According to John in John 20:18 have Mary Magdalene joyously announce to the male disciples, “I have seen the Lord!”

This Easter message is expressed joyfully and enthusiastically within our Easter hymns and throughout our Easter liturgies. Certainly it is to be expressed joyfully and with enthusiasm in the reading of all of these texts and in our proclamation of the Easter message. Anything less would be totally inappropriate on this most important day of our Church Year.

It is often noted that Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, writing prior to the formation of the Four Gospels, placed his emphasis on appearances of Jesus as the Risen Christ rather than on the empty tomb, the Easter setting in each of the Four Gospels. If we use 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and John 20:1-18 on Easter Day, our emphasis also should be on appearances of Jesus as the Risen Christ, including the appearance to Mary Magdalene. The difference is that Paul cited a variety of appearances of the Risen Christ, primarily to males and to the more than five hundred that would presumably have included women, while in John 20:1-18 the dramatic appearance is to a woman, Mary Magdalene. What shall we do with this?

Acts 10:34-43

As the Lukan playwright presents it, Peter announces to Cornelius in this text that Jesus as the Risen Christ has been appointed by God to be the judge of both those who are living and of those who have died and that everyone who believes in Jesus as the Risen Christ receives forgiveness of sins through Christ’s name. Peter and all of us are to be eyewitnesses of this and to share the message as eyewitnesses.

Gospel

John 20:1-18

Among the Easter accounts within the Four Gospels, this is the most fully developed and complex. The text begins and ends with Mary Magdalene. Told by Mary Magdalene that the stone had been rolled aside from the entrance to the tomb and that the body of the Lord had been taken from the tomb, Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” are said to have run to the tomb. That the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived first at the tomb is usually considered to be an indication that Peter was relatively old and could not keep up the pace of the younger “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Within the context of the Fourth Gospel, however, in which “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is repeatedly portrayed as “one up” on Peter, there is the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is more than a single individual, that this “disciple” is a symbol, a self-designation of the Johannine community, while it considered Peter to be a representative symbol of the much larger extended Markan community. The Johannine community was then perhaps in its document claiming to have been “reclining close to Jesus” at the meal on the night on which Jesus was betrayed (John 13:23-25). The Johannine community then was claiming to have been present at the foot of the cross to be given and to accept the responsibility from the Johannine Jesus to take the mother of Jesus into its care, thereby doing what the Johannine Jesus previously had done (John 19:26-27). The Johannine community then was perhaps claiming in its document to have outrun Peter and the Markan community to the empty tomb and was the first to “believe,” as it claimed in this John 20:3-8 text. The Johannine community then is the one about whom the Johannine Jesus says to Peter in John 21:20-23, “If I want ‘him’ (or ‘it’) to remain until I come, what concern is that to you?” The Johannine community then, not merely a single individual, is the witness concerning all of the things that are written in the Fourth Gospel. The Johannine community then is said to have been the one who has written the Fourth Gospel (John 20:24).

There is a certain arrogance in the claim in the Fourth Gospel that there was one disciple “whom Jesus loved.” Did not Jesus love all of his disciples? There is still a certain level of arrogance if the community was symbolically claiming that it rather than Peter and the larger Markan community was especially loved by Jesus, but the arrogance is more understandable and acceptable if was the community members who felt that they were special, that they were especially loved by Jesus, than if one person is said to have been the one “person whom Jesus loved.” A community of faith may feel that its members are especially loved and blessed and happily express that within the community and even discreetly beyond the community without saying explicitly, “We are better than you are!” Perhaps this is what happened and what we have in the Fourth Gospel, the validating document of the Johannine community, the document in which it expressed its faith and its claims.

It is of great interest also to note the progression from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John in who is presented as announcing for God the Easter message to followers of Jesus. In Mark 16:5-7 the message is announced by the neaniskos (a young man) here clothed in white. We note that the word neaniskos is used in Mark 14:51-52 to describe the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane who, after the twelve disciples of Jesus had fled, remained until some of the bodyguards sent by Caiaphas to seize Jesus reached for him, when he tore loose, leaving his garment and running away “naked.” Now in Mark 16:5-7 it is a neaniskos clothed in white who announces for God that Jesus has been raised from the dead. We cannot be certain, but if this first Gospel was written by John Mark, it is possible that John Mark was that neaniskos, who was in Gethsemane along with the twelve somewhat older young followers of Jesus, the young teenager who lived with his mother in Jerusalem and in whose home the women who had come with Jesus to Galilee may have been guests, providing meals for Jesus and his male disciples who had come with him from Galilee, while Jesus and the other males camped each night in Gethsemane. In the Gospel According to Mark, much of the material (chapters 11-16) is about Jesus in Jerusalem, so much so that some commentators have described Mark as a passion account with an extensive introduction. This may have been because the young man John Mark had seen and been with Jesus only during the final week of Jesus’ life. Rather than for John Mark as the writer of this Gospel to make the critically important proclamation, “Jesus has been raised from the dead!” he may have put himself into his Gospel as a minor character in 14:51-51 but as a major character in 16:5-7 who made this announcement. (For a literary portrayal of this and of many other incidents in the life of Jesus portrayed as a man, see my movie script, “Jesus, the Man,” available at the Texas Lutheran University Bookstore www.tlu.edu.)

Instead of the neaniskos clothed in white in Mark 16:5-7, the Matthean redactors in Matthew 28:2-7 portray an angel of the Lord clothed in white as making this all-important announcement. The Lukan redactor expanded Mark’s neaniskos clothed in white in Luke 24:4-7 into two men who were in clothing as bright as lightning! The Fourth Gospel redactors went one step farther by having two angels in bright apparel (John 20:12-13) appearing to Mary Magdalene. Had there been a Fifth or Sixth Gospel, we might expect that the announcement would have been made by a whole chorus of angels, much as the Lukan writer has a chorus of angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in the field in Luke 2:13-15. We continue this progression in our Easter worship services as we and our congregations’ choirs and our congregations joyously sing the Easter hymns and proclaim the Easter message.

Mark 16:1-8

The secondary source that has been most helpful to me in my appreciation of the resurrection of Jesus accounts in the Synoptic Gospels is a short book written by the British Baptist scholar Norman Perrin just before his death at the University of Chicago in 1976 as a result of both cancer and heart disease. In his The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) Perrin explained how the passion and resurrection of Jesus account in the Gospel According to Mark depicts the failure of Jesus’ male disciples to believe and trust in him, and how these disciples fade away after Jesus is seized in Gethsemane. Even the women followers of Jesus, who, although unlike the men, they are with Jesus in Mark’s Gospel watching from a distance as Jesus dies on the cross, watching also as Joseph of Arimathea places the body of Jesus in Joseph’s tomb, and preparing to anoint the body of Jesus early in the morning after the sabbath, when told by the neaniskos that Jesus has been raised from the dead, fail Jesus because they say nothing to anyone about what the neaniskos has said to them, because they are afraid.

Perrin described the resurrection of Jesus account in Mark 16:1-8 as a “primordial myth,” an almost primitive, primeval expression of the theme and experience of “suffering/death/the overcoming of death,” evidences of which Perrin wrote “are found everywhere in human culture” (page 34).

The readers and hearers of the passion and resurrection account in Mark that ends, or rather that is left unended with the words “for they were afraid,” do not have the assurances of appearances of Jesus as the Risen Christ that are provided by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 and by the redactor-writers who produced Matthew 28, Luke 24, John 20-21, and the various “endings” attached after Mark 16:1-8 in later centuries. The readers and hearers of the passion and resurrection accounts in Mark are given no expressions of proof of Jesus’ resurrection, or of their own! So also it is for us as we read and hear Mark’s “primordial” story. They, and we as well, who live after the “ascension” of Jesus, do not physically see Jesus the Risen Christ. The first readers and hearers of Mark’s story, and we as well, read, hear, and believe. They, as we as well, have no physical proof. Together, we live by faith, a primordial, primitive, primeval faith. That is why Perrin resonated so well with Mark’s account. What about you? What do you think about this? If you use Mark’s story, what will you proclaim and how will you proclaim it?