Easter Sunday – B

Easter Sunday – B

Years B
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 25:6-9
Ps. 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Mark 16:1-8

No earthquake in Mark. "When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back."

As you look back at your own life-journey (not always "spiritual") can you identify those times when your eye had been downcast, but, when you did, accidentally or hopefully, look up, it was obvious the dragon's maw no longer awaited you?

These are important markers, individually and communally, when we are then able to enter the tomb we so feared or were resigned to.

As in Mark, we may find even these subsequent experiences to be as frightening in their reality as they had been in their expectation. We may yet run afraid, away. But always there is a remembrance of a stone having rolled away and we can regroup to move beyond a next fear.

The ending of Mark is a marker for us in this process. Just how many endings there are to the resurrectional story, no one will ever know. They don't end with the recorded accretion of endings in Mark. We are still adding new endings to this old story. One way or another, fear never has the last word.

What we know as the original ending of Mark begs for completion in our lives. We have hurried (then and then and then) onward through this story that had no beginning and has no end. We have run right up to and past the last word of "afraid" and found ourselves hanging over an existential abyss - How'd we get here? What are we going to do now? Will this be the last word?

Mark's masterpiece has a masterpiece of an ending that tosses the salvation of G*D and Creation right back to us. Are you going to run forever, away, or stand over your nothing left and trust again, build again, live again?

= = = = = = =

so a new heaven and new earth
are about to be created

will this creation be a partnership
or a wholly-owned subsidiary

if without remembrance
will it long endure

without labor's seeming vanity
where resurrection's blessing

as came death so comes life
through you and me and us

choose this day
a last fruit - a first