Where's Jesus?

Mark 16:1-8; Acts 10:34-43; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

You heard the words, the sentences of the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t appear. Mark’s gospel ends and the risen Jesus is not there. 

If you were reading along, you will have noticed that Mark’s gospel appears to continue. But everything after verse eight is bracketed off. There’s a footnote that says what follows doesn’t appear in the oldest manuscripts. The added endings are questionable, most likely added to sync Mark’s account with the other three gospels and Paul’s 1 Corinthians account.

So where is Jesus? Mark does not have any story about the risen Lord appearing to anybody at any time. All we have is an empty tomb, a young man with a message, and some frightened, tight-lipped women.

Where’s Jesus?

If you remember Star Trek, Captain Kirk was always entering data into the captain’s log, giving the star date and coordinates. That’s a chronological story. Mark is not a logbook of the three year ministry of Jesus. Neither he nor his gospel writing colleagues were doing that. Mark’s gospel is not a live-streaming, chronological story with an OMG, “Oh my God,” at the end. 

Mark compiled the gospel some thirty years after the resurrection as he reflected on all that he and others remembered. He told the story knowing the end and he told how the story got to the end. Our Good Friday liturgy this year looked at the Marcan account and showed that the crucifixion wasn’t a spur of the moment happening but the inevitable outcome of Jesus’ ministry from its start.

Mark wrote from the very beginning with the resurrection in mind: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son....[who] came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!” (Mark 1:1, 15). The gospel starts with resurrection and ends with resurrection.

Dr. David Wiley suggests that while there are no resurrection appearances at the end of the gospel, Mark has not omitted them. He carefully included them, albeit disguised, at key points in the gospel. You and I do not easily see this because we read the gospel like a logbook. Wiley states, 

“It is a story that begins at the end, and ends at the beginning. It is an account from a master storyteller, who believes, in its entirety, in the resurrection of Jesus, and who uses his great writing skills to tell the story of Jesus’ resurrection in a unique, compelling, and extremely powerful way.”(1)

Mark’s key for the resurrection of Jesus is the message of the young man waiting in the open tomb: “Go tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you” (16:7). Dr. Wiley suggests that Mark may not have been saying go to the literal region of Galilee where Jesus had his ministry but rather “go back to the Galilee where you first met Jesus — in the gospel that you are reading! Go back to the beginning of the gospel. Read it again. There you will see him! There you will see the risen Christ!”(2)

Physically, the region of Galilee was at the edge of things. It was at the intersection of the acceptable Jewish world and the unacceptable Gentile world. The city of Capernaum, where Jesus lived, was more worldly and Greek than Jewish, set apart from the institutional and ideological religious center of Jerusalem. Galilee represented the doorway to the nations. 

Mark reports Jesus saying in chapter 13's “Little Apocalypse,” “First, the good news must be proclaimed to all the nations” (13:10). Jesus’ ministry didn’t start at the atrophied heart of the faith, but at the edge, in Galilee (1:14). From the edge of old faith practices the gospel must go out before it can return.

So, where is the risen Jesus?

Wiley suggests that Mark prefigures the resurrection morning with how he describes Jesus’ setting off from Capernaum to spread his ministry:

“Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. Simon and those with him tracked him down. When they found him, they told him, ‘Everyone’s looking for you!’ ” (1:35-37)

The ministry starts “early in the morning, well before sunrise,” on the day after the Sabbath. The resurrection story begins, “When the Sabbath was over,...very early on the first day of the week.” Further Mark, in reporting in the ministry start that “Jesus rose,” uses the same verb as Jesus would use in his three announcements about his coming death and resurrection. At dawn Jesus was missing, just as he was in Easter and Simon and others looked for him on both occasions. Ministry began in Galilee. It begins again in Galilee after the resurrection. That’s what Jesus came to do.(3)

Where’s the risen Jesus?

Mark records a number of miracle stories. All but three have to do with healing diseases of body or spirit in others. Dr. Wiley claims that the three non-healing miracles are Mark’s cleverly disguised accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances.

Those three miracle stories are Jesus’ stilling the storm (Mark 4:35-41), his walking on the water (Mark 6:47-52), and the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8). Each of these stories tells something about Jesus.

Before stilling the storm, Jesus had spent the entire day teaching about the Kingdom of God. Then at nightfall he had the disciples set sail for “the other side of the lake” (4:35). Nightfall was when Jesus was buried. The fierceness of the storm represents the chaos that erupts as the world rejects God’s kingdom in its midst – the crucifixion. While the sea was crashing in Jesus slept, just as he slept in death as the world reeled from his presence. In awful fear the disciples “woke” Jesus, which is the same word the young man in the tomb uses when he says, “He has been raised” (16:6). Jesus asked the disciples, “Why are you frightened?” and the young man soothes, “Do not be afraid.” “Overcome with awe, [the disciples] said to each other, ‘Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4:41). Mark knows. He is the risen Lord.

Mark’s second hidden resurrection appearance is Jesus’ walking on the water. This also happened after a full day of teaching and the feeding of the 5,000. Again it is nightfall. Jesus sends the disciples away across the lake while he goes into seclusion to pray. As the disciples struggled against an adverse wind – just as the Kingdom struggles against an adverse world – Jesus comes to them. They perceive him as dead – a ghost – and they scream. Jesus calms them and gets in the boat. The disciples are “so baffled they are beside themselves” because they hadn’t understood about the loaves. The progression mirrors the last hours with Jesus: the supper in the upper room, the praying in the garden, the soothing, “Don’t be afraid.” The words of resurrection announcement.

Mark’s third hidden resurrection appearance is Jesus’ transfiguration. It follows on the heals of Peter’s bravado in saying that Jesus was “the Christ” (8:29), just as the resurrection follows closely on Peter’s denial of Jesus. Again, the disciples who saw Jesus transfigured were confused about its meaning. They were never confused about the healing miracles, only the miracles that revealed Christ’s glory (resurrection glory). 

All this seems speculative. And we don’t usually think of Mark doing theology at the same level as John. Yet it gets us thinking. Resurrection happens. And not just at the end of the story. Whether the disciples realized it or not, they experienced resurrection before it happened. Which means that we also experience resurrection in ways that disguise tombs and calming, matter-of-fact announcing messengers. Resurrection may be the good news of Easter, but it is also the good news of otherwise ordinary days.

The point of resurrection is not for Jesus to ascend to the throne in Jerusalem, but to go back to Galilee – back to the beginning, back home, back to the fringe, back to the portal into the rest of the world, and back the place of daily, ordinary life. The point of the resurrection is that with the risen Jesus we go back to Galilee with new (or at least newly affirmed and witnessed) power and authority to cast out a whole host of demonic ideas, heal the sick in faith and spirit, and create new communities of life for those pushed to the margins beyond community. All that is the mission of the church.

Easter is not a day that sends us into heavenly rapture and a longing for and assurance of release at the end of life from the limitations of this world. Easter is a day – more than any other day – that sends us back into the world, back to Earth, back to this life, back to the people and life of the world with an even more powerful and authoritative message of the redemption of all the world.

How will each one of us live the resurrection for the world to see? How will we put resurrection into the ordinary parts of our lives that interact with people for whom resurrection is not yet a reality?

Where’s Jesus? Just look around you at the faces of those who share his resurrection with you. Jesus is here. We are the resurrection. 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

(1) David E. Wiley III, Why Mark? The Politics of Resurrection in the First Gospel (Lima, Ohio: C.S.S. Publishing, 2015), p. 7.

(2) Ibid., p. 41.

(3) ibid., p. 43.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.