Living Word

I am always amazed at the new things I learn from reading the Gospels year by year. This year I have found myself tripping over the ending of Mark, just a little bit. Far from the explosive proclamation of the other Gospels Mark sort of judders to a halt with unwilling witnesses giving a sketchy outline of what they have found.
This is actually the reaction to be expected. If I had turned up to tend to the body of a friend who had, so I thought, been dead for over 24 hours I would have my face set to the unpleasant and heart rending task. I would be trying to work out what I was going to say to the guards, wondering whether we should have brought some men, imagining what the rest of the day might be like without Jesus, without Jesus for ever.
I would be in a profound state of shock from the events of the previous few days - the unexpected and inexplicable death of a man who I had hoped would change my life for ever, in fact I thought he already had, but that was over, the hope was gone.
This very deep and persuaded mindset is suddenly interrupted. If you have ever lost something you will know how disturbing it can be, if you have ever found things very different to the way you had expected them to be you will know it throws you off course, especially when the change in inexplicable. And so I turn up spices in hand and find the tomb empty and worse than that a messenger sitting in the tomb, very much alive who tells me that the man I know to be dead has been raised.
What is my reaction, what is your reaction to this news, the very first time. It is amazing and wonderful but it is also frightening - even when I believe that I am not losing my mind  - what this means for my life and for the life of those around me is different to what I might have thought. This moment is God's victory, this alleluia moment is Jesus winning out over sin and death, but I had not expected it to look quite like this - wonderful, amazing, life changing, but not quite like this.
In Mark no one runs off shouting and screaming. At first the women did nothing, said nothing and then when they did tell Peter and the others, they spoke briefly. And, by the way, notice that it is women who are witnesses. Jewish law called for two male witnesses in a court of law, these are women, more than two of them, but definitely women.
But in the last verses of Mark, whichever version of the end you take, resurrection soon turns to proclamation. There is only one logical outcome of Good News, and that is to tell people about it. Mark, in some ways the most ragged and human of the Gospels, allows his characters to fear and to be hesitant but then like a great roaring flame the Gospel is proclaimed in every direction.
We are often cautious about this - mission is for missionaries but from the very first moment of the revelation of this new life those who are its witnesses are sent - sent being the core meaning of the word mission.
There are always reasons to be quiet - people will laugh at us, think us mad or weak - but Jesus knew that, Jesus understood how it would be for his followers. There are always reasons not to come to Church, after all we are not like people who do and there are always reasons to assume that we are failing as an institution. We hear so much which might make us question the very reason that we might be here today in the first place - but we are here and we are witnesses of the Resurrection.
Go and tell, says the messenger, Go and tell - and what are we to do?