Alone among the gospels, Mark’s account of
Easter Sunday has no appearance of Jesus. Instead, women come to the tomb and
find it empty, except for an angel who scares the daylights out of them.
Where’s Jesus? “He is not here.” But he will appear to his disciples in
Galilee, the women are told. And with that they flee in terror.
How can you have Easter without an appearance
of the risen Jesus? It seems pretty clear that there was some dissatisfaction
in the early church with Mark’s version of Easter. There are multiple
alternative endings to Mark in which Jesus does appear but most scholars agree
none of them are original to Mark’s gospel. Thus, most recent versions of the
Bible now end Mark as we find it in today’s Gospel reading.
Mark’s Easter story carries special weight,
however, because New Testament scholarship is nearly unanimous in believing
Mark was the first of the Bible’s gospels to be written. It’s also pretty
obvious that the authors of both Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of
their own gospels (the author of John may also have had Mark in front of him
but that’s less clear).
Thus they both added appearances of Jesus to
the Easter story they found in Mark. In Matthew the insertion is pretty clumsy.
At the tomb, the angel tells the women to go and tell the disciples that Jesus
will appear to them in Galilee (as in Mark). Just as the women leave to do
this, Jesus suddenly appears and then repeats what the angel just said. It
seems Jesus and the angels aren’t communicating very well.
So why does Jesus not appear in Mark’s Easter
story? It’s hard to imagine Mark’s author left out such a detail if he knew
of it. And therefore, as surprising as it might be, it seems likely
that he was unaware of traditions or stories about Jesus walking around and talking
to people on Easter. Nor was Paul, who wrote perhaps twenty years before Mark
and never mentions it in his letters. Thus it was not until the writing of
Matthew and Luke, a half-century after Jesus’ death, that there are written
accounts of Jesus appearing to his followers on Easter.
How could that be? One clue is in Paul’s
letters. Paul insists that, like the other apostles, he too has seen Jesus, and
he implies there is no difference between his experience and theirs. The word
he uses repeatedly in talking of all the apostles’ experiences of the risen
Jesus is “appear” (“last of all…he appeared also to me”). The Greek word
translated here is the one used in talking of what happens in a vision or a
dream (a relatively common subject in ancient writing). Paul never describes
his experience of Jesus, though he does speak of being “caught up” into heaven,
again obviously in some kind of visionary experience. Also, the stories in Acts
about Paul’s conversion (but not written by him) describe his experience as
being a vision of Jesus.
As a consequence, many scholars have
concluded that the experiences which launched the church after Jesus’ death
were visions of him raised and in heaven. Perhaps the first to have such a
vision was Simon Peter, as is said in several places. Interestingly however,
there are no New Testament stories describing Jesus’ appearance to Peter.
Perhaps the first visions occurred to women among Jesus’ followers, as the
Easter gospel stories imply. Other visionary experiences then followed, likely
even with groups. The appearance to Paul apparently was one of the last of
these. His need to assert it indicates, however, that some in the church may
have questioned its authenticity.
So what do we make of the stories in the
other gospels of Jesus’ Easter appearances? They are certainly more vivid,
dramatic, and, we might say, “tangible”. Yet this is what has made these
stories difficult for many people to swallow, especially today. The physicality
of the risen Jesus does raise all sorts of questions and problems. This bothers
some people and not others. In any case, appreciation of Mark’s Easter story
and the experience of Paul show there is more than one way to faithfully
understand the resurrection of Jesus.
Personally, I appreciate the Easter stories
where Jesus actually shows up (Luke’s “road to Emmaus” is one of my favorites).
Historically, however, I do find the idea of visionary experiences of Jesus a
more plausible explanation for how the “Jesus movement” got its start. What is
important to realize, though, is that Christianity is not based on beliefs
about what did or didn’t happen in ancient history. Faith is not based on
belief in anyone else’s experience, whether it’s someone we know personally or
someone who lived centuries ago. Faith can only be based on our own experience.
Paul, again, is of help here. Never does he
use his experience of the risen Jesus as a reason for others to have faith (he
does use it to insist on his credentials to be an apostle). Rather, “faith
comes by hearing” the words of scripture and the words of preaching and
witness. Or as Luther says, faith happens “in our ears” and is itself a miracle
and gift of grace. And what faith does is awaken us to the presence of the
risen Christ among us, rather than one wandering around a garden in ancient
Palestine.
Did God raise Jesus
from the dead? Is Christ alive? As Mark implies and as Paul says, this is not a
question of history. Rather, it is an existential question of faith that we can
only answer for ourselves. Whether Jesus lives here and now—however you
understand that—is the only question about him that really matters. “He is not
here” in this tomb, the angel says. He’s gone on ahead.
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