"And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint Him. Very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb when the sun had just risen. And they were saying to one another, `Who will roll the stone away for us from the door of the tomb?' And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back, and it was very large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe and they were amazed. He said to them, `Do not be amazed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see Him, as he told you.' They went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had come upon them. They said nothing to any one and they were afraid."

That is where St. Mark leaves it at the end of his sixteenth chapter, and the first account of the Easter victory of Christ, with trembling, with astonishment, with fear.

The other gospel writers, Matthew and Luke and John, give us the rest of the story. They are very welcome stories, indeed, but Mark stops short, leaving it with the women in fear and trembling. Over the years, many commentators have sought to look for an additional ending to St. Mark's gospel. The Easter story can't stop there. I think there is a real meaning and a purpose for the Easter account of Mark stopping where it does. You see, our own experiences take us to moments not unlike those two Marys and Salome very early on the first Easter morning.

I am talking about the moments of shock, of let down, of grief, of disappointment, a sense of the bottom dropping out of things that surely you know about, and I as well. The times when a hospital emergency room arrival at three o'clock in the morning leaves you numb with fear and wonderment. The times when a phone call from a state police officer informs you of a tragic accident claiming the life of one very dear to you. The times when a note left on a kitchen table informs you that the marriage is over, and you are deserted. The times when you are sitting across the table from a doctor who is trying to tell you in even and measured tones that the prognosis is very, very bad. The times when you go back to your desk after a coffee break and find a pink slip there inside the envelope with the terse message, "You are fired."

The times, not when we are exalted and jubilant and hopeful and surrounded by all of the Easter joy and celebration, but the times when we join with these three women. We join them in shock, in shattering moments. Times when we are stunned into a kind of numb silence. If not the crisis moments, simply the impact of the ordinary, the everyday, the humdrum, the irritations, the things that just occupy the flat landscape of our lives. In these moments, too, Easter seems so far away.

Mark, the evangelist, has a purpose for starting the Easter story where our need is the deepest, where we are at our least and most vulnerable. Mark starts the story there but he doesn't leave it there, because the message, the word, the announcement, the proclamation picks up these three women on their way in mournful burial rights that first Easter morning. It opens a new horizon to them, as also to you and to me. For the message on this day still is, you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. He is risen, indeed!

This is the power and the heart of the Easter message that is ongoing. God has put his power whereby He raised His Son from death into a word, a message, and places it on our lips that we may speak it one to another, and sing it, and live it in the conviction that behind this message Christ is risen. Risen, indeed, is the truth, and death and evil and mourning and loss and despair and futility and guilt and sin are not the last word. The last word lies with the God who meets us in Christ at the open tomb, meets us in our disappointments and loss and illusion, and makes us more than conquerors through Him, through the Risen One, who is for us and not against us.

We are part of the ongoing Easter. That is the Good News that sweeps you and me up into its fullness. Over the centuries, men and women, youth and children have been drawn by the magnetic force of God's redeeming love into the ongoing Easter to be people who have, of course, problems and failures and disappointments. But people who, by the grace of the Risen One, have learned and are continuing to learn to live on the resurrection side of every daily cross, people who are drawn together in a community, a congregation of mutual care, of interest, of welcome. A community that wants to share the treasure of faith, of resurrection hope with those not yet aware of how dear they are in God's sight.

The ending of St. Mark then is the great new beginning of the church which comes down into our time and our city and faces us in our own urban life with things that astonish us, make us tremble, make us afraid and make us want to run. What a great thing it is for people of the faith to be drawn together in the spirit of the resurrected Lord across the barriers of race, of economy, of difficulty, and bear our witness to our city that Christ lives and rules. That ongoing power of Easter is what is before us, to keep on being drawn into mission and purpose, and the conviction that Christ is raised. Go and tell that He is raised, He goes before us and we will see Him.

Ongoing Easter gets us finally home at last, for life is not an endless circle but life is moving to an end point. The crowning achievement of the risen Lord is to bring us finally home together with the whole family of God in that transition from time into eternity. It is a great privilege to witness that transition in the lives of people and I think of one this Easter day. Her name was Augusta. She lived 100 years, raised in the prairies of South Dakota, faced every manner of hardship and heartache, but was buoyant and lived on the resurrection side of the cross, raised a family. In the last hour of her life standing with her daughters around her in the hospital room, I heard her bless her daughters. Being a mother to the very end and with a twinkle in her eye, looked at the faces of her daughters around her and pointed to them each one and said, "Too much lipstick," and then closed her eyes in peaceful death.