Easter Day Year B
Taken from Lectionary Reflections - Year B
Description
Easter Day
Isaiah 25.6-9
Philippians 15.1–11
Mark 16.1-8
After all the horror, and the crowds and the noise of the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, this chapter of Mark’s Gospel starts quietly. We have already seen these women at the crucifixion scene, but we hardly noticed them there. Some of them were standing at ‘a distance’ (Mark 15.40–41), watching the terrible death of the man they had followed and supported. They made it their business to keep an eye on the body of Jesus, as it was taken down from the cross and laid – with kindness and courtesy, but without the reverence they knew it deserved – in the tomb. But although we are told their names, it is not until this final chapter that the women spring sharply into focus. Clearly, they had a strategy, unlike the male disciples. The disciples whose names we have heard all through the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s ministry had a plan that led only to victory. The terrible end of all their hopes leaves them in disarray. They are notable by their absence in the whole of chapter 15 of Mark’s account...
Taken from Lectionary Reflections – Year B by Jane Williams