Mark 16:6

but he said to them, “Do not be dismayed; you are looking for Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified; he has risen, he is not here! Look! Here is the place where they laid him.


a first order of business
acknowledge fear’s failure
point to an ever-present
cheshire cat’s smile
quietly beckon resolve
relax breathe listen

you are searching
the wrong soil
for a seed already harvested
it is not safely stored away
but already invested
in feeding thousands

you won’t find here
what you came looking for
all that’s present
is a changed life
the question left is
not surety but trust


Readers may remember the contested “Son of G*D” language from 1:1. As it is not attested to in the earliest manuscripts, I prefer to delete it.

Either way, though, 1:1 identifies Jesus as “Christ”—“Messiah”, “Anointed”. That’s the starting identifier.

Here at the end of Mark Jesus is known as “of Nazareth”, which is in Galilee. This returns Jesus to his pre-baptism identifier (1:9)—“Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee”.

After all those titles along the way of “Son of G*D”, “Son of Man” (ben ’adam or image of Adam), “Son of David”, “Son of Mary”, “the Beloved Son” “the Anointed”, “Messiah”, we are left with the mystery of Jesus (a human, one from a no-place like Nazareth) being like G*D. This can be taken as a confirmation of a “divine” image in every human (Eastern Orthodox vision of theosis). Now we can look back to the early Galilean disciples—to be invited to “fish for people” is to move into the image of G*D, to come to one’s S*lf, and be a lure attracting others to follow in like manner: to follow their path to wholeness.

Life is never confinable to a tomb. Life rises. In recent applications of the conservation of matter and energy, it may be differently located, but not lost or erased. The old ballad of Barbara Allen gives an image here of rose and briar growing from graves to form a true lover’s knot.

Look. Your assumptions, expectations, religious constructs, and fears have tricked you. You’ve not been “Watching”. Look.

Look!