The Trembling Truth of Easter: When Resurrection Refuses to Be Tidy

Easter morning began with trembling.

Not with triumphant fanfare or confident proclamations, but with women fleeing from an empty tomb, bodies shaking, minds unable to process what they had witnessed. The Gospel of Mark gives us this startling image: "They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

This is not the Easter we've been trained to expect.

We prefer our resurrection stories wrapped in neat packages—angels singing, disciples rejoicing, everything resolved with a satisfying bow. We want the feather duster version of Easter: predictable, manageable, safe. But Mark hands us something altogether different. He gives us the mongoose-in-a-box version—the kind that makes you jump, that changes your voice from baritone to soprano, that leaves you shaken and uncertain.

And perhaps that's exactly what we need.

The Gift of Bewilderment
Two words capture the essence of that first Easter morning: trembling and bewildered. These aren't words of spiritual failure. They're honest, embodied responses to an encounter that changes everything.

Trembling is physical. It's what happens when the ground shifts beneath your feet, when reality rearranges itself so dramatically that your body registers the shock before your mind can make sense of it. Like standing miles from a rocket launch and feeling the sound waves vibrate through your chest—that's trembling. The world changes, and your body knows it first.

Bewilderment is different. It's the soul's refusal to fit what it sees into old categories. It's not ignorance; it's the recognition that our maps no longer match the territory. Bewilderment says, "I don't have a box for this," or perhaps more importantly, "I don't want to put these pieces back together the way they were before."

We live in a culture that trains us to avoid bewilderment. We have apps to smooth our schedules, algorithms to predict our preferences, experts to tell us what to think. We're taught that confidence means never showing doubt. We prefer tidy answers.

Easter resists that.

The God Who Refuses Our Projections
When you read Mark's Gospel from beginning to end, a pattern emerges. God refuses to be reduced to our projections. God is not the angry, show-offy deity we might imagine, not the petty judge we would be if we wore the divine crown. Instead, God surprises us at every turn.

Jesus moves fast through Mark's Gospel. There's no lingering over manger scenes or childhood stories. Instead, we meet a man on the move—confronting unclean spirits, eating with people the respectable avoid, calling fishermen and tax collectors, sending misfits out into the countryside.

He says destabilizing things: "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." "Sell all you have." He speaks of a kingdom that looks nothing like Rome's empire. He breaks rules. He angers the religious establishment.

And he heals—more than a dozen recorded healings—but with no tidy formula. Sometimes with spoken commands. Sometimes addressing the person rather than the chaos. Sometimes with hands, with spit and dirt, with human touch. Because bodies matter. Because God's loving Spirit animates our flesh, making our very bodies the language of divine mercy.

The Strong Man Who Empties Himself
Mark calls Jesus "the strong man," but not because he models human grit or ultra-athlete endurance. Jesus shows us a different, deeper strength: divine faithfulness.

Remarkably, Mark spends more than half his Gospel not on Jesus' teachings or cosmic battles with evil, but on the last week of his life. Jesus predicts his death and rising three times, then walks directly into the worst the world can do.

Crowned with scorn. Mocked as "King of the Jews." Crucified between common thieves who join in hurling insults. Abandoned, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This is the strong man? This humiliated, executed victim of state terror?

Yes. Because in that poured-out power, death itself is overturned. His power is not domination but self-giving. His victory is not the applause of crowds but the vindication of the crucified one. His resurrection is the beginning of a new world.

And watching it all, from a distance because it wasn't safe to be too close, are the women.

The Surprise That Reorders Everything
The resurrection surprise isn't primarily that God would raise someone from the dead. It's that God would raise this man—a crucified man—and vindicate his claim to being the Son of God.

The Messiah was supposed to be strong, to subvert Roman rule through power. Instead, this victim of brutal execution transcends all powers, inaugurating a new kingdom that's still breaking into the world.

Through Jesus' resurrection, the hierarchies and artificial divisions of the Roman era—and every era since—wilt. The full weight of God's power now presses upon the present moment, forging an upside-down kingdom where the last become first, where the downtrodden are lifted up, where hope dawns even in brutal circumstances.

The women witness this, trembling and bewildered, because through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has reordered the world.

Living the Resurrection Surprise
So what does this mean for us?

First, it means the resurrection offers both a promise for the next life and an obligation for this one. We cannot have one without the other. We hold the supernatural resurrection and the promise of eternal life in one hand, and in the other, we hold costly solidarity with the outsider, the marginalized, the stranger among us.

Second, it means being people of hope. The early believers didn't say, "Look what the world is coming to." They said, "Look what has come into the world." That's a big difference. If Jesus Christ was really raised from the dead, then whatever you're facing, it's going to be all right. It may not be what you expect, but it will be all right.

Third, it means paying attention. Resurrection isn't reserved for the extraordinary. It happens in ordinary moments—if we but notice.

There's a poem about a mother slicing peaches for her child, spotting a small moth, and suddenly recognizing happiness "plashing blunt, soft wings inside her as if it wants to escape again." Resurrection joy is all around us in small, bewildering moments—God's eternal time breaking into our ordinary days.

The Trembling That Becomes Testimony
The women fled from the tomb trembling and bewildered. But their trembling became the first step of witness. Their bewilderment opened them to a God who redraws the maps of life.

May we be resurrection people who live with that same trembling and bewilderment. May we embody hope, pursue costly solidarity, and train our eyes for the small, ordinary surprises that make joy break in.

May we run into the world with the news that the crucified one is raised.

And may our trembling become testimony.

Christ is risen. The world is reordered. Everything has changed.

Are you paying attention?