8 April 2012

“A wholly unsatisfying ending … but a great beginning”
Mark 16:1-8
The Resurrection of our Lord 8 April 2012


“So now you get to find out if you really believe what you say you believe.”

Those words … I’ve heard them before from you, from others … coming to us, at times when the regular expected routine of everyday life is interrupted … intruded upon … by some event or events which seems so totally out of the un-planned-ness, the way-it-should-be-ness of life … that, at least for a moment, maybe a whole string of moments, we’re knocked off course … or set adrift … like an unmoored boat, bobbing around, aimlessly … looking for safety, comfort, calm, stability, in the places where we most hope to find it … hoping, praying, that it will be enough for us, if not to bring it all back to “normal,” at least, then, to allow us to continue on in life.

Certainly, that was the hope, the fervent prayer, of those women gathered at Jesus’ tomb on the morning that the Sabbath was over. Their teacher, their rabbi, their friend, their enfleshed hope for something better in this life had been taken from them; taken from them before their very eyes, this one to whom they had grown close, following, supporting him in his ministry.
They were there, these women, who had watched everything that had happened those past three days.
Jesus’ arrest.
His “trial,” if you could call it that.
His appearing before the leaders of the church and of the state, taking their questions, their scorn, their brutalizing and beating, and finally, their death sentence.
These women watched at a distance as Jesus was nailed to the cross, tormented and taunted. These women heard that final, last agonizing cry, as Jesus expressed the truth of what indeed was happening to him … “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” They saw the end, the end which in some ways they could not believe, but they had to, they must … death, the final end, the final God-forsakenness, had taken Jesus.
They watched at a distance while Jesus was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb.
They went home and marked the Passover Sabbath, that high day of their religion, as dutifully as they could. And then, just as dutifully, they arrived at the tomb that morning, bringing spices so they could give Jesus the burial proper to one of their religion, perhaps, just going through the motions, numbed by it all, but still walking in the word and deed of their religion, even to this end, with a hope, a prayer, that somehow, someway, it would get back to “normal,” at least, then, allowing them to continue on in life.
And then it all blew wide open.
Jesus wasn’t there anymore. What there was, was a tomb without a dead body, the dead body that had been placed in it just a couple of days before. They’d seen Jesus’ burial, they knew that to be true … but now, here, something else had happened …
That something else, was like a lightning bolt from heaven …
There was no Jesus’ body, that was certain … there was that young man in white, telling them some utterly amazing words … he has been raised, he is not here.
Now, if they’d stopped and thought about it … really taken some time for reflection … if they would have adjourned to the first century version of Starbucks or Luther’s Table … taken the time to chew on it, talk with each other, they probably would have remembered that this was exactly what Jesus had been telling them would happen, all along.
They might remember it through the mists of their clouded memory, clouded by the storms of the days just past, somehow, like sun breaking through the clouds, Jesus’ words about grains of wheat falling to the earth and dying, but then sprouting again, bearing much fruit … words about the Son of Man being handed over to those who would condemn him and beat him and kill him, and after three days he would rise again … if they thought about it, really thought about it, they would remember … and then, they would find out that they, indeed, believed what they hoped they really believed … that what Jesus told them, that what Jesus had promised them, was, had, come to pass for them.
The new future, not ‘normal’ but beyond normal … the best of all words, for them. The ultimate gift of God For Us. He has been raised.
Ah, but here in our brief text, that isn’t the case. These women hear the words but it’s all too fresh, too soon, too close, and this last blow to their old, straight-line, a+b=c way of thinking about life and religion and The Way It All Is … this last blow is the final cruelty. Now, even the word of death, the final word which they know, the final word which they can, do, trust to be true … even death cannot be trusted anymore.
And they just can’t handle it.
Thus, we have Mark’s wholly unsatisfying ending to his story of the” Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” …

So 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.

Well, who could blame them? Those words, bringing with them the end of the old and ushering in the new, the end of death’s reign and the beginning of the new life, the Kingdom of God as Jesus had promised it … the old word and way of death-bound life had to die in them first before the shock of the new could sink in and take hold and be, not as shock, but as the in-breaking, hope-filled Word of Resurrection and New Life for them, creating them anew too.
And die that old word would … though it would surely take a while, that fear, that terror and amazement which seized them on that first Easter morning would give way, eventually, to … proclamation. The Word, The Good News about Jesus, moving and flowing like life-giving water, through their words, perhaps haltingly at first, then, slowly, increasing in their frequency, their boldness, their sheer life giving-ness, flowing forth through them and drenching the world in this great Good News:
He has been raised.
And so this word is for us this morning as well, us, wherever we are in this journey of life … we hear it, proclaimed once more, we share it, in word of forgiveness, in word of baptismal water, in word of bread and wine, given and shed for us. Wherever we are … the word of the old, the word of the way of death, has been struck down once more, struck down by the sheer awesome silence of an empty tomb, and now, and now,
… we have been given another moment, another day, another season, to receive, to share, to live with each other this Word of Resurrection, so that we may believe what we say we believe.
He has been raised.
Death is dead.
Life … God’s life … the Kingdom life … is here, and now, and for us, to celebrate, to live into, to share with others.
That wholly unsatisfying ending … is once again a great beginning … the greatest of beginnings … for us, for all, for the sake of the world God loves.
Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Amen.