When the World Doesn't Look the Same
Easter 2012: Mark 16:1-8
I don't know if you are like me, but when I make my choices in entertainment, especially in movies, one of my favorite weekend pastimes, there is only major requirement I have.
And that is: I like a good endings. I hope for loose ends tied up. I want an ending where I feel like the story I've invested my 10, 12 or in some cases $15 was well spent. The alternative to this often is frustrating isn't it? Investing hours of your time into a storyline, only to be disappointed in the end that you don't know what happens! Stories that don't end in the imprisonment of all the bad guys, kissing and making up for all the "they are so perfect for each other couples" and the most hopeless of characters coming to their senses and making some good choices: I simply don't like them.
We go to movies to escape the drudgery, the monotony and the unsettling parts of our lives and so "happy endings" in somebody else's life seem to be such a big part of it. Without all plot lines settled in the end, we feel gypped.
In the same spirit, if we came to church this Easter morning hoping for a proclamation of the gospel where all was well in paradise, where we get the 100% perfect happy ending that we've been waiting for throughout the Lenten season, I have sad news for you. In Mark's account of the resurrection story, we don't get it. We are left with a cliff hanging end of unforeseeable proportions. Without some further exploration of this text, we might feel like we are missing our Easter ending too.
Though we read of the stone being rolled away, Jesus not being in the tomb and the angel appearing to the women saying, "Do not be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here" which calls for us to shout words of joy, "Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed" Mark's account gives us no tidy ending. In fact, we are left with response that most preachers like to avoid at the end of verse 8. The women, who heard, the news, "went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."
Though there's this amazing, all-inspiring story of Jesus not being in the grave and an angel, yes dressed in a white robe telling Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome that Jesus was not there. . .
And though the good news that Jesus had been predicting all along in his years of teaching and preaching-- that yes, I'll be crucified but on the 3rd day, I'll arise from the grave-- is coming true . . . Christ is risen (Christ is risen indeed).
And though the women are told specifically in verse seven, "But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you" and are given everything they need to take the next step . .
Scripture tells us that the women do nothing. They do nothing. For it is in terror and amazement of what has happened that these women say nothing.
Jesus does his part. The angel did his part. And the women were given the opportunity to respond and follow the orders. But they don't.
And for this reason, all seems lost. All seems ruined. How about this story for a happy Easter, celebration! It is a real downer, right?
Seems like a complete sour kind of ending doesn't it?
Such is why countless translators through the years have sought to insert an alternative ending to Mark chapter 16. If you have your Bible with you open it to Mark 16 now (or if not make a note to do so when you go home today). What you will notice is the presence of section of scripture that is known as the "alternative ending."
And though most of Bible translations contain these sections, almost all Biblical scholars agree that the addition of Jesus' resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene, to the two believers traveling along the road, the giving of the Great Commission and the ascension story were all most likely added 200 years later. For none of the earliest gospel manuscripts contain them. In fact, if we study the original Greek as it flows from verses 1-8 and then verses 9-20, we find distinct changes in tone and tense of verbs. All in all, in all thoughtfulness, we can assume that Mark meant to end his gospel at verse 8.
But what a shame! It would be so much easier to have verses 9-20 to get the happy ending that we all crave. It would be nice to have the later commentary on the story because it wouldn't force us to talk about resurrection in terms of how the women experienced it-- in terror and amazement.
It seems so un-church-like doesn't it to think about Easter in this way? Shouldn't have the women been shouting, "Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!" to all their friends? Shouldn't they been overjoyed to share Jesus, their teacher wasn't dead? Shouldn't have they been able to recognize in an instant how this proclamation was going to change their lives-- for if Jesus had conquered death, didn't that mean something good for them too?
But none of this was clear. None of it.
And although some Biblical commentators want to stop us at this point and make parallels between the response of the male disciples (all of those guys who fled the scene and didn't stay with Jesus at the cross) and the female disciples (saying, hey the women messed up too-- see women weren't up to the task of following Jesus either)-- I believe all of this thinking completely misses the point.
Because, really the resurrection was a lot to take in. More than these women could have ever imagined on the adventure of following Jesus.
I ask you this morning-- have you ever had an experience in your life that surprised the heck out of you? I mean, really, really surprised you in a mind-blowing, "I never saw this coming" kind of way? An experience that maybe you hoped for or even prayed for but never thought in a million years would actually come true?
Well, if you have, then, I believe that you understand how truly bewildering it was for the women to find the empty tomb that earl
y morn.
Sure, they'd heard Jesus mentioned this was going to happen. Sure, maybe even they'd been around at the home of Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus was raised. But, deep in their hearts, it was hard to believe that such was going to happen to their beloved teacher and friend. No, Jesus couldn't rise again. No way! Resurrection wasn't natural. No way. Death was a final event after all. We are born, we live and we die. It is just what human beings do. How could Jesus not be in the tomb?
Eyes crusted over. Hair uncombed. Shoes on but going through the motions of walking yet not quite sure where they were going. Tears stains still on their cheeks. Tears in their eyes ready for water works to pour at anytime as the simplest of words of memories ever-present to set them off again. The flood of shame, of uncertainty, of anger of loss: why did this happen to their Jesus?
They were lost in a sea of unanswered questions, of last words that should have been said, that needed to be said. They were caught up in the power of grief as it came to strike them and sought to bury them too in pain that was more than they knew how to bear.
Of course they were in shock. So of course they were afraid.
One commentator even unofficially diagnoses the women with what we know in modern times as post traumatic stress-- both from the trauma of the crucifixion and of the jarring news to their tear stained faces that indeed Jesus was not there. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. It was such good news that they just couldn't take it all end. The women were speechless.
If you happen to be a fan of YouTube, you might already be familiar with a video of Sarah Churman that has gotten millions of hits since its posting in September of last year. Sarah was born with a rare genetic deformity that means she’s missing the hair in her inner ear that transmits sound to the brain. She was fitted with her first hearing aid at age 2, but even with that technology she could only hear some vibrations and loud noises. She compensated throughout her life by becoming adept at reading people’s lips. She’d worked so hard to compensate in other ways; the thought of being able to hear just seemed out of the realm of possibility
But in late 2011, Sarah was fitted with a device called the Esteem Inner Ear Stimulator, an implantable hearing aid for the specific kind of hearing loss Sarah suffered. On the popular YouTube video, you can see a video of Sarah Churnam hearing for the very first time at age 29.
I have to say that it is quite moving to watch. As Sarah hears for the very first time her own voice: her laugh, her tears, the sounds of others around her, it's a reality she never could have imagined, not under any circumstances, not in any amount of time. Not in her wildest dreams did she ever believe such would come true, but it does. And in response, she weeps. And weeps and weeps.
Imagine hearing for the first time the sound of her husband. Imagine hearing the chatter of your child for the first time. Imagine all of this.
And when it happens, Sarah is stuck dead in her tracks for minutes, upon minutes. Smiling. Full of joy but paralyzed to move toward anything at first. Sarah's life would never be the same.
And, likewise, paralyzed in their tracks too the women who heard the news of the resurrection were overwhelmed too. Everything they knew, believed and staked their lives on? changed.
Resurrection of their Lord begged them to consider. What if Jesus was the real deal: God with us? What if Jesus' healings all those years had really come from God? What if the kingdom of God, the abundant life they'd be hoping for was real?
Resurrection clouded their view from what had always been. Resurrection shifted their gaze from their own pain to what God could do in their pain, how God could restore their broken spirits. Above all, resurrection meant they were going to have to spend some time re-learning the stories on which they'd based their life.
What if the end was not the end?
What if new life could come from the most unlikely of places?
What if God could be trusted to care, and protect and guide them their entire life through and beyond too?
And, what if God trusted them so much and all of the Christ followers to come-- like us-- to keep the story going?
What if the ending was not about Jesus saying or doing this or that, but people like us being a part of the world not being the same?
Then, if resurrection was real, everything was going to have to change. No more shrinking into the back of the crowds. No more taking the worst news at face value. No more being a second class citizen. No more being exclusive of people who looked just like them. No more. In resurrection the world did not look the same.
And, though the ending of Mark's gospel is still an unresolved cliff hanger, so we want to ask ourselves, what did the women do next? How long were they afraid? How long did they not say anything to anyone? With our 2000 year plus perspective, history tells us the rest of the story. And the rest of the story is that we know the story. We know the story because eventually they did tell the story. And upon each telling and re-telling of the good news: "Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed" the world never looked the same. We are living the story now.
I know this morning, I'm telling most of you a story that is not unfamiliar to you at all. In fact, you hear it every year. You've sure got Jesus is risen thing down. You know it well. You could recite it to a friend easily, just like I did with the children sermon this morning.
But, what I wonder is resurrection real for you, more than just a word that floats off your tongue in the spring time? I need to tell you today that resurrection, my friends, is not a noun and just an excuse to have a holiday celebrate, but it is a verb that asks of us action. And it is a verb that is meant to be inserted into the sentences of our lives not only on days like today but throughout all the moments of our lives.
We are called to action because of the gift of the resurrection. We are called to the action of being storytellers of the change. To be active bearers of this good story to our families to our friends, to our communities, to anyone who will listen.
At times, this story as each and everyone one of us experiences it, is going to overwhelm us. Sure, we might just have to be quiet for awhile in awe of what life altering news might do to our plans. Sure, we might even have to do some running away from time to time to get the enormity of emotions out of our system so we can begin to act on what we see and feel.
But, regardless our call is to tell. Our call is to be the story. Our call is to keep writing and writing the chapters of the gospel tale so that the goodness of Jesus Christ that we've experienced it can be experienced by others too.
Today: I tell you because of the resurrection, we've got chapters to write together, we've got a story to finish. Come again next week because we've got to live out resurrection together.
Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!
AMEN
Easter 2011 a sermon preached at Washington Plaza Baptist Church, Reston, VA from Matthew 28:1-10
Stories that conclude without happy ending drive me completely nuts. I’d almost rather not hear the story if I don’t know everything is going to work out ok in the end. Sound familiar to anyone?
This is especially the case when I go movies. When the plot line finishes unresolved, with couples who don’t kiss and make up, or the final scene being a summary of this is how life stinks when we are alone, I feel like my hard-earned 10, 11 or even now 12 dollars (growing all the time these days) is wasted. For, I didn’t need to pay money to be reminded of unfair life can be. And, I’ll leave the theater in a bad mood. (Kevin knows this is so true).
Such sentiments of gloom would be perfectly understandable too in the case of where we left our gospel story when we last read together on Friday.
After a humiliating trial and unrelenting crowds shouting, “Crucify Him” and six hours on a cross facing a cruel Roman execution, Jesus dies. No happy ending. The beloved teacher, friend, and one said to be called, “The King of the Jews” on whom many hopes of the coming of the kingdom of God were placed, dies. So much promise, carrying on his shoulders so many hopes, yet he dies. It was the original unhappy ending.
Just as Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” the followers of Jesus must have felt pretty abandoned too at this point. All the good talk Jesus had engaged in about “the kingdom of heaven is near” and “Trust God, trust also in me” seemed like a bunch of bologna as Jesus breathed his last and word got out in the community that had trusted him heard Jesus was dead. Anger and bad moods too were probably shared all around too.
If you’ve recently lost a loved one, you know that one of the first things that we do immediately following is not always full-out “cry a river of tears” posture.
While there are tears, yes, there’s a lot of quickly trying to jump to what is next.
There are funeral arrangements to be made, family to inform, decisions about what to do with the body trying to unsure that the deceased has a proper burial.
The natural human instinct, for many, is a desire to move on and move on quickly. You begin imagining life without this person. You might even find yourself supposedly comforted by others of by the notion of “Ok, now, that he or she is dead, let’s just get on with our lives.” You begin to change the focus of your gaze from hope for your life together with the loved one to how you can get over this wrenching pain as quickly as possible.
Though the past day and a half had probably seemed like the most emotional, longest time of their lives, they were seeking to close the loop on their friendship to Jesus by morning. It was why they got up so early.
I think “drama” is the last thing that they were looking for or even expecting. They believed and hoped that everything was in good order—they were just going to make sure. Therefore, all that the scene needed was a powerful melodic closing song and it could win the Oscar for the saddest story ever told.
For, it would not be the unhappy ending they were living and preparing to keep on living. What would come next would be the disruption that changed everything!
As Matthew tells the story, as soon as Mary and Mary found themselves in the place where Jesus’ body had been laid, all of nature erupted in an earthquake.
We’ve all done a lot of thinking about earthquakes recently, sending our hearts out to our friends in Japan, so we know how shocking and overwhelming such an occurrence can be. The ground that you trust so much to lift you up and keep you safe is taken from beneath you. But this was not all.
Verse two goes on to tell us more about this interruption.
As the earth itself opened up, simultaneously, a messenger appeared an angel of the Lord from the heavens. Matthew gives us some good metaphors to deal with here because he writes that this angel was “like lightening” with “his clothes white as snow.”
It was a sight to behold.
An interruption to normal in more ways than one and not only just for the women: scripture tells us that the guards who had been sent to guard the tomb were greatly shaken and fell to the ground like dead men.
This was now the Lord’s day and the women were about to not only to see something of earth shattering proportions, literally, but there were going to get a word about it too.Look with me at the interruption from the angel after the stone to the tomb has been rolled away in verse five:
“Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then, go quickly and tell his disciples that he has been raised from the dead.”
From now on, when religious leaders and government officials ruled with an iron fist and fraudulent practices, such was not the end of the story.
What they saw in front of their eyes in moments of deep loss, soul crippling pain, and heaps of sorrow was not the end of the story.
When they felt abandoned, forsaken and as if the whole world was against them, such was not the end of the story either.
And, the icing on the cake that morning came as the women were beginning the four-day journey, all 63 miles of it, from Jerusalem to Galilee. Because, I feel, they had eyes ready to behold the disruption—after accepting the word of the angel—Jesus appears to them on this road and they see him! He greets them, allowing the women to touch his feet (to know for sure that he was real) and said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
You and I would not be sitting here today, hearing this ancient story once again, if this disruption of major proportions was not received into the lives of the Marys and then later the other disciples.
For while the story of resurrection was Jesus completing the work of love he came to do, it had a dependant human element to it: resurrection would mean nothing, absolutely nothing if those who experienced it did not share it.
The interruption—the transformation, the new life-giving opportunity that the resurrection on Easter morn would give all of humanity—would be not one at all, if the women and then all who came after them at the empty tomb, and generations and generations that followed those first eyewitnesses had not allowed the disruption to sink into their beings and become a part of who they were.
Resurrection was more than a proclamation on that Sunday.
For the women at the tomb that morn, resurrection was the interruption that gave them purpose beyond being the traveling companions of this great teacher. They were charged to bear witness to this divine truth: God could be trusted to see the darkest night of our lives through.
Because in the end, this was all they were asked to do—not give theological accounts as to the science of the resurrection, not to be able to connect every dot of this point in the faith story to that one, not even to convince those whom they told with persuasive and passionate arguments so that they would believe too, they were just to live into the disruption by announcing it not only with words, but in presence too.
So, this morning I want you to practice. Those of you who were at the early morning service will remember this litany written by Sharlande Sledge. And, this is your part: we are resurrection people with Easter in our hearts. Say it with me.
When others dismiss your story as an idle tale, who will you be?
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When the world seems to be crumbling around you, remember who you are:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When despair would seem to squelch all hope, believe in who you have become:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When it is hard to persevere against all odds, trust in God who names you:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
As we follow Christ into the world, may God help us remember who we are . . .
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
So today, I say again, covering you my beloved, with the hope of this very good day—that whatever place of life you find yourself in this morning that in Christ, that even in the most difficult circumstances of our lives and in death too, we are people of the resurrection. Thanks be to God.
Let us proclaim: Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen Indeed.
AMEN
