A story is
told about a couple of churchgoing friends sharing a conversation about
their worship experience on Easter morning a few days after the fact.
One expressed her enthusiastic appreciation of the combination of music,
scripture and preaching. But the other friend simply grumbled because
he and his wife had spent most of the service trying to convince their
two year old daughter to keep her shoes and socks on. It seems that the
preacher had begun his Easter sermon with a solemn demand. “Take off
your shoes, for this is holy ground.” Just when you think the kids
aren’t paying attention. Watch out!
The story
is a reminder to us all that, no matter who we are or what our age, we
are treading on holy ground this Easter Sunday morning. Arrayed in our
Easter finery, set for the noonday feast that awaits us all, together
our songs, our words and our very being proclaim the good news “Christ
the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!!” That’s the way things are
supposed to be on Easter Sunday anyway, right? But if we are to take
our cues from Mark’s gospel this morning, we might well be led to sing a
different tune. The ground may well be holy, but at the same time, it
seems awfully shaky. I mean, what are we to make of the end of the
story? A mysterious white robed man tells Mary, Mary Magdalene and
Salome that Jesus has been raised and is not there, that they should go
on to Galilee and tell his disciples and there they will see Jesus. And
their response? “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.”
Those of
us who have a lot invested in a day like today, who’ve come with a
certain set of expectations may well be wondering right about now. “Is
this any way to put together a resurrection?” I hate to disappoint you
folks, but I’m afraid it’s even worse than that because in the original
text the story ends right in mid sentence. Try this on for size. “The
women went out from the tomb for terror and amazement had seized them;
they said nothing to anyone, they were afraid for…” That’s it! End of
story. How do you like that? Where’s Paul Harvey when you need him
ready to give us “the rest of the story.” Not that the folks way back
when didn’t try to smooth things out and add a more neat and respectable
ending—a convincing appearance by the resurrected Jesus in which he
sends the disciples out into the world to share the good news—the kind
of an ending that allows you to bring up the, roll the final credits and
let folks leave feeling good about the world and themselves. None of
this “they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid” business, thank
you! What kind of a good news story ends with such disturbing
uncertainty: a promise whispered from a dark, dank tomb and women
running away scared out of their wits?
But then
can’t we identify with where those women happen to be early on that
first day of the week? I mean, even today on Easter Sunday, in the
living of life, don’t we all find ourselves caught somewhere between
hope-filled promise and fearful apprehension, a confusing web of doubt
and amazement? Parents hold tight to sons and daughters full of hopes
and dreams for their future, but with fear and concern for them as well
in a world where nothing is sure. A loved one is diagnosed with a
serious or even life threatening illness. The doctor’s calm assurance
that they’re doing everything they can, provides us with momentary
comfort, but in the deep, dark of the night, we awake to our worst
fears. We want to trust our leaders when they promise to keep us safe
from terror and disaster, but a part of us wonders if we’re going be
next. Singer, song writer, Paul Simon describes that sense of being
caught between hope and fear in his song, “The Boy in the Bubble”.
“These are days of miracle and wonder” he declares, where “medicine is
magical and magical is art, the boy in the bubble and the baby with the
baboon heart, but don’t cry baby, don’t cry.” We want desperately to
believe in the miracle and wonder, but “sometimes not even music can
substitute for tears.”
And yet,
the good news of resurrection comes precisely to those caught between
promise and uncertainty, to people like the two Marys and Salome, to
people like you and me. “They said nothing, they were afraid for…” The
story says they said nothing, but obviously something happened beyond
the story that led them to do just that, to tell what they saw and
heard. They told someone who told someone else, who told a lot more
people so that four decades later a guy named Mark decided to write it
down, so that nearly two thousand years later here we are hearing,
believing and continuing to share it today!
Maybe the
story of Jesus’ resurrection has no ending because there is no ending,
at least not the kind of ending that we suppose, at least not yet. A
strange sentence that ends in a preposition may well be Mark’s way of
telling us that the story isn’t over because now it’s our story, sort of
like one of those movies where you get to choose the ending only in our
case we get to live it. We get to go back again to Galilee to meet the
one who is himself, the goodness, the love, the mercy of God who gives
food to the hungry, who heals the sick, who forgives sinners and raises
the dead. As the church, we believe and confess. “Christ has died.
Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.” For those who are confused
about the past, bewildered about the present and scared about the
future, there is no sweeter sound than the voice of the one who calls us
by name through baptism. “Child of God, you have been sealed by the
Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” Because of
Easter, we can be truthful about the past, we can have confidence for
today and hope for the future. We don’t have to fear death anymore
because Jesus has been raised. We don’t have to fear evil, because
Jesus is alive and on the move. We don’t have to fear the future,
because we will see him.
And in
every way, our lives are lived in response to what God has done in
Jesus. The women’s silence should serve as a reminder to us though,
that we like them aren’t there yet. There will be moments when our
fears will get the best of us, when we’re struck silent, when we fail to
respond as we should. But even then, maybe even more so, Christ will be
there. He’s already been there and he’s out there ahead us leading us
into the gift of a new day, full of expectation, full of possibility,
full of God’s dream for all creation. And if we want to see Jesus
that’s where we need to look, out there ahead of us in what amounts to
be our own Galilees—“where” in the words of theologian Campbell “charity
and love prevail over injustice and violence; where compassion and hope
replace cynicism and despair, where peace and love take root in lives
that are empty and lost; where human beings know joy and justice,
dignity and delight: there is the risen Christ, beckoning to us.”
So the
invitation to us today my friends is the same as that first Easter
morning when the light glowed bright and warm on the horizon. Go and
tell and there you will see him. But be prepared, because just when you
think you’ve got him in your sites, he’ll be gone out ahead of us again,
ever on the move, always pressing towards that day when all things will
be made new, even you and even me. Then let us, up and away, Christ
beckons us and there is no better place to be. Praise be to God now and
evermore. Amen.
