Easter Day
April 12, 2009
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8
Alleluia, Christ is risen. [Response: The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia.] Feels pretty good, doesn’t it. It feels great to be able to proclaim the best news of the good news of our faith on this Easter Sunday. No thanks to Mark, however. No thanks to Mark because we come from centuries of celebrating Easter as the story is told the three other gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. But not in Mark.
Did you notice? Mark’s gospel account ends abruptly at the open tomb. There is no account of Jesus appearing to anyone at the tomb, or anywhere else. Consequently there is no cause for Easter joy, or celebration for the three women who have gone to Jesus’ tomb that morning. In fact their response is just the opposite. They are amazed that the huge stone has been rolled away. But they are frightened by the young man who is sitting in there. And they are terrified when they learn that Jesus is not in that tomb, despite the fact that the young man tells them that Jesus has been raised. Then, when he tell them to tell the disciples that he will see them in Galilee, they vow to say nothing to anyone, and they run away as fast as they can in fear of what they have just experienced.
So we have to ask, what is going on here in Mark’s account of Jesus’ resurrection ? How does he want us to understand this event? How does he want this story to make a difference in the life of people like us. Easter people who want so much to sing and shout our Alleluias today. But Mark seems to give us little reason or encouragement. At least not by the standards set for us in the other gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.
Now, I don’t pretend to have conclusive answers to these questions, but I have a particular fondness for Mark’s gospel, and I have many thoughts about the way he ends it; thoughts that have certainly made a difference in my life. And while I love to sing and shout my alleluias as much as you do on this day, I love to engage the ending of Mark’s gospel for the very fact that Mark places all the burden on us to enter the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection. He requires us to engage our minds and our hearts and our faith in this story more than any other gospel writer. And the possibilities for understanding it, and living into its promises of resurrection seem endless.
So, here are some of the thoughts about Mark’s story of resurrection this morning. How it makes sense to my life of faith. And why I value its meaning for my life. I begin at Mark’s very abrupt ending. Mark tells us the women “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” And that’s it, my friends. THE END.
We never know what happens after that. The only information we get about Jesus’ resurrection comes from a young man, who may or may not be and angel. We have to accept what he says on faith, and run with it. These women are no help at all. They’ve decided they are not going to tell anyone what they have seen and heard. Not even us. But their fear and their flight from the tomb tells us a lot, I think, about out own response of fear and flight to events which do not match our own expectation or understanding of them. And, truth be told, the most feared event, and least understood event in our life is death.
When these three women came to Jesus’ tomb they have the same experience and expectations about death as we have. They expect to anoint Jesus’ body for final burial, but he is not in that tomb. And nothing the young man says to them about that makes senses to their human experience of death. So, one important message I believe we receive from Mark’s story this Easter day is this: resurrection from the dead does not make sense to a world occupied and weighed down by the limitations of our human experience and expectation of death. When human beings die we see dead bodies and we conclude that there is no more life in this person. We presume that this is the end. We see to it that the body is prepared for the grave, we pay our respects at a service for the burial of the dead, and then we get on with the business of life. But we continue to live our life under the shadow of death; under the expectation that we, too, will die. And death will also be our end. Because it certainly appears to be the case. There is a100% predictability that we will die.
So, we can hardly blame the response of these women. I am inclined to think that any one of us would have responded in the same way to learn that the person we have come to bury is not dead. Because as Mark tells us previous to this event, these women saw his dead body with their own eyes. They experienced his death with their own tears. And they witnessed his lifeless body was committed to his burial site. But Jesus was not in the tomb that morning; death no longer lived there. In fact they are told that Jesus is alive; that he has been raised from the dead. And when that stone was rolled away he was set free to go back into the world to be with his disciples. And what I read in this important part of resurrection in Mark’s gospel account is this: All we have to do is look for Jesus in the place he tells us he is going to be, and we will find him. It can be a long journey for a lot of us, but we don’t have far to look. We will find that this living God lives in us and that we live in him, forever.
History has shown us, however, that humankind basically has two responses to this story of resurrection; they either believe it, or they don’t. Skeptics, or non-believers, will not find a living God because when they look at their life and their world they can only see an inexorable process of dying and decay in the universe. That makes it is easy for them to walk away from this story, resolved to live in their human experience and expectation of death. For such people dead is dead. There is no escaping death. But there is denial. And there is no denying the negative impact death has on our life by ways we fear it, or deny it, or welcome it prematurely in moments of passion or despair. When we believe death brings an end to life, death casts a shadow of fear which makes us anxious for our life, and for life as we know it on this earth.
But for those who believe in this story of resurrection, there was no death in that tomb. God raised Jesus from our human expectations of death to divine expectations of life, and a new understanding of how we can live it into eternity. Because there was no death in that tomb. There was no death in Jesus. The empty tomb gives us a new understanding of death. Death is merely a moment of transition to new life. All fear of endings is ended. As a result, we become free to live our life differently in this world because we have nothing to fear by losing it. And we have nothing to fear by living it because death of our human body, because death no longer has power over us. Like Jesus, we are set free in this world to live our life in love and not fear, in hope and not despair, in the promise of eternal life and not the threat of our human end. And the most distinguishing feature of the life of Easter people is that we live our life in the promise of redemption, not just from this world, but in it.
One of my favorite New England poets, Emily Dickinson, speaks profoundly about the power of redemption in her poetry. Her understanding of death is illustrated in a note she wrote to her nieces just before she died. She told them with great confidence that Emily was about to be “called back” to God. And they should be glad for her.
Emily Dickinson got it right. Easter people believes that resurrection calls us back to God, not only in our death, but in our life. Resurrection changes everything we once knew to be true by the limitations of our human senses and sensibilities. In a world which seems to be stuck in the greed and betrayal, the pain and suffering, violence and death of Good Friday, Easter people are no longer held hostage to fear and death; we are free to live our life in the life-giving power of love. The well-known pastor and teacher William Sloan Coffin reminds us that our Easter story is “the victory of powerless love over loveless power.”
It seems to me that Mark’s purpose for writing this abrupt ending to his story of resurrection was intentional. There is no doubt that people Mark is writing his gospel for knew the stories of Jesus’ appearances after his apparent death; no doubt that Jesus’ disciples witnessed Jesus presence with them, albeit a changed appearance, otherwise why would they have made the effort to gather people into communities they called churches. Why would Christianity have grown so rapidly throughout the world. And why would Jesus’ disciples be willing to martyr themselves for the sake of this story.
So I am glad for the other gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection and appearances to them, but I must admit, I favor Mark’s account. Because Mark shifts the burden of understanding resurrection to us, the readers of his Gospel. He requires us to move beyond the limitations of human reason and experience of death. He invites us to discover for ourselves what this story means to our life and how it can make a difference in our life and in this world. When we no longer fear the power of death over our life, we are able to walk out of our own tombs; the self-made tombs we inhabit and the tombs others have place us in. Free to become the people God made us to be, to live the life God has given us to live.
Today Mark invites us to complete his Easter story. We have come to this place on this Easter morning to acknowledge the victory of life over death. Because we know there was no death in that tomb. And we know there is no death in us.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. (Response: The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia.] And so are we!