Easter 2015
April 5, 2015
Mark 16:1-8
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Have you
ever read a book that was gripping from the very beginning? It was fast-paced
and full of incredible stories, and the characters were compelling, and there
was a big secret that finally became public knowledge in the most dramatic and
heart-wrenching way possible? But then you get to the last page of the book,
the big surprise ending, and the plot just sort of… stops? And you think, “This
is a terrible ending! How unsatisfying!”
That’s how I
feel about the Gospel according to Mark, the so-called “ending” of which we
just heard a moment ago, in which the angel tells the women that Jesus isn’t
there, but they never actually see him. And then they never tell anything to
anyone. Done. What kind of conclusion is that?! And I know I’m not alone in my
dissatisfaction – I read Mark’s version of the Easter story to one our of our
shut-ins last week asked her what she thought about his sudden stop, with no
But why not?
Well, because we like a story to end conclusively, with some sense of
satisfaction, not in this unsettled, unfinished way. We have been walking with
Jesus through all these impressive events in his life, and most recently the
terribly emotional story of his suffering and death, and after all we’ve gone through,
don’t we at least deserve not to be left practically mid-sentence? Don’t we
deserve a satisfying conclusion to the story?
Others
throughout the centuries have felt the same way. If you read this out of the
Bible, you will see at the end of Mark, after this last verse, there are two
other possible endings, which fill in some of the blanks with information that
the other Gospel accounts offer. Both endings are so much more ending-like, but
scholars agree that they were likely added years later by monks who were making
copies of the scriptures and were unsatisfied and so they used other sources to
fill in the blanks that Mark left out. No one really believes that Mark
actually wrote either of those endings. Mark intentionally left us hanging.
Why would he
do such a thing? An answer can be found by looking way back to the beginning of
Mark’s Gospel. Do you remember the first line? It says, “The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Of course, when we read that at
first, we thought, “Well yes, this is where the Gospel starts,” assuming then
that it would then end at, well, the end! But what if that’s not what it means?
What if it really means this is just the beginning of the good news of Jesus
Christ? Like, what Mark has included here is just Part I of the story?
Now suddenly
that hypothetical book I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon that ends on a
cliffhanger is no longer frustrating, it is gripping. It becomes like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,
the penultimate novel in that gripping 7-book series. Or it is Hunger Games: Catching Fire, where
things really start to get interesting. It becomes a story that makes you
desperate to read the final book and see what happens next, how this incredible
(and true!) story will end.
Okay, so
where do we find this next book, and when can I get it on my Kindle? Well, you
could read the two fake endings of Mark, if that does it for you. Or you could
look to the other
Gospels, which have much more developed endings. These may
very well satisfy your itch, and hey, in that case, you could be like the women
at the tomb and never have to say anything to anyone, because you can just
direct people to read it for themselves in the Gospels according to Luke,
Matthew, or John.
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| Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene (John's Gospel) |
But I don’t
think that’s what Mark had in mind. Some scholars say that Mark was the most
brilliant literary genius of all the Gospel-writers, and had this unmatched
ability to draw people into the story… and this ending is his literary
masterpiece. Because for Mark, we are
Part II of the story. In Mark, the women never tell anyone about what they saw,
but they weren’t the only ones who heard about the empty tomb – we did, too. We
heard about it just a moment ago, when I read it! The women don’t tell, because
that’s our job.
But I think
Part II of the story goes beyond simply telling other people about what
happened that first Easter morning. Because a rock rolled away, terrified
women, an enthusiastic angel, and an empty tomb by themselves are not enough to
change anyone’s life. I think Part II of “the good news of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God” is less about saying what happened 2000 years ago, and more about living today as if resurrection is real.
In other
words, Part II is about practicing the resurrection, and about living our lives
as if resurrection still happens every single day – which I fully believe it
does. And no, I don’t mean every day is Easter, though I hope that every day we
do live in the hope that Easter brings. What I mean is that resurrection happens
in our lives all the time – the question is whether or not we actually notice it.
So what does
resurrection look like today, and how do we see it? I think there are at least
two parts. The first is simply to notice
– notice how resurrection happens in your own life, notice how God takes the
things that seemed like certain death (an unwanted ending of some sort), and
turns it into life, into a beginning you previously could not have imagined. Where
does God give us hope to cling to during the tough times of life? A
relationship ends and breaks your heart, but out of your devastation a new friendship
blossoms, or an old one deepens… A job is lost and you are left in fear,
When we start
noticing these things in our own lives, something in our hearts changes. We
start noticing these glimpses of hope and life and resurrection, and it is natural
not only to notice them in the world around us, but we are compelled to
participate in them. The question then becomes, “how are we partnering with God
today in transforming despair into hope, apathy into compassion, hate into
love, and death into new life?”[1] In
short, how is God using us to bring hope to a world in desperate need of good
news? In Part II of Mark’s Gospel, how might God use you to “go and tell,” not
only through your words, but also through the way you interact with the needs
of the world? I can’t stand up here and give you
the answer for how that looks
in your particular life, but the variation of response is what makes Part II of
Mark’s Gospel so very rich and interesting. What a gift to be able to help
write it!
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| Christus Victor Banner Inspired by mosaic (AD 500's) in the ArchEpiscopalChapel in Ravenna, Italy. |
Today we
celebrate how God is indeed so powerful that even death doesn’t stand a chance.
Christ is the victor, even over the grave. Friends, this means that nothing is
more powerful than our God! And this is news that can change lives, both ours
and the lives of those we encounter, so let us live like “he is risen indeed,”
like resurrection is indeed true,
today and every day! Let us take Mark’s sudden ending to Part I of the Gospel,
and keep writing the story – the story of how God takes what troubles us the
most and what would have meant
despair, and turns even that into a victory, and into a chance to let hope
shine into our lives, a chance to let the light of Christ shine into our
darkness, a chance to let life have
the final word.
Alleluia!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Alleluia! In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1]
From Patheos, “Practice Resurrection,” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/03/practice-resurrection-progressive-christian-theology-for-easter/#ixzz3VWUK0JGI
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