Full service can be viewed HERE. Gospel/sermon begins at 20:45.
Resurrection of our Lord
April 4, 2021
Mark 16:1-8
 |
| By Natalie Cincotta, age 17, St Paul's member |
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Like many people, my husband and I have some favorite television shows, many of which we like to return to again and again. One of these is called, My Name is Earl – a delightful story about a man who is a real scumbag, but when he wins the lottery, and discovers karma, he resolves to use his winnings to right every wrong he has ever committed. But when we rewatch it, my husband refuses to watch the last episode. Why? Because it ends on a cliff-hanger, with those telltale words, “to be continued…” across the screen, but the show was not picked up for another season, so we never get to see what happens next. “It’s just too painful,” my husband says. “I can’t go through that again.” (It’s a little dramatic, I know, but, he really loves this show!)
I sometimes feel that way when I read this cliffhanger ending of Mark. We’ve just gone through the agony of Jesus’ suffering and death: his betrayal by Judas, his denial by Peter, his desertion by his friends. We cried with the women, we gasped at the dramatic moment of death when the temple curtain was torn in two and Jesus was finally recognized for who he really is. We wiped grateful tears as Joseph of Arimathea and the women saw to it that Jesus got laid in a decent grave. And now we come back, with popcorn popped, cuddled under a blanket ready to watch the series finale. With bated breath we watch the women show up at the tomb. We wonder how they will move that big stone, and are as shocked as they are to see it has already been moved! Angels?! Didn’t see that coming! What could be next?? The angel charges them to meet him once again in Galilee. Oh this is exciting… and the women were filled with terror and amazement (so are we!), and…. They never told anyone anything. To be continued…. Or not. Sorry.
Uhhhh… For the fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat kind of gospel account that Mark provides us, this ending kind of stinks, right?
Turns out, others thought so, too. If you look up this passage in your Bible, you will find two other options for endings, cleverly labeled “shorter ending of Mark” and “longer ending of Mark.” No one thinks they were written by Mark, but rather, they were added 2-3 centuries later by monks who didn’t like the unsettling ending Mark provided, so they filled it in with themes from other Gospel accounts. But like a bad sequel for a classic Disney movie, the animation is all wrong and the voices have all changed. These endings don’t match Mark’s style or voice at all.
Even worse, these attempts take away from what Mark was trying to do with his strange but ultimately compelling ending. Well that’s no good! So let’s take a closer look.
To understand the end, we have to go back to the beginning. Do you remember what Mark’s very first line of his gospel is? “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Now, we may have heard this and thought, “Hmm, a bit abrupt, but I guess it’s descriptive.” We assumed that it would then end at, well, the end! But now we see more layers to what felt like just a lazy way to start a story. What if what Mark really meant was: this is just the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ? Like, what we have here in the Bible is just Part I of the story?
Aha. Now suddenly Mark’s story is less like a TV show that didn’t get picked up for another season, which will never satisfy us. Now it becomes like the season finale of the penultimate season of The Good Place, or whatever your favorite show may be, where you immediately look online to see when the final season is due to come out. It becomes a story that makes you desperate to see how this incredible (and in Mark’s case, true!) story will end.
Okay, so when will the next season of Mark drop on Netflix? Well, you could check out 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.
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 the next season. 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 huge rock mysteriously 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 recognizing the ways that resurrection is still happening in our lives, the ways that God is still taking our endings and transforming them into beginnings, the ways that God takes all of that death, and pain, and brokenness we experience, and brings forth from it opportunity and new life, turning it into a beginning we could not have previously imagined.
This possibility, this promise, this hope of new life coming from death, is at the forefront of our minds right now, as we just begin to emerge from this pandemic. It has been a time full of loss and deaths, both significant and mundane, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. As much as we long to “get back to normal,” we also know deep down that “back to normal” is not going to be entirely possible, nor is it necessarily in our best interest. What I hope follows will be a time of individual and communal reckoning with what just happened: how will we be changed as people, as communities, as a Church, and as the world as a result of what we just went through together? How will God use this to bring about necessary transformation of this world?
The pandemic is of course a big, shared thing on our minds, but we also all have individual situations, significant and mundane, in which we long to experience resurrection, and the joy and transformation that goes along with it.
For example: A marriage is struggling… but the work to keep it together deepens your connection to one another, strengthening what you have.
A job is lost and you are left in fear… but the loss has finally freed you from something that wasn’t bringing you any joy, and gives you the chance to search for what you really want to do with your life.
An addiction grips you… but you finally realize there is nowhere left to go but up, and piece by piece your life starts to fall into a place of which you are proud instead of fearful.
I don’t mean to present these as “silver linings.” They are more than that: these resurrections are opportunities, even transformations, and invitations to see what new thing God is doing, is bringing out of our death and loss. When we start noticing these things, these resurrections, in our own lives, something in our heart changes. We start noticing these glimpses of hope and life and newness, and it becomes natural not only to notice them in the world around us, but we are compelled to participate in them, to partner with God in transforming the despair of this world into hope, apathy into compassion, hate into love, and death into new life. In short, we see how God is using us to bring hope to a world in desperate need of good news.
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 cast away the shadows, 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment