WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT EASTER?

(Preached on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009)

So they went out an fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.      -Mark 16:8

 

(Give a long pause, allow them to grow uncomfortable.)

So, what are we to do?

What is there to say?

Mark says the women ran away and said nothing to anyone.  Surely you didn’t come here to sit in silence for 20 minutes and meditate on the beautiful Easter lilies?!?  But I ask you, is this any way to end a story?  Where is the “Good News” in fearful silence?  Is there enough here to persuade, to stir new life in the followers of Jesus?

 

We like our endings to “tie things up.”  We don’t like loose ends.  When the hit HBO drama “The Sopranos,” about the New Jersey mob, ended its successful run a few years ago by simply fading to black critics and fans alike went ballistic.  Most people hated the ending.  Mark seems to have the common disease which afflicts all preachers: how to end the sermon!  Young Barrett preached his first sermon not only before his new church, but also in front of his mother-in-law, Mary.  Mary was a woman of “few words,” a Southern euphemism for “blunt.”  After the sermon was over, during Sunday dinner, Barrett bravely asked Mary what she thought of the sermon.  She replied, “Well, I thought you had a good sermon.  In fact, I thought you had a number of good sermons.  In fact, I thought that you missed about three good stopping places in your sermon.”  (I’ve heard similar comments from some of you in the past, on pastoral evaluations.  It is a common struggle for us preachers.)

 

Even though Mark doesn’t give us a happy ending with everything tied up in a nice package with a pretty bow on top, I believe Mark knew exactly what he was doing.  By the time he wrote his Gospel there had been decades of Christian preaching about how God raised Jesus following the crucifixion.  The apostle Paul bore witness in his letters to the fact that the resurrected Jesus had been seen by literally hundreds of people.  Mark had to know that Jesus’ resurrection was not a fearfully kept secret.  But Mark was not writing a biography.  He was not writing an historical record.  Mark was writing a gospel.  And the purpose of a gospel, as John tells us at the end of his, is “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  A gospel is not an objective, scientific, historical record.  A gospel is a propaganda document.  A gospel is intended to proclaim the good news of what God is doing in the world in order to inspire faith in those who read it.

So Mark is intending to inspire faith.  He is intent on triggering a reaction.  I think he has done a masterful job at that.  With his abrupt ending of his gospel he confronts us as readers with a simple and direct questions: “NOW, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?”

 

That is why the women fled in fear and awe and shock.  Because they suddenly discovered the story was not over.  None of them expected what they found that morning.  They were going to the grave for the postscript.  In their minds the story had ended on Friday, on that terrible cross.  After all, everyone knew, everyone understood, that death was always the end of the story. 

 

It had been a wonderful story.  Jesus had inspired such hope.  Jesus actually believed peace was possible among people and nations.  He actually believed people could be healed and transformed by love.  Jesus thought children truly mattered and were not merely amusing at their best and annoying most other times.  Jesus believed in helping people who would never be able to help him.  He thought compassion was a better path than competition.  Jesus believed in loving enemies.  He didn’t think possessions were the measure of a life worth living.  Jesus believed suffering was not the sign of God’s absence, but a time for deepening relationship with God.  He even believed that death was not the final word on human existence. He was truly inspiring.  So, let’s remember him, let’s pay homage to him, let’s remember his birthday.  Maybe business as usual isn’t so bad.  Let’s take care of our religious duties towards him and then head back home. 

 

Only, Jesus is not there.  They discover the story is not over.  As usual, he’s gone on ahead, calling them yet again to follow.  Jesus is calling us to follow him into the living future he is creating, in Galilee and unto the ends of the earth.  After Easter, everything Jesus taught and did is vindicated.  His way has been affirmed and exalted by God as THE WAY.  Jesus’ way is the way of life God desires, delights in, participates in, and sustains.  That is the knowledge which frightens the women.  It is also the knowledge which eventually overcomes their fear.  At first the news is overwhelming and disorienting.  But in time, it becomes the very essence of life for them.

 

The women approached the tomb that morning certain of what they would find: a dead body in a cold tomb with the entrance covered by a huge stone.  They could deal with everything, they thought, except moving the stone.  What they discovered was that there was so much more there to deal with than that.  What they discovered was that God rolls the stones away from our lives.  It is God who opens new possibilities where we see only problems and dead ends.  It is God who will enable and empower us to live as fully as we are created to live.  This is a story about God at work, about the power of God, not about us or our doubts and questions.  It is a story about God.

 

Terror, amazement, awe.  Totally appropriate emotions for Easter.  Totally appropriate emotions when confronted with the evidence of God at work in our lives and in the life of the world.  After all, if stones are rolled away without human effort, if Jesus really is raised from the dead, what other human assumptions about wisdom and folly, power and weakness, will likewise be proved false?  If the very power of death has been overcome, what other kinds of power and domination will likewise be overthrown?  We can surrender our grip on business as usual, as well as all our fears and despair, because there is more to life than death.

 

Novelist Reynolds Price wrote a book he called A Whole New Life.  It is his account of having cancer, having surgery, ending up paralyzed from the waist down, using a wheelchair.  It is the story of how Reynolds learned not to be confined to a wheelchair or confined anywhere for that matter.  He started over.  He wrote some of this best fiction during this time when his life could have been ended.  And in the book, Reynolds says that one of the biggest mistakes we can make, when we are assaulted by some great trauma or tragedy, is to think that we can brush off, and go right on living the life that we lived before.  The only hope for us is to say, “The old me has died.  There must now be a new me, reinvented.”  That is one way to respond to the new world that confronts us as a result of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

 

The ending of Mark’s gospel is still being written.  It is begin written by you and me and how we respond to the amazing, frightening news of the power of God let loose in our world.  Henri Nouwen describes the hope that is possible for us as a result of this news.  He writes: “It is the victory of Jesus, who has called you.  He overcame for you the power of death so that you could live in freedom.  You have to claim that victory and not live as if death still controlled you... Trust the victory and let your mind and emotions gradually be converted to the truth.  You will experience new joy and new peace as you let that truth reach every part of your being.  Don’t forget: victory has been won, the powers of darkness no longer rule, love is stronger than death.”