Easter Day, April 5, 2015 Sermon by Rev. W. Bruce McPherson

Acts 10:34-43 Colossians 3:1-4 Mark 16:1-8

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

Let me welcome you to St. Martin’s this morning to this special service for a special day. And what could be more special than Easter. Jesus crucified, dead and buried for three days then rising from the tomb on Easter morning.

Easter is a special day and the Easter story is a special story but it’s not a simple story the way Mark tells it. I has an ending that really gets your attention, because it is an ending that ever ends.

Have you ever noticed that a really good story keeps your attention long after the end? Sometimes, the ending is so ambiguous, so challenging that you spend time trying to see what the next chapter would look like if it had been written.

Stories where they lived happily ever after are nice but they really don’t engage you in the same way – there’re too pat. That happened to some other Cinderella and her Prince Charming. Good stories keep your attention long after they end.

If you think about the great novels you've read they probably ended before the story was finished. James Joyce's great Ulysses ends with the word "Yes."

Maybe the best recent example is the novel Life of Pi. The story begins by saying that it is a story that will make you believe in God. Pi is an Indian who narrates the story of his survival from a ship wreck.

You don’t need the details, but what is important is that it is subject to various interpretations, some dismal and despairing, some uplifting and hopeful.

So in a sense, the story never ends because the debate goes on every time the story is revisited. And it is no coincidence that the hero’s name, Pi, is also an irrational number – a constant with an infinite number of decimal places.

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Huck Finn heads west; Ishmael lives to tell the story of Moby Dick, and if you want a recent movie to illustrate the point, perhaps you saw Gone Girl, did he do it or not?

Here’s another story that keeps you in it long after it ends. Three women went to the tomb, not expecting a miracle, but so that they could express their love for their defeated and lifeless teacher. They wanted to anoint the body as was the custom and their only concern was whether they could move the massive stone that sealed the tomb.

But when they got there, the stone was rolled away and a man in a white robe was sitting there saying that Jesus was raised and urging them to go to Galilee where they would see him.

Then, the text says, “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.”

And that, my friends, is where Mark’s story ends. There is no Jesus in the garden, no post-resurrection appearances no happily ever after, only fearful flight, just like all the other followers of Jesus.

Now I suspect that most of you (some of you) will rush home and pull down your bibles because that’s not the way you remember the ending. But, for Mark, that’s it; that’s the end.

To be sure there’s a little passage tacked onto the ending by some unknown author 200 years or so after Mark. But there’s virtually unanimous scholarly opinion that Mark’s gospel ends with the women on the run.

For anyone looking for a happy ending, this gospel is disappointing. The women finally fail just like the disciples and everyone else. And all that’s left is a promise, a promise made many times in this gospel (5 to be exact), a promise that they would see him in Galilee – afterwards.

Mark’s gospel ends with the protagonist dead and his friends on the run. But there are two important matters to be considered in this ending: God’s involvement in it and our response to it. This can be said to be true of all of life’s dilemmas.

At first glance, God does not do such a great job with Jesus. From the moment when he was driven into the wilderness after the baptism until his agonizing cries on the cross what happens to Jesus is mostly bad.

2 He says wonderful things and does amazing things but his time is not an easy time. He was berated for eating with the wrong kind of people, he was rejected by the home town crowd, the powers that be were constantly putting him to the test and, of course, there was the business about the crucifixion.

It is as though God has put Jesus in a no-win situation, overloaded the disciples with a near-fatal dose of fear, and sends a group of well-meaning women reeling at the very moment they need reassurance. Hardly does any of this sound like good news.

Then, just as there is an amazing and wonderful twist in all of Jesus’ parables, there was an amazing and wonderful twist in God’s story line. In this one death-defying act, God vindicates all that Jesus said and did. God raised Jesus affirming his barrier-breaking vision that included the excluded in God’s plan for creation.

No wonder that the women were afraid. What if it were true? What if Jesus had risen from the dead? If this were to be true, then everything we thought to be certain is uncertain everything we thought was settled is unsettled everything that seemed final is anything but final.

Think about that for a minute. The only things certain are death and taxes. But if he is risen death is no longer a sure thing.

If death is no longer certain, then what on earth is? If death is no longer certain then everything we thought was true might not be; everything we thought was important might be unimportant; everything we thought was real… It’s frightening, if you think about it

It would be easier in lots of ways to keep him in the tomb; get real. We have lots of ways of doing that, you know. We don’t have to deny the resurrection, we can simply reduce it to insignificance.

We can say, for example, that the teachings of Jesus are immortal like the music of Mozart or the painting of Rembrandt. That he lives on in the beauty of the beatitudes and the wisdom of the parables.

And we can turn it into poetry by pointing to the return of spring and the blooming of the cherry blossoms and the greening of the grass. It is the return of life to a dead earth; to rebirth of hope in a despairing world.

3 All of these are miracles, I suppose, but none of them are resurrection. Unless something very real and very powerful took place there would be no Church, no Christianity, no faith, no hope.

If he’s really dead then we don’t have to listen too closely when he tells us to love our enemies, or to turn the other cheek. And we can write off everything else to hyperbole; he really didn’t mean it about the camel and the eye of the needle

We disciples, just like the women at the tomb, have a decision to make every day – a decision between faith and fear; will we take follow him even when it seems the improbable thing to do or will we not. Our response matters.

Stories with endings like this keep us engaged precisely so that we will respond to it. And like the women, we have to decide what to do in the face of uncertainty. We have to decide how we will handle life’s most perplexing questions and it’s especially difficult when the chips are down.

If this is not what the crucifixion is all about then religion can become for us into mere superstition. But we need more, so we have been given Jesus.

A year ago or so I clipped an article from the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Is one man’s faith another’s superstition?” I get this question all the time from my brother-in-law. Superstition says that if you know the magic formula you can control everything.

If you say the right words or sacrifice the right animal or if you wear the right jewelry or paint your barn with the proper symbol then you can keep evil at bay or never get sick or win the game. At lease we hope so, knock on wood.

Faith is far more difficult and far more rewarding. Faith is about the search for meaning and purpose in that journey upon which we are all embarked. By faith we learn to see the world with different eyes.

We may see the world as hostile; or we may see it as indifferent. But through the eyes of faith we come to see the world as life-giving and generous.

All of which brings me back to the women at the tomb. Mark’s telling of the resurrection of Jesus isn’t filled with victory speeches and triumphal marches, but rather fear and trembling.

4 Mark’s telling of the Easter story is about three frightened women. It is about three women who came to the tomb out of love and fidelity to do the ritual things of their tradition.

God, however, had other ideas. God broke through the barrier that separates death and life as if to say to the women and to us, so now what are you going to do?

Only God can make death come out right. That, after all, is what the resurrection is all about. Like the three women, God brings us to our knees in amazement and pulls us to our feet running. God does not ask us to be successful, only to follow.

Mark speaks to us at that most difficult moment when, like the women, we know what we are supposed to do but fear the consequences of it. And it’s up to us to decide. It’s our response that matters.

Have you ever noticed how a good story keeps your attention even after the end? Good stories make us think and therefore they shape our behavior. Good stories take us back again and again.

This story – our salvation story – the story of three women afraid and silent, brings us back over and over again and it is compelling because when these women find their voice, and they will, they are a powerful witness to the truth.

There is no slick and easy Easter story here. Their story, their witness, has great authority and enormous weight. Because they’ve been to the cemetery and looked into the darkness and in the darkness of an awful tomb they saw an angel.

May we do the same.

AMEN

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