Sermon for Easter Sunday,  April 16, 2006

UNFINISHED EASTER

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture:  Mark 16:1-8

¹When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.  

³They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?"

⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.

 ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.

 ⁶But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.

 ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."

 ⁸So 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.

The original ending to the gospel of Mark, the authentic ending is very, very strange. You may know by now that Mark is the earliest of the four gospels and when we study the Bible, the earliest sources carry more weight—they are the closest to the very time of Jesus.

So the way Mark ends his dramatic story of the life and teaching and impact of Jesus the messiah is especially important, strange as it is. Mark tells us that after the three women have seen a young man sitting on the right side of the empty tomb and heard his message about Jesus, they were alarmed, and they fled from the tomb in terror and amazement and said nothing about this to anyone because they were so afraid.

We can contrast this to all the other gospels and see how shocking Mark’s story is. In Matthew Jesus appears to the women just after they leave the tomb and he tells them those three words that are the most frequent words in the Bible—Don’t be afraid. He tells them because he sees that they are very afraid. Then Jesus also appears to the rest of his friends on top of a mountain in Galilee and some of them could believe what was happening and others as they saw him and heard him still doubted. And there the risen Christ gives them what we know as the great commission:

Go now into all the world and offer this new life to all people and create more disciples and baptize them and teach them to obey everything I have taught you.

There is that word—obey—that we used last week when we gave away 1300 crosses to people and said, “Take one if you are willing to take a new step of obedience, of following Christ.”

In the gospel of Luke, there are also appearances by the risen Christ to his friends and the first one is when two friends are very slowly and sadly walking to a town called Emmaus and they are joined by a stranger, someone they don’t know, who asks them why they are sad. They stop and tell him what has happened to Jesus and then they say some of the saddest words in any language: We had hoped that he was going to be the one to liberate Israel.

We had hoped. We had hoped to be able to grow old together and see our kids through college and love our grandkids, but something happened. We had hoped that we would have good health all of our lives. We had hoped that our business would be successful. 

Does anyone bring any of those broken hopes here this morning? Jesus’ disciples had those broken hopes.

You remember the rest of Luke’s story?  They walk on to the town of Emmaus, the two disciples persuade this stranger to stay and eat with them and when he takes the bread to bless it and break it, THEY CAN SEE WHO IT IS, AND IT IS THE LORD. IT WAS THE LORD ALL THE TIME! And they say, weren’t our hearts on fire as he was explaining the scriptures to us?? They weren’t having indigestion; they were in the presence of the risen Christ. 

And in the gospel of John, Jesus appears to his friends on Easter day several times! John is the latest gospel to be written and by that time we know of several appearances: once to Mary Magdalene at the tomb when she thinks he is the gardener, another time back in the city in the upper room where all the doors are locked, another time to Thomas when Jesus invites him to see the wounds. And then the last time in the gospel of John when Peter and others have gone fishing and Jesus is on the shore and fixes a picnic for them on the beach and then asks Peter three times to feed his sheep, take care of his lambs.

Now those are inspiring stories, stories with direction and motivation and joy, but today we have these verses from Mark that are almost embarrassing. The women were so frightened and terrified that they ran away and did not tell anyone. THE END. In fact they were so embarrassing that the early church felt it had to add some happier endings to this gospel so later on after Mark wrote this, others added some stories about Jesus appearing to his friends and things feel better. In most Bibles, if you have a current translation, these stories are bracketed and there is a footnote telling you these verses are not what Mark wrote and they were added later by someone else.

What do we make of this—on Easter Sunday, the happiest day of the year, we stop with the message of fear and shock and awe and people running away in terror? I think there is something important here for us to learn from and it has to do with our initial response to the news of Easter if we can get past our preconceptions, there will be a great blessing in what Mark tells us in verses 1-8. 

These three women had been with Jesus. They have seen the past few days. They have already been frightened by the tension in the air ever since coming to Jerusalem one week earlier for the Passover. They have seen one of the twelve disciples lead the soldiers to Jesus so he could be arrested. Incidentally, I believe Judas just misunderstood the kind of messiah Jesus is. Judas like many others wanted a warrior messiah like King David who would raise up an army to fight the Romans and throw off their oppressive rule and restore the kingdom to Israel and Judas and others could not conceive of a suffering servant messiah. Judas brought the soldiers there to force Jesus to finally start the revolution and he was so disturbed when he saw the result of his betrayal that he ended his life.  

The women have seen all of this, they have seen Jesus mocked and beaten and nailed to a cross and killed. They have seen him taken quickly to a borrowed tomb late on Friday which was fortunately available because otherwise his body would have gone to a remote tomb where criminals are buried because he was executed as a criminal. They have seen all of their hopes and dreams shattered and they are in the midst of post traumatic stress on this Sunday morning, but still they come to the tomb to anoint his body with spices so the smell would not be so bad. 

Have you noticed that all of the people in the four gospels who came to the Easter tomb were women? The women were the first witnesses to Easter! 

And they had the same reaction you and I would have. They experienced a shaking of the foundations of their lives. Things got turned upside down and of course they were terrified there in the empty tomb. Life is not rational and logical and predictable any more. Life is surprise and not reasonable and full of mystery and awe. 

That is how it is when we are in the presence of God. We are in mystery. We are shaken to our very core. And we feel afraid. 

Dr. Rachel Remen works with physicians from across America in her center in California. She tells a story about mystery and awe and holy ground and God in one of her books. She is in a group with a physician named Tim in his 40’s who tells the other doctors in his group about his father’s death. His father had Alzheimer’s disease when the son was a young teenager. He was able to stay at home and his family always had someone with him. His father had no awareness of his wife or two sons and had not spoken for several years. One Sunday afternoon the mother had gone to the grocery store and left the two sons and her husband watching the football game on TV. The boys were taken aback when their father fell out of his chair, was gasping for breath lying on the floor and was about to die.  

The physician telling this story now said, “From my father came a voice that I had not heard in many years: “Don’t call 911 son. Tell your mother I love her. Tell her I am all right.” And then Tim’s father died. 

Because he died unexpectedly at home, the law required an autopsy Tim told the group of physicians around him. My father’s brain was almost completely destroyed by this disease. So for many years I have asked myself, ‘Who spoke?…I do not know but what I know, Tim said, is that much of life cannot be explained but only witnessed.’ 

There is more mystery than we think and this story from Mark tells us that. 

Dr. Diane Komp is a pediatric oncologist. It is a very tough job. She works with children who have cancer. She works with their families. She tells about being with a little girl who has leukemia. This was several years ago when the recovery rate was far lower that it is now. The seven year old girl, Anna, had gone in and out of remission several times but now she was near the end. With her in the hospital room were her parents, the hospital chaplain, and Dr. Komp who would have described herself as a “pragmatic post christian agnostic”, that is, a member of the church alumni association, as one of our friends calls it.

Dr. Komp said before she died, seven year old Anna mustered the final energy to sit up in the bed and say, “The angels—they are so beautiful. Mommy can you see them? Do you hear their singing? I have never heard such beautiful singing.”

Then, Dr Komp says, she lay back on her pillow and she was gone.

Anna’s parents reacted as if they had been given the most precious gift in the world. (They had been.)  The hospital chaplain quickly left the room, leaving the agnostic Dr. Komp alone with the grieving family, and here is how Diane Komp describes that time with the parents:

“Together we contemplated a spiritual mystery that transcended our understanding and experience.”

“A spiritual mystery that transcended our understanding and experience.” If we can’t catch a glimpse of that today—Easter Sunday— we may as well not be present. That is what was happening to the women at the tomb and they were in shock. Their foundations were being shaken all the way down. This does not make sense. Jesus of Nazareth was killed. We saw it. And now we are told he has been raised and… is going on ahead of us?

I am a very scientifically minded and logical and rational person. I think that churches too often try to bypass reason and science and logic and try to have people turn off their minds. But this day is the day, that in the words of Dr. Komp, transcends our understanding and experience. But it does not transcend our reason.

Something happened to turn that discouraged, defeated, deeply grieved band of Jesus’ friends into the most enthusiastic group of missionaries the world has seen—willing to stand up to the power of Rome and even to die because of their faith. Something happened or we would have probably heard very little about Jesus of Nazareth. As your bulletin cover says, there were many people who in the first century claimed to be the messiah and gathered some disciples around them and they were killed and we know very little about them.

Something happened after Jesus’ humiliating execution to cause books to be written, a community to be established, the Lord’s Supper to be celebrated, and churches to form that touch more people across the world than any other religion ever.

That is what our reason tells us, but along with that reasonable evidence I hope we can get just a glimpse of what Mark tries to show us in his story—the wonder, the wonder, the awe, the mystery that we feel when we are in the presence of God’s resurrection of Christ.

Mark has some other important words for us, words the young man tells the terrified women in front of him.

One of those women is Mary Magdalene, and she is in every one of the Gospels as one of the first people at the tomb. Mary Magdalene was a very important leader in the early Jesus’ movement after Easter and this is the one place that Dan Brown’s DaVinci  Code book is correct. He is wrong about so many other things in Christian history and we will be looking at his errors in two weeks as we start a new sermon series. But he is right that Mary had a leadership role for a while and the chauvinists managed to squelch that role and pretend that she was a prostitute which is not true. Mary was called a leader of the disciples and it is probably no coincidence that in some of the Easter stories, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene.

Here is what we learn in Mark.  Jesus is not here in the tomb any more. He is not among the dead any longer. He is alive. He is now at work in our world.

Where is Jesus really? Might he just as well be dead for you? Is he a nice historical figure like Socrates who left some good ideas but he is still locked away safely in the past? Is he still on the cross and it is too bad about him that he was a martyr but that’s how it goes and, by the way, what are we having for lunch?

Or is Jesus a living teacher and Lord and guide and life coach and savior who wants you and me to experience the fullest life now and is waiting for us to open our hearts so he can? Is he really alive for you or is he still hanging on that cross? This, by the way, is an empty cross which means that he is loose in our world and ready to go with you.

That is the next thing we are told. He is going on ahead of you. This means two things. Whatever loss and pain and tragedy you have experienced and will experience, Christ understands that and walks with you because Christ has experienced suffering and pain and loss and grief also. This is a suffering servant messiah who has borne grief and carried sorrow and who knows the hurts of life and has gone on ahead of us through those hurts so he can now see us through them as well.

In fact, the Apostle’s Creed says it this way: after that Friday, Jesus descended into hell. There is no place, no bad experience we will go through that Christ has not already been also and will see us through that bad place.

I visited Craig Hospital last week to see one of our St Andrew members. He is recovering from an accident that has left him partly paralyzed and he is making progress in regaining strength and mobility. Craig Hospital is a wonderful place; several of our members work there. It is one of the best rehab places in America. It is a place of hope and resurrection and gives us reminders again of the mystery of life.

The man I visited talked about how grateful he is for every day of life and about how he wants to use this experience to grow closer to God and how important it is for some of our Stephen ministers and others to be with him and surround him with prayer and how even out of this accident he is experiencing new life and new hope.

The next thing the man sitting in the tomb says is about what I saw last week: Jesus has been raised and he is going on ahead of you, so go and tell the disciples, including Peter—why would he say that? Because Peter has shamed himself and disgraced himself by denying he even knew Jesus, just to save his own neck. And the message of Easter to Peter is that he is forgiven and he is welcomed back into the family in spite of what he has done. He is forgiven. Does anyone else need to hear that message of forgiveness and grace this morning? Go and tell the others—including (your name) that he is going on now and you will see him.

You will see him. I did see Christ last week at Craig hospital at work in the staff and the patients there bringing hope and promise and new life. In fact, I can see the risen Christ at work in many of you: in the story of some of our youth who were on a mission trip in Central America over spring break and two of them said after they had worked to build a small house for a family of five people that they were really aware now of how much they have that they do not really need and one of them decided to follow through on his intent to go through his closet and give away some of what is there because he does not need all of that and others do.

I see the risen Christ at work in the person who has come close to hitting the bottom in life and admitted that he is addicted to alcohol and has joined one of the AA groups that meets here and is turning his life in a new direction. Or in the church member who works with prisoners at the correctional center in Denver teaching them a new vocation and he gets notes from those ex prisoners who are living productive lives and thanking him for helping them begin a new life. I see Christ at work in the person recently new in our community and coming to church and learning abut parenting and committing herself as a follower of Christ.

Mark’s story of Easter is unfinished and I sort of like it that Mark leaves his gospel a little unfinished because I think that draws us in and lets us finish the story. We can do that after today. What will happen in you after today? Is this just a chance to come and hear great music and sing the Hallelujah chorus and go eat baked ham and then go back to the daily rat race?

Or will you have experienced mystery, holy ground, and the presence of God who in the risen Christ is still active in our world and offering new life and new hope and joy to anyone who wants to follow him?

I think that the gospel of Mark is inviting us to finish the story.

Christ is alive and comes to bring good news to this and every age. ‘Til earth and all creation ring with joy, with justice, love and praise. Amen.

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