Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006

(Jimmie Johnson)

I Corinthians 15:1-11

Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Mark 16:1-8

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But 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. But 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.” 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.

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For some of us the problem with Easter is that we live in what looks like a Good Friday world. Our experience of life tells us one thing, and the Christian faith promises us another. No, not all Christians report this paradox, but some of us do.

This past week I read my dad’s Air Force records again. I noticed he was involved in a mission over Germany in which his heavy bomber group of B17s bombed the city of Hamburg, Germany, The bombing was so intense it created a wind, which, in turn, fed a firestorm that killed over 40,000 German civilians.

Just a few years ago at a Baylor conference I met a man named Jurgen Moltmann, a world-class theologian. Some of you have read his books. It turns out he was a 17-year-old boy just drafted into the German army and was in Hamburg on the day of my dad’s mission. So as my dad was up in a plane dropping bombs, he was on the ground watching the city go up in flames.

With some 40,000 civilians killed in that raid, is it any wonder Moltmann later wrote that Good Friday really is the center of the world? But this same Christian believer and world-class thinker went on to say he still believed: “Easter morning is the Sunrise of the coming of God, and the morning of new life, and the beginning of the future of the world” (Christian Century, April 2006).

In this testimony Moltmann is trying to be loyal to the truth of both his experiences: belief in the loving God who brings hope yet being alive in a world where death so massively grins in denial of God. Many of us feel the same contradictions within us, at least those of us who desire to think in our believing and believe in our thinking.

For this reason I really am glad that every three years Mark’s gospel with its strange ending is the Easter gospel to be read and preached. It’s partly because of the way the other gospels tell the Easter story that some of us feel the tension of our faith so sharply when compared to what other Christians report. We know what Matthew and Luke and John tell. They say, “Easter is supposed to have post-resurrection appearances, joyful seaside meals, scenes of reconciliation and forgiveness, garden embraces of the risen Lord, and the disciples’ excited shout: ‘He is risen!’” (John Buchanan, Christian Century, April 2006). And we all know Christians who describe their experience of Easter as Matthew, Luke, and John do. Elements of this service validate their powerful, almost enviable Easter. But many of us don’t experience Easter that way.

Mark’s Easter is such fresh air for those like me. Mark doesn’t offer us a super-duper Easter ending as Matthew, Luke, and John do. His Christian testimony is different. Instead, he chooses to end his story with frightened women fleeing from a cemetery in silence. Oh sure, there are the additional verses that follow. But this addition ending that you see tacked on in your Bible, according to almost all New Testament scholars, is a later addition and not part of Mark’s original ending. Someone wanting to help Mark do a better job added the ending after verse 8. Whoever it was was probably made a tad nervous because Mark originally left things in an unfinished form.

Look at how verse 8 ends. You have women going to the cemetery only to find a mysterious young man pointing to Jesus’ empty tomb and then preaching to them Easter news. This is the way Mark really wanted to design the Easter service and sermon—somewhat muted and cautious. He wants to tell us openly that there is something incomplete and unsatisfying about Easter faith. He 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.” That’s no way to run a resurrection (Tom Long, Christian Century, April 2006).

You can’t leave it without a proper ending. Mark does. But he does something else. His ending actually lurches to an awkward grammatical stop (Tom Long, Christian Century, April 2006). A more literal translation is “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…” It’s as if Gospel writer Mark had to stop what he was doing and go make a hospital visit before he could even finish his sentence. Of what were they afraid? But maybe rather than interruption, it is spirit-filled religious genius at work in Mark. Maybe Mark is trying to reach out to believers like me and perhaps you, who see so much about this world incomplete and unjust and who have so many unanswered questions about why death seems to gin unchallenged.

I love the writer Anne Lamott. She writes, “I hate it that you can’t prove the beliefs of my faith.” Amen, Sister Anne, preach on. She goes on to say, “Darkness is our context, Easter’s context: without it you couldn’t see the light. Hope is about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak (stuff) anyone can throw at us” (John Buchanan quoting Lamott in Christian Century, April 2006). She’s right. It comes down to choosing which part you are going to believe the most: that we can kill God’s love, or that we can’t keep it dead and buried. Look at how Mark reaches out to us to help us make our Easter choice.

Matthew, Luke, and John do a great job, but Mark wants to reveal another dimension of Easter faith. As you come to the last verse and think about his intentional, unfinished ending where his Jesus story ends in silent fear and wondering where to go from here, look at what the young man at the empty tomb said, “He’s going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” To whom is he speaking? Who are the disciples? Peter, James, John and Andrew, yes, but you and me, too. And where is Galilee? North of Jerusalem. But it is somewhere else, too (Christian Century, April 2006).

It is located in the very opening chapter of Mark. “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” In other words, Mark is telling us through the words of the young man that Easter isn’t over. Leave the empty tomb and go back and read the good news story all again. Just like the disciples, there are a lot of us who don’t understand the Jesus story the first time. Now that we have been to the cross and the cemetery, we are to go back and read the Jesus story all over again.

What do we see when we read the Gospel of Mark again, this time with Easter eyes and faith? We see Jesus healing and teaching and casting out oppressive powers but always being misunderstood, even by those closest to him. In other words, Mark is telling us that the saving action of God in the world is always hidden, ambiguous, sealed off from the obvious explanation and never provable. (Hooray for Professor Long, Christian Century, April 2006)

No wonder the women left the cemetery with fear and confusion about what was going on and what they had been told. So do we. I have left a lot of cemeteries in my line of work, and I think I have been like those women each and every time.

Reading Mark a second time, we see Jesus breaking through into human life as God With Us but also as one who will suffer and die. In other words, we see a God whose power is a strange, suffering power. We go back to Galilee, back to the beginning, and the second time around every story in the Gospel is an Easter appearance. (Professor Long, still preaching, and oh so well!) What we see is a God who surprises us at every turn in the road, a God whose power is expressed finally in weakness.

Surely this is what Mark is reaching out to us about. He is wanting us to know that there are believers like him in addition to the Matthews, Lukes, and Johns, believers like Mark and some of us who experience Easter in the dark, in uncertain ways, with fear and muted belief yet who do truly believe Christ is extending his saving hand to all human aching, long, and need. (A final crediting “Hooray” for Dr. Long).

And, we skeptical, confused, uncertain disciples, we share in the Good News of Easter too!