Easter, Plain and Simple
Easter, Plain and Simple
Mark 16:1-8
A few months ago, I announced to Tracy: “I’m going to focus on the Gospel of Mark for Lent.” Without hesitation, she said, “Oh, no! Why would you choose to do that?” I chuckled to myself and thought, “Wow, Trace, what do you really think?” I knew what she was saying, though: who would choose to tell an Easter story in which the risen Jesus never appears? Let that sink in…
I know that there are a lot of different needs and interests in this room this morning. For some people, attending Easter worship is required if they want to enjoy Easter dinner. A beloved moderator of the church, years ago, told me my Easter sermon that year was way too long: “Really, Mark…folks are just thinking about the ham that’s in the oven at home.”
This is okay! That food is worth savoring. The connections to the people at that table matter even more! Maybe time here can help you get ready to appreciate the rest of the day. That sounds easy until someone passes a bowl full of green Jello to you and smiles and says, “It’s lime, you know!” You’re going to smile and hug them and say, “This is the best Jello I’ve ever had!” You’re going to do that because you took the time to be ready to be a loving person. If you add to the love around that table, you will help make Easter a sacred day. “Ya, Mark…” you think to yourself, “but when do we get out of here?” Soon…I promise…soon.
Another group of people are here today to be reassured about the “return on their investment.” For them, Easter is the day where you hear about your eternal retirement portfolio: heaven and pearly gates and angel wings. If you do the right thing and say the right thing and come to church, more or less, all the time, then when you die, all will be well. “Reassure us Mark! Say the words!”
So, if that first group wants to get out of here and go home and eat, the second group wants to know that when it is time to “get out of here”—big picture—you’re going to the right place. Honestly, what we really want to know is that the people that we have loved and lost are okay and that they’re waiting for us. Of course, this becomes a problem If we conclude that there’s nothing left worth living and loving in this life in the meantime.
After 37 years of being a pastor, I will admit that the question, “What comes after this” matters more to me now that I ever would have imagined when I started. I am far more aware of my own mortality than I was when I was young and immortal. Now, the question is far more personal than theoretical. I’ve lived long enough and loved enough people that I do wonder where those beloved people are now. I loved them. I miss them. I know, for sure, that they are in my heart every day. What’s become of them?
I can tell you a couple of things that just seem true. First, whatever has become of them, the love they shared with me and the chance to love them back changed me, forever. That shared love seems like the very definition of why we’re here at all. I hope that I have passed the love they gave me on to the people around me. I hope the people I’ve loved are passing that love on, too.
Second, because I’ve had the privilege of sitting with a lot of people at the end of life, I’m convinced that death is not the end. The God who loves us in this life loves us well beyond this life. Sitting at the edge of life, I’ve caught glimpses of mysteries—things that reassure me. I’m convinced, thought, that our job is not to cheat the mystery out of its mystery. When this life ends, there is more. It’s going to be amazing. I think it’s going to be an incredible reunion. Still, we won’t know until we know, right? So, if you ask me for the details, out of respect for the mystery, my answer is, “Maybe we all need to just wait and see.”
Here’s the crazy thing…I think that the Gospel of Mark respects the mystery as much as I do. Let me explain. Mark is the first Gospel written, probably about 30 years after Jesus’ death. As soon as Jesus died, some of his earliest followers expected the whole world to end. Every so often over the last two thousand years, groups of Christians have joined that long tradition: “The world’s going to end now! Okay…I was wrong. Now, for sure the world is going to end.” The world, though, keeps on ticking.
Another group of Jesus’ followers expected this world to be turned upside down. The good people will finally take over! The bad people will finally pay! By the time Mark was written, though, really wonderful followers of Jesus had suffered at the hands of the very same powers who had persecuted Jesus. Nothing changed. The suffering went on. Terrible things happened to good people. Eventually, a fair number of people gave up on change. They gave up on this world (the one God “so loved”) and went back to thinking faith is all about the next life.
When Mark was being written, almost all the people who had heard or known Jesus in person were dying off. Those witnesses were the authorities. Their testimony felt like proof. No one had to figure out what they believed. You just had to take the witnesses word for it.
Without those witnesses, people were going to have to meet Jesus, themselves. “What is he teaching me about the nature of my world? What would it mean for me to follow him? I can’t be a spectator anymore. Things are going to have to be personal.”
Mark was writing in response to these kinds of questions. Interestingly, he doesn’t tell us any of the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth. He doesn’t tell us about Jesus’ childhood. Instead, Mark starts with a grown up Jesus, coming to be baptized by John. Then, after a very brief foray into the wilderness, Jesus’ ministry begins.
Mark takes us on a barnstorming tour. Yes, Jesus calls disciples. However, they struggle mightily to keep up. Jesus’ focus is on a suffering world—the world of hurt in which we still live. There are so many people who have been overlooked and ignored, who have been declared untouchable or unworthy by the powers that be. Jesus makes a bee line to those people, one at a time, and does whatever it takes to heal them and feed them and teach them and guide them toward wholeness. Some are blind or lame or bleeding. Some are foreigners or women or children. Some are mentally ill and utterly terrifying. Some of them are dying. One little girl—the daughter of a Pharisee, no less—looks dead and gone until the moment when Jesus calls out to her and she rises.
People are healed. Miracles happen. People wonder, “How does he do such things?” The point, though, is not that he has a great bag of tricks. The point is that he cares…and…he cares about the people no one cares about. And, just in case we misread things, Jesus leaves no room for discussion: “Love your enemies;” “Love your neighbor…and..by the way…everyone is your neighbor;” “Forgive…seven times seventy times.”
In Mark’s world (and ours!) suffering is very real and that suffering takes many forms. Jesus sees suffering people and responds with loving care. Some of those things we could easily do but often don’t do (feed the hungry, care for the sick). Jesus also does things we simply can’t do (make the blind see). However, “Do you want to do this” and “Could you do this” aren’t really the questions. Instead, Jesus keeps challenging us: “Do you see these suffering people? What are you going to do?” Faith is what you live, right here, right now! Faith is what you do to relieve suffering.
In Mark, people keep trying to make Jesus the focus. They want to define him. He’s the greatest charismatic healer of all time! He’s a fantastic story teller! He’s a preacher. He’s a teacher. He’s John, the Baptist, come back from the dead. People try so hard to stuff Jesus into some category that already exists. Maybe he’s the Messiah, the one who will make Israel great again! Mark keeps reminding us that Jesus is always essentially a mystery who defies our explanations.
Who is Jesus Christ for Mark? He’s the suffering servant, the one who keeps on loving, no matter what. He’s the one who wants us to know that nothing can separate us from the love of God—not even death. He’s the one who wants us to see that no matter what we are going through there is still the chance to choose to be a loving person, even when we’ve been betrayed and denied, even when we’ve been falsely accused and convicted, even when we realize that we have reached the end of life as we know it. The choice is ours: Are we willing to suffer in and for this world? Will we keep on loving, no matter what happens to us, until this life ends?
The focus of the Gospel of Mark is not on some cosmic other world. What matters is this world, the one we all know, where life can be marvelous beyond words one second and unspeakably terrifying, the next. Our job is to love our way through life, one person at a time—not because there’s anything in it for us, now or in eternity, but because this is what we were put here to do.
So, the faithful women, who do keep choosing to be loving people, follow Jesus all the way to the cross. They watch Jesus die a terrible death. They see this world at it’s worst. Then, they rise to face the new day. They know that the next loving thing to do is to give Jesus a decent burial. Yet, even that seems crazy. They ask each other, “Who will roll the stone away?” They have no answer. However, they don’t “do the math.” As faithful people, neither should we. They just trust and go. May God help us to be so brave!
When they arrive, the stone has been rolled away and a young man is in the tomb. We suspect he’s an angel but Mark isn’t going there (too other worldly for him.) Instead, the young man tells the women the good news, the utterly incomprehensible news, the death shattering news that Jesus is not here. He died. Now, he lives again. There is no explanation offered and no proof given. The risen Jesus never appears. Instead, there is just a promise that they will meet him soon…in this world: “Tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them back in Galilee.”
The women are amazed and terrified. (Who can blame them?) Like the believers in Mark’s day, the women are going to have to wrestle with how to follow the risen Jesus who is in their midst but not yet seen. Like the rest of us, they will have to figure out how to be relentlessly loving people in a world full of suffering and hurt. It will take time for their fear to give way to grief. With time, they will rise to love again. If they do this hard work, Christ will work through them. If we do that same hard, loving work, the risen Christ will appear and will make us brave and will work through us. I promise…
Today, as you gather to share the food you love with the people you love, may the risen Christ be present at your table.
As you remember those you have loved and lost, may you discover the risen Christ in your heart, right next to your most beloved people who are at rest there.
As you see the suffering of others in this still broken world and choose to respond, may the risen Christ walk beside you and make you brave. Amen