Easter Sunday Sermon 2024

Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-13, Mark 16:1-15, 19, True Christianity 838 (see below)
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Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels

Most scholars agree that, despite its placement as the second gospel in line, the gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written, some 30 years after Jesus died. So, let me tell you something about our text for today that blew my mind when I first heard about it. The earliest versions of the gospel of Mark that have to this day been discovered do not include the verses after verse 8, in our reading today. That’s right, the earliest versions of the easter story in Mark end with “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”  That’s where it ends. The following verses 9-20 were added later. Wow, right? No Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, or to the disciples, no Jesus being taken up to heaven, just these women being told to go tell the disciples and not doing it because they were afraid.

Now, I don’t blame you if you feel bit grumpy with me right now.  Perhaps it seems like I have let the air out of the Easter balloon.  I totally get it.  So, let me be clear, I do believe that the holy spirit has worked and does work within those verses after verse 8.  The bible has come together in fascinating and inspired ways, and God finds a way to speak through all of it, the parts that comfort and the parts that challenge.

But in this case, with the knowledge of how the original gospel writer ended this story, we now have the opportunity to uncover a little piece of treasure that we might not have otherwise.  We have the opportunity to ask the question: how does this familiar story change when it is ended this way?

Well, one thing that I have noticed is that it thrusts us, the reader, headlong into the story ourselves. When the whole story is tied up with a pretty bow, it is easy for us to keep our distance.  Certainly we might feel happy and joyous and grateful about the resurrection, but these events happened a long time ago.  And really how often do we go to anoint a body after burial, or contemplate how we are going to access said body because of a giant boulder?  It can be hard to relate.

But then, with this abrupt and unexpected ending, our safe distance is exploded.  Because hanging in the air, hanging in the silence after verse 8 is the question: what would we have done? In our shaky intake of breath, in our quickened heartbeat as our certain ending is taken away, we become these women.  We become these women because we know we would have been trembling and bewildered too.  We know we would have been afraid. And we suspect we might have done exactly the same as them. We suspect we might have been too afraid to act.

How does it feel to face up to that possibility?  It’s kind of awful, right, a bit squirmy. That’s okay.  I assure you, God is in the squirminess. God is in the the suspended moment of uh-oh, when we really see ourselves, perhaps even more than in the certainty of a happy ending.  Believe me, God is not disappointed with us in that moment, God is excited for us, because in that moment, in each of these moments that we encounter throughout our lives, we have a choice.  We can choose to keep the blinders on because it is comfortable and convenient, or we can say, “Coach, put me in the game.”

This is one of the reasons that I love this shortened ending. As readers, we are no sooner done learning about the engaged and courageous life of Jesus, we are no sooner confronted with the reality of the resurrection than we are asked to embody it.  Because that is what the gospel is for: to be embodied in the here and now.  Jesus life, death and resurrection is not just something to feel grateful for, it is something we are called to enter into. We are not simply lucky that God did something wonderful for us once, we are called to make it real in our everyday. God’s incarnation into this world, Jesus’ death and resurrection is telling us about the way that God works all the time, about how love is the engine of the universe, about how suffering and brokenness will never have the last word.  And we get to choose if we are going to step into that reality, if we are going to have a part in furthering that reality. 

What we learn from the other gospels is that this ending in Mark was just a pause. Two thousand years later we are reading the story, so the women must have told someone eventually.  Even in the text itself, this is hinted at. The angel tells the women specifically to go find Peter by name.  The last time we had seen Peter in this gospel, he was weeping.  Not at only at Jesus death, but at his own denial of Jesus, at his own shortcomings.  Yet, in the resurrection, Jesus returns to him, as he returns to us all.  Jesus’ followers were human, and failed him many times, yet Jesus still called them and loved them.  As one of my commentaries pointed out, Jesus did not return and try to find a group of better disciples who would not fail him. He deliberately sent these women, these trembling and bewildered people, to minister to a weeping and despairing person, Peter. Flawed people ministering to flawed people. Broken people transforming brokenness. Because that’s what the good news is: even in the bleakest most improbable of circumstances, transformation is possible.  Out of suffering can come healing, out of death, resurrection.  And not as some sort of divine program to make us stronger…God is not a drill sergeant, demanding our suffering so that we might be purified, but rather, God took what is evil in the world - hostility, fear, hate, self-preservation, greed, and showed us that these things will not have the last word.  This is God’s great promise to us: there is nothing, not even the world’s darkest impulses, that cannot be transformed, cannot be brought to life, through the power of love.

And so, now we are given an opportunity. There was clearly more to be written, both in the same gospel and other gospels.  And likewise, there is more to be written for us as well. How will each of us write our ending of this story?  How will *we* be resurrected out of our fear, out of our complacency, out of our self-centeredness?  Because, let me tell you, if we desire it, if we open ourselves up to it, if we work for it, we surely will be. The last words of the angel were this: “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” Jesus returned to them, not in the great city Jerusalem, but to Galilee, the place where he endeavored to uncover the reality of God’s kingdom time and time again with his actions and his words, to the place of their everyday life together.  And so too does God return to us.  As the question hovers over us, “What would we have done?” we are reminded that God returns to meet us in the place of our struggles, our details, our mundane, too-busy, distracted, falling-apart life.  God is there already, waiting for us.  And perhaps we are trembling and bewildered, perhaps we are weeping and disappointed; sometimes our everyday life does that.  Yet, hallelujah, Jesus has risen, so that we too might rise up and head into Galilee, so that we too might rise up to each moment that stands in front of us, that we too might remain present to our lives and that we might do it in community with each other. For, the kingdom of God is not something that we aspire to, it is something we carry within us; may the power of the easter season reveal its presence to us.  “There you will see him, just as he told you.”

Amen.


Readings:

Isaiah 55: 1-3, 8-13

1 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the LORD’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.”

Mark 16:1-15, 19

1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ ” 8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. 11 When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. 12 Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. 13 These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. 14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. 15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 

True Christianity 838

Because God at the level of his essence is burning with a love for uniting himself with us, it was necessary for him to wrap himself in a body that was adapted in such a way that we could receive it and enter into a partnership with him. Therefore God came down and took on a human manifestation according to the divine design that he himself established at the creation of the world. His conception occurred through an offshoot of his own power; he was carried in the womb, was born, grew in wisdom and love, and came closer and closer to his divine origin until he was fully united to it. In this way God became a human being and a human being became God…Reason sees that there is no other way in which God, whose love is like the purest fire, could unite himself to people and people to himself.