Easter B, 31 March 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Isaiah 25: 6-9. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of God’s people will be taken away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
- 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11. Also you are being saved.
- Mark 16: 1-8. 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.
O God of life, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Hello! If you love being at Emmanuel on Easter Sunday, whether in person or on livestream, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m also glad you’re here even if you’re not sure you made the right choice this morning. Of all the days to come to church, I think Easter Sunday might be the most likely day to convince you that church is really not for you: the service is long; the stories are unbelievable. Maybe the resplendent flowers make your nose itch, our puppets seem strange and ridiculous, or the hymns are not light enough to lift your heavy hearts. I get it; I see you. You might love the cantata this morning; it has all the feels.
I want to tell you a little story (some of you might remember it because I’ve often told it). About two-dozen years ago, my wife Joy came home from a walk through Mount Auburn Cemetery with our then four-year-old Grace. They had been enjoying a beautiful summer day, looking at statues, gravestones, and flowers. After being quiet for a while, Grace looked up and said, “Mom, what happened to that guy who died in church?” Joy repeated the phrase to give herself time to think, “The guy who died in church?” Her mind raced: had there been a recent medical emergency during worship? had there been prayers for a loved one who had died? had Grace heard something in the news? Grace repeated, “You know: the guy…who died…in church.” All of a sudden, Joy suggested, “Jesus?” “Yes!” said Grace, “Jesus! What happened to him?” As Joy was relating this conversation to me, before I could learn what she said next to Grace, I interrupted with, “Did you tell her he died from listening to sermons that were too long, or from singing every verse to all the hymns? Did he die from alleluias sung or said with a stern face?” Or, as I heard someone say yesterday, “The poor guy, it happens to him every year!”
I think Jesus would have liked best the Gospel of Mark’s account of what happened to him. Compared with twenty verses in Matthew, fifty-three verses in Luke, and two whole chapters in John, Mark tells in eight short verses what happened to that guy who died in church. [1] There’s no fluff. Three women (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome) went to the tomb to prepare a proper burial, to anoint Jesus’ body with aromatic balms. Knowing that even together they didn’t have the strength to roll away the big stone that covered the door to the burial cave, they worried about how they would get in. When they arrived, they saw that that work had been done already. When they walked into the cave, they saw a young man sitting there, wearing a white robe. They were astonished. I don’t think alarmed is quite the right translation. I prefer astonished or greatly amazed. The young man said, “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, has been raised and is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there. Tell Peter and the others it’s just as he told you.” They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and ecstasy had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.
Actually, not only is there no fluff in this version, there’s no ending in the oldest manuscripts of the first Gospel written. The words at the end actually read more like an ee-cummings poem, something like this: “And having gone out they fled from the tomb they had for themselves trembling and ecstasy and they said nothing nobody they were afraid for.” For is the unusual last word of the Gospel of Mark. They were afraid for. That’s posed a textual dilemma for Bible scholars and storytellers ever since! One commentator has famously said about this passage, “This is no way to run a resurrection!” [2] They were afraid for seems like (and is) an incomplete sentence. Did the writer of Mark keel over in mid-thought? Did someone else stop the writer mid-thought? Or, did the writer know that, when it comes to that guy Jesus, the best endings are left up to the readers? (That’s what I like to think.)
The amazing thing about the man sitting in the burial cave was that he was clothed in the garment of a vindicated martyr, according to the Biblical tradition. [3] His message is that Jesus, too, has been vindicated. Jesus’ most shameful death has not had the last word. You may know that the stories of raising the dead in Jesus’ Bible (the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings) are not about living forever in the sense of immortality. They are stories about God’s vindication of people who have been oppressed, utterly disgraced, tortured, and killed. They are about fullness of life being restored. As in our reading from Isaiah this morning: “On this mountain, (in other words) right here in this place, the Holy One will provide for all peoples plenty of delicious food and drink, a great feast, and destroy the pall that has been cast over all the nations. The Holy One will swallow up death forever, wipe away the tears from all faces, and take away the disgrace of the people.” Biblical salvation is about life without oppression and disgrace. Biblical resurrection is about vindication for the victims of the hard-hearted and violent.
Easter Sunday is not the church year’s special day to praise God for what will happen to any of us after we die, whether we are good or not so good. (I think nothing is more deadening or deadly than religious belief that is all about heavenly rewards after our lives are over.) Easter Sunday is a special day in the church year to praise God for redeeming human lives that have been utterly devastated and humiliated. It is, as Bishop Steven Charleston writes, “[to praise God] for when love returns, when what has been lost is found, when an abandoned hope comes alive.” [4]
In the Gospel of Mark, the women are told to tell Peter (who was last seen and heard weeping bitterly) and the other disciples (who had forsaken Jesus and fled) that they will see Jesus again in the Galilee. The Galilee of the Gentiles (or Nations) was how it was known, because it was a cosmopolitan home to Jews and non-Jews. It was the disciples’ home turf and a major crossroads of international trade and communication routes. As Barbara Brown Taylor once preached, the women thought they were going to the burial cave to grieve, not to organize! [5] These women thought they had gone to engage in a sacred burial ritual; they did not expect to get sent back home to start a mission hub! They left trembling and ecstatic. They were afraid for, for it to be true, and probably afraid for it not to be true. So they may have been dumbfounded for a while, but we know they eventually found and used their voices! They got brave enough to call Peter and the other disciples together and go back to the Galilee. They returned to the risky work that got Jesus killed: the work of healing, serving, and spreading the Love of God all around, lavishly and evenly, which was how they discovered Love stronger than death.
According to Mark, resurrection is not necessarily a happy ending, even if it is filled with hope for restoration. The women were afraid for, for there was, indeed, much to fear. Boston College theologian Pheme Perkins writes: [6]
[Mark has insisted that] the cross is the way of life for those who wish to follow Jesus. He does not compromise the paradox of suffering service by producing a glorious triumph in the end. Instead [the hearer] must learn that the powerlessness of Jesus on the cross has broken apart … evil and [re]initiated the rule of God.
The assurance is that no matter how frightening it may look, Jesus is going on ahead and meets us in the faces of people who are most in need of kindness and compassion, most in need of friends.
With Mark, as with all of our sacred texts, an important question for us is not, “Did it really happen?” but “what does it mean?” According to Mark, it means if we’re looking for Jesus, we can’t look back, we’ve got to look ahead. Jesus is going before us, beckoning us to follow. With Jesus, it’s about the future, not about the history. Death does not deter him, and neither death nor the fear of death should deter us from spreading the Love of God all around. According to Mark, with Jesus there is no “closure”. The Gospel of Mark’s ending is a beginning, and today we are somewhere in the middle of the resurrected life of Jesus.
Listen to these words from poet Dean Johnston: [7]
Jesus didn’t die so that you don’t have to.
Jesus died so …you would know how to.
…Jesus didn’t rise so that you don’t have to.
Jesus rose so that you would be able to.
Jesus didn’t rise instead of you. / Jesus rose ahead of you.
Death and resurrection [are] about communal participation [that] liberates people to fully partake in the divine nature.
Jesus didn’t say, “Worship me.” He said, “Follow me!”
We will not see Jesus in the place where we know his body was left, or where we saw him last. We must stop looking back and be brave enough to look forward, remembering that courage is fear that has said its prayers. The promise of the resurrection is that we will see Jesus wherever we go to alleviate suffering and sorrow or to promote well-being and dignity. The promise of the resurrection is that we will see Jesus wherever we go to repair hearts and homes, cities and nations, and maybe even the Church! Happy Easter!
- Thanks to the late Marcus J. Borg for counting this up for me! See his Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2009), pp. 107-8.
- Attributed to the late Fred Craddock.
- See Lawrence Wills’ note for Mark 16:1-8 in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 94, citing Daniel 11:35.
- Steven Charleston’s Facebook post on Easter morning, 2015.
- Harvey Cox quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor, “Easter Sunday 2006,” Journal for Preachers 31(3), Easter 2008, pp. 10-13.
- Pheme Perkins, “Mark,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 732.
- Adapted from a random Facebook post found on Holy Saturday.