Isaiah 25:6-9 | Mark 16:1-8
Jeremy Richards
Our Gospel reading this morning begins with three heartbroken women trudging towards a tomb – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. They are going through the rituals of grief, attending to a dead body in its third day of decay. This ritual, like all rituals that surround death, is meant to bring closure. Two days after the horrific events of Good Friday, these women still weep, they still mourn, but, if they are honest, there is a certain kind of relief that comes from these practices.
Jesus is dead, and his promises with him, which is devasting. But now they can put this season of life, and the person who stood at its center, behind them. They are not only putting Jesus to rest, they are also putting all the hopes and expectations that came with him to rest. They are seeking some return to normalcy – pre-Jesus normalcy. Time to close this chapter. Time to begin the process of moving on.
As they make their way to the tomb, they do so without so much as a hint hope. They seek only a conclusion to what has been a traumatic few days. In fact, it seems as if in reality they are only going through the motions of what is expected of them, without any real intention of accomplishing their task. They leave in the morning with spices to help cover up the stench of Jesus’ dead body, but they do so knowing there’s a giant stone blocking their way. It’s as if they go simply to say, “Well, we tried, but there was no way to move the stone.” Most likely they didn’t expect to even complete the task they set out for, much less did they expect to see the stone already rolled away, the tomb empty, and the young messenger who would greet them waiting inside.
A couple of weeks ago, Matt shared with us the impact Rob Bell’s book Love Wins had on them. Rob Bell’s books have also had a great impact on me. In one of his other books, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, he shares this story.
One Sunday morning a number of years ago I found myself face-to-face with the possibility that there is no God and we really are on our own and this may be all there is.
Now I realize lots of people have questions and convictions and doubts along those lines—that’s nothing new. But in my case, it was an Easter Sunday morning and I was a pastor. I was driving to the church services where I’d be giving a sermon about how there is a God and that God came here to Earth to do something miraculous and rise from the dead so that all of us could live forever.
I imagine Rob Bell driving to his church in much the same way those women walked toward what they thought would be a sealed tomb. Both travelled toward Easter morning with doubt and sorrow. Both approached the tomb in the midst of a crisis of faith. It seemed, at the time, that they could no longer believe what they had previously believed. Everything had changed. (Which was true in both cases, their belief would change, but not in the way they expected. They thought it was the end, but it was really a new beginning.)
In both cases, there was a large stone blocking their way – for the women it was a literal stone, for Rob Bell it was a metaphorical stone – the stone of doubt, rolled over the entrance of faith.
I wonder if, for some of us, there is a stone of one kind or another blocking our way this morning. Maybe it’s doubt as well, like it was for Rob Bell.
Or maybe it’s exhaustion from the year we’ve had. Maybe it’s just the cumulative effect of 2020 and 2021, and the fact that, while it’s good to see everyone this morning and while the vaccines are here, and things are looking up, the truth is, the last year has taken its toll on us.
Just this morning I read this from the New York Times, the title was “We’ve Hit a Wall”:
Do you often ask yourself, what time is it? What day is it? Why am I standing in front of the refrigerator staring at an old clove of garlic? You’re not alone. A year of uncertainty and loss has left many people in kind of a fog.
One expert said that state could lead to anhedonia, or the loss of the ability to take pleasure in activities. Another said the pandemic’s longevity had contributed to the sense that time is moving differently and had dulled our ability to form meaningful new memories. Resilience seems in short supply.
For the last year, every day has been almost identical, so maybe it’s hard to celebrate today as some special day, when most of us will leave this service and go back to more of the same: more masks, more isolation, more low-grade anxiety about simply going to the grocery store. It’s hard to celebrate a day that says, “Everything’s changed!” when, in truth, so much remains the same.
Or maybe it’s hard to get in the spirit of Easter this year, simply because we’re so familiar with the story at this point. Not only do we celebrate Easter every year, but really we acknowledge Easter every Sunday and maybe every other day of the week as well. Every time we pray to Jesus or listen or sing to a song about Jesus we are assuming he’s alive, which assumes the resurrection, which is what Easter is all about.
Or maybe it’s something altogether different.
Whatever the case, some of us may come this morning like Mary and Mary and Salome – going through the motions, expecting little to nothing to change, assuming the same stone will be there when we show up for the Easter service. And, truthfully, maybe that’s exactly the way it will go for you today.
If that’s the case, the first thing I want to say about that is it’s okay. The death Jesus experienced and the women witnessed was real. The stone that blocked off the opening to the tomb that held Jesus’ body was real. The women really wouldn’t have been able to move it on their own. The same is true with whatever may be preventing some of us from really feeling the good news of Easter this morning.
If, so far, Easter has failed to really move you this year, you’re not alone. The women from our story are with you, and I don’t mean just as they approach the tomb. I mean even after they see the stone rolled away and they witness the empty tomb and they hear the words of this angelic messenger. Even then they don’t celebrate. Instead, they’re terrified and run home and don’t tell anyone. They encounter the empty tomb and hear the angel’s words, just as we, through scripture, also encounter the empty tomb and hear the angel’s words this morning. But it doesn’t invoke in them joy or relief or hope. In a sense, at least initially, it only makes things worse. They wanted closure, but now everything’s been…disrupted. A few weeks ago we talked about how Jesus has a way of disrupting our lives. He can’t even be trusted to stay dead when he’s supposed to!
If Easter just isn’t doing it for you this year, there’s really no better gospel account of the resurrection than the one Linda read for us this morning. I don’t know if you know it or not, but our reading this morning is the original end to Mark’s Gospel. Unlike Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels, the resurrected Christ never appears in Mark’s original manuscript. This made the early church so uncomfortable that they tagged on one of two different endings. In some Bibles the added endings appear as footnotes. In others, like mine, they appear with the headings “The shorter ending of Mark” and “The Longer Ending of Mark,” but it’s basically universally accepted that these were not original to Mark’s Gospel. Instead, Mark’s Gospel originally ended with our reading today: an empty tomb but no Jesus. The women who hear that he’s been raised don’t spread the good news, but flee in terror and keep silent.
With this unique ending, Mark passes the ball from the women to us. Through this story, we travel with them to see the tomb, we witness the stone rolled away, the empty space where Jesus once lay. We hear the words of the angel proclaiming Christ’s resurrection. And then we are given the twofold directive to go and meet Christ where he has promised to meet us, and to share the story which we have heard.
I said a minute ago that this is the perfect gospel reading for those of us who aren’t really feeling Easter this year, and that’s because Mark doesn’t really put as much emphasis on this one day. (I mean, it is important. The day that Jesus was raised from the dead is obviously significant). But today, Easter, isn’t the end of the story but a brand new beginning. Just as the women are denied the closure they expected, so we are denied any kind of closure, because the risen Christ isn’t in the story, he’s jumped off the page and into the world, the very world that surrounds us this morning (whether we’re here or on Zoom). The risen Christ goes ahead of us. He’s to be found again and again in everyday life. He’s to be encountered in places we expect to see him (he does appear to the disciples in Galilee, according to Matthew), and in places we don’t expect to see him, like the story of the Road to Emmaus, when Jesus unexpectedly appears to two disciples as they walk along.
We may feel pressure to make this one day into something special, and hopefully for many of us it is. Not only is today the day that we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, there are also some awesome things happening around us. It’s pretty amazing that Easter marks our first in-person gathering in at least 6 months. We’re together, the weather’s (kind of) better, and some relief from the pandemic on the horizon. So there is lots to celebrate! I hope many of us do feel that this day is special. It is special.
But whether we’re super pumped about Easter, or struggling to differentiate it from any other day, the lesson from Mark’s Gospel remains the same: the resurrection of Jesus isn’t confined to one day. This isn’t our only chance to encounter the risen Christ. He’s gone ahead of us, into our everyday lives. He will meet us there. Not just once, and most likely not in any spectacular way, but again and again and again in the ordinary and the mundane – on the road, over a meal, at work, in a closed room (these are all places where he appeared to his disciples after the resurrection, according to the other gospels).
Galilee, where he said he would meet the disciples, was the disciples’ home. Remember from last Sunday’s reading? The servant girl and the bystanders guess that Peter is one of Jesus’ disciples because he’s a Galilean and his accent gives him away. When Jesus says he’ll meet them in Galilee, he’s saying he’ll meet them back home, back in the regular, everyday places. Leave the empty tomb and the angelic messenger, and meet me in the familiar, he says. Meet me where I’ve told you to meet me.
But where has Christ told us he would meet us? Where do we go to find him? In scripture, in prayer, in the natural world, in our hearts. All of these are true, of course, but this morning I want to stress the importance of our church community. Nowhere are we promised Christ more than in our gathering together. The church together is the body of Christ. As a community, we reflect on the stories of Christ’s resurrection, and we share our own personal stories – big and small – of resurrection. We share the ways Christ has gone ahead of us over the years, and the unexpected places we’ve found him waiting for us. It’s through the church that we praise God as one body. It’s through the church that we receive the ordinances of baptism and communion.
In those times in our life when we are plagued by doubt or exhaustion or anxiety or what seems like the meaninglessness of life, our siblings in the faith have faith for us. They pray when we don’t have the confidence to pray. They sing when we’re too tired to sing. They comfort us when we have no comfort of our own to give.
Community is so important. And that’s why this past year has been so difficult, because it’s been so hard to connect with one another. But despite the difficulties, again and again over the past year I’ve been encouraged and uplifted by all of you – whether through worship, through our book studies, through our Why Baptist? series, or one of our other formal events, or simply through a good conversation on the phone or a funny postcard left in the church mailbox.
But I know the last year has been difficult. Maybe we didn’t come to the service this morning sprinting, like the disciple whom Jesus loved from the Gospel of John, but like the three women trudging along the trail, weighed down by grief or exhaustion or apathy.
Again, that’s okay. It isn’t all about this one day. Easter isn’t about staying in the tomb, staring at the place where Jesus used to be. On Easter, we see that the stone has been rolled away, we witness the empty place where Jesus used to be, we hear the words of the angel, and then we walk back through the entrance that was previously sealed by the stone, but is now wide open. The doorway that once held Jesus’ body captive has become the doorway that released him back into the world. The place of death has become the womb of resurrection.
The stone over the tomb was meant to be the ultimate conclusion. What’s more final than a boulder rolled over the opening of a tomb, sealing death in? But what was meant to be the ultimate conclusion has become the gateway to a brand new reality. Death has given way to life – and not just any life, resurrected life. Life eternal, life without end. The very life of God made available to us. A life meant to be lived in community, just as God in God’s very self lives in the community of the Parent, Son, and Holy Spirit, and through Jesus lives in community with us.
When God raised Jesus from the dead and rolled that stone away, the whole universe was thrown open to redemption and resurrection. Everywhere we look the risen Christ is there, waiting to meet us, calling us into new life, resurrected life, his life.
This is not the end. This is the beginning.
Amen.