April 12, 2009

Mark 16:1-8

Easter Sunday

What if there were no Easter? 

            Hey, are you expecting me to give some great new insight about Easter this morning?  Well, I’m not sure you will be able to hear it unless you get in touch with and identify your feelings first. Your feelings will color and filter what you will hear. So what are you feeling being here in church on Easter? Joy? Fear? Duty? Astonishment? Abandonment? Anger? Hope? No hope? Boredom? Or perhaps one I have not listed?  Have you got a handle on it now? Good!  Now I want you to take your feeling and do something with it. I want you to replace it with puzzlement. Got that? Feel puzzlement. All right, now we are all on the same page. You should be good and puzzled by now. You should be thinking that Pastor Ken is sure weird today, if nothing else.  

Mark ended his gospel message with this line: “So they (the women) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The End of the gospel. Finis. Over and out. Not one resurrection appearance notated. The other gospels talk about witnesses and proof appearances of the resurrected Jesus. Not Mark. Is this any way to hold a resurrection? Where is the victory? Are you now more puzzled?  

Well, you are not alone. First and Second Century readers of the Gospel of Mark were puzzled, too. Why didn’t Mark end with resurrection appearances like Matthew, Luke, and John? Would not people think the resurrection didn’t happen? Yeah, so some early scribes decided to rewrite the ending so that Mark would get it right. One person added a verse with an appearance and another later writer added 12 more verses with many appearances. So puzzlement was a frequent reaction by readers on the ending of Mark, and you are now in a long line of puzzlers throughout history.  

Do you remember back in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested that all the disciples ran away? I’m sure you remember that Peter hung around in the courtyard of the High Priest where Jesus was being tried; and when he was identified as a follower of Jesus, he denied Jesus three times and ran. The men all vamoosed, but the women hung around. They witnessed the crucifixion and saw where Jesus was buried. A few days later they came to the tomb to anoint the body with oils and were told that he had been raised and was gone. They even were given instructions to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus would meet up with them in Galilee. And what did the women do? They ran away and kept their mouths shut because they were afraid. Everybody was afraid and ran away, and that is the end of the gospel of Mark. The only sign of something more to come was the instructions that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. Galilee was their home and they all went home.  

Mark was really hard in the gospel on the disciples as he recounted the years they spent with Jesus. They were dumb and dumber as to what Jesus was doing and what their part would be as disciples. They would argue with Jesus about touching sick people, talking to women - especially foreign women, and having children crawl all over him, and saying later that he was going to die at the hands of the Romans. They would argue with one another about who were Jesus’ favorite and even a mother got involved with her pressure to choose her sons. And when their leader, Jesus, was executed, all they could do was run home. They had no backbone and no real understanding about Jesus’ ministry and true purposes. He was a failure. Messiahs don’t get killed.  

These men might have been a little thick witted, but don’t think they did not know about dead people. Life was very dangerous and people died around them every day. The Romans were ruthless and crosses were real.  Sicknesses and brutality took loved ones at young ages. They saw more dead bodies in a month then we do in a lifetime. The dead were buried and they stayed buried.  

After Jesus’ death the disciples, the Romans, and the temple leaders knew that Jesus was history and no one would ever hear of him again. Wrong! Something unfathomable happened between the time Jesus died and these 30 to 40 years later when the Gospel of Mark was written. Churches had sprung up in numerous cities in many countries proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and that God had resurrected him from the dead and he goes before us as the first fruit of God’s new kingdom. 

Something big had to happen to get these men and women motivated to spend the rest of their lives facing persecution and death to proclaim the message of Jesus to the world. And that was Easter. It was the resurrection of Jesus, and only the belief of this as absolute reality, that enabled the Christian church to come into existence and grow. Nothing less could have started the Jesus movement. Jesus as a good and gentle man and a good teacher who healed a few people could not have put spines into these weak disciples. Only Easter could.  

Easter is the celebration that Jesus was raised from the dead by his Father God and it was the divine validation that who and what Jesus is. Because of Easter we can trust the good news of the gospel and face tomorrow certain that what we do and how we live as Jesus’ followers in obedience to God our Creator makes a difference and death does not win out.  

I think I know why Mark ended his story with all the disciples going back to Galilee where he was to meet with them again. They could start afresh now from their home base knowing that the Living Christ was with them and would go ahead of them in their work and ministry. The Living Christ was their future just as he is our future. He is not dead, he is risen! Love has overcome death and evil. Yes, you will still experience suffering, loss, pain, and death; but God’s love overcomes them all. This is what we believe. 

But what if the disciples had gone home and stayed? What if Jesus did not go before them and there were no Easter? What would be reality now for us? People over the known world had no respect for children. They were abused, starved, and killed with little or no repercussions. Jesus demonstrated to his disciples that children were valued in God’s eyes, and the early church cherished and nurtured them. And so do we. Would this be without Easter? 

People over the known world treated women as property. They had no rights. They could not even receive religious instructions. It was a man’s world. Women in the early church were accorded prestige and held positions of dignity and respect equal to men. Why? Jesus and his disciples respected and treated women as equals. There was a lot of backtracking on this during the life of the church, but women today in countries where the church is dominate are equal to men. Would this be without Easter? 

The sick and the suffering people of the known world received little compassion from the strong and wealthy. In fact, oftentimes their misery was added to by others. But Jesus was moved with compassion and healed the sick and instructed his disciples to do likewise. Today hospitals have been built by churches and have their names on them or the names of Jesus’ disciples. Would this be without Easter?  

Stoicism was the philosophy of the Romans, and the common person hoped for little help from the rich and powerful. Jesus said, “It is better to give than receive.” The early churches lived this to the fullest and were known to be generous to others without expecting anything in return. The church today and many of the countries of the world in which the Christian church flourishes are generous givers to the poor and needy throughout the world.  

Education of children and women was unheard of in the first century. The early church educated men, women, and children in the faith. Many of the universities and colleges in our country were started by churches because of this equality of learning brought to us by the example of Jesus. Would this be without Easter? 

Compassion and humility were viewed as weakness in the known world in which Jesus lived. But the church of Jesus Christ lives by these values and believes that they are essential traits of God’s people. Would this be without Easter?  

Without Easter would we be living in fear and no hope like the disciples and women who ran away in fear that fateful week in Jerusalem?  

What we believe and feel makes a difference. There is no need now for puzzlement. We believe that God has a love affair with his children and suffering, greed, violence, and death are not the last word. What we do and how we live makes a difference today just like it did for those disciples in the early church. The living Christ goes before us leading the way. Easter is God’s victory of love over the power of evil.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. We celebrate today God’s perfect love that casts out all fear. 

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