Mark 16:1-8
As Good as Dead
James
Sledge Resurrection
of the Lord April
1, 2018
If
you had a pew Bible open as I read our scripture, you may have noticed a
heading “The Shorter Ending of Mark” just past where I stopped. And if you
looked two sentences further another heading reads, “The Longer Ending of
Mark.” Both of these endings got attached many years after the gospel was originally
written, presumably in an effort to “fix” that rather unsatisfying, 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. The end.
Scholars
debate whether the original ending of Mark got lost along the way, or if the
author intentionally ended things in such abrupt fashion. But regardless, for
they were afraid is the only ending of the original gospel that we’ve
got.
This
ending doesn’t fit very well with our Easter celebration. Not a lot of fear and
silence today. Instead there are shouts of “Christ is risen!” and the biggest
crowds of the year at worship. The music is glorious, accompanied by special
musicians, and there is a bright, festive mood. Nothing remotely like, and
they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
In
Mark’s gospel, there is no joy on Easter morning, no shouts of “He is risen!”
only terror, shock, fear, and silence. Not all that surprising when you think
about it. Centuries insulate us from the drama of that morning, the raw
emotions of going to a friend’s grave and finding it open and empty, a strange
young man sitting there, saying our friend has been raised.
On
top of that, we aren’t much worried about meeting our now risen friend. Jesus
is not going to be there when we get back home. No chance that he’ll say
anything to us about our behavior after he was arrested. We’re not worried
about what to say to Peter, who denied Jesus all those times, or the other
disciples, who all ran and hid. We’ve got Jesus safely confined to heaven, not
running around loose where we might bump into him.
For many of us, Jesus might as well be
dead. We’ve heard about him, learned stories about him, are perhaps impressed
by some of his teachings, but he doesn’t really intrude into our daily lives. Jesus
may be no more alive to us than family, friends, and loved ones who’ve died.
He’s gone to heaven, unseen by us. In a sense, he’s as good as dead.
__________________________________________________________________________
I’ve
lived my entire life in the Presbyterian Church. That’s much less common than
it once was, so I can’t assume that all of you here today know the stereotypes
associated with us Presbyterians, our obsession with doing things “decently and
in order,” or of our nickname, “the frozen chosen.” Suffice to say that we have
a long history of being staid, buttoned-down, well-educated, from the neck up
Christians.
As
a result, we’ve been suspicious of things that seem overly spontaneous or
enthusiastic. We’re uneasy with people doing crazy things because of the Holy
Spirit, and we’ve made sure such things don’t happen in our congregations.
Some
of our of caution is appropriate. We do need to “test the spirits,” as the
Apostle Paul wrote, to see which are from God. We do need to confirm that some
fit of inspiration does indeed align with the God we meet in Jesus. But we’ve
rarely stopped there.
The
Holy Spirit didn’t really come up all that often in the churches where I grew
up. I learned the Pentecost story. I recited the Apostles’ Creed, saying, “I
believe in the Holy Spirit.” Decently decently
and in order was usually about maintaining control, making sure nothing
happened that we didn’t manage. No letting the Spirit hijack our worship or other
church programs. No danger of bumping into the risen Jesus.
For
the very first Christians, meeting the risen Christ was not restricted to those
few who were around in the days following the resurrection. By the power of the
Holy Spirit, the risen Christ continued to be present to the community of
faith. The Apostle Paul goes so far as to say, “Anyone who does not have the
Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” For Paul and the other early
Christians, there was new life in Christ because Christ dwelled in them through
the Spirit. Christ was alive, not safely sequestered off in heaven for all eternity.
He was present in the here and now, really and truly alive.
I
wonder if Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek, was thinking of such things when she wrote,
On the whole, I
do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.
Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?
Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children
playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to
kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats
to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life
preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping
god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to
where we can never return.[1]
I
think the women at the tomb understood this better than we do, and so they had the
good sense to be a little frightened. If Jesus was alive, God had indeed
stirred. This had never happened before. Resurrection is not reanimation. It is
not going to heaven when you die. Resurrection is the raising of the dead at
the end of time. If Jesus had truly been raised, been resurrected, then a new
age was breaking in. Everything had changed. Of course the women experienced
terror and fear. Life would never be the same again.
Christ
is risen! Not he died and went to heaven, but he IS risen! IS. In
our baptisms we are joined to the risen
Christ, and he dwells in us. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Christ is
risen! Christ is risen indeed! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! And the
risen Christ calls us to follow with him, to be his body in the world, so that
the world may know that he lives.
Christ
is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Thanks be to God.
[1] Dillard,
Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk: “Expeditions
and Encounters,” (p. 49). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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