The Never-Ending Story

Mark 15:42-16:8

A year ago Easter we were a little shell-shocked to still be in a pandemic, and I, for one, felt certain it was going to be the one and only online Easter.  Alleluia! 

But here we are again, a year later, and we’ve changed, the world has changed, and also we’re still stuck inside an agonizing moment that keeps on going.  And I, for one, come to this moment ready to hear the good news of the gospel on Easter, hoping it has something to say to us right now that might pull us out of this never-ending Lent. So let's see what it has for us.

First of all, have you ever notice that there is Sabbath in the Easter story? There is. Right there in the middle of it, interrupting the incarnate God living and dying and rising again, a sabbath day.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us about it, they all make sure we know that everyone and everything pauses for the sabbath before resuming again on Sunday. This strikes me so profoundly strange and wonderful. 
 
I suppose it never occurred to me to wonder before why Jesus waited a day in death to rise again on the third day.  Why not the next day? Luther says it’s because Jesus was keeping the sabbath in the grave. The son of God, the son of a Jewish carpenter, dead and buried, sabbathing in the cemetery.
 
In the midst of life and death, when all that was is gone and all that will be has not yet unfolded, when God is doing the most significant thing God has done since speaking the world into being, it all just stops.  Right in the middle of the thing that will change the whole planet to “before” and “after,” the pause button is hit.  
 
It seems to me this is the point in any world-altering project when it’s all hands on deck, nobody stopping, nobody sleeping, a beating heart of adrenaline-hyped project managers and bleary-eyed, caffeinated engineers making sure it all comes off as it’s meant to. But instead, they leave the building and turn out the lights. They go home and crawl into bed and spend an entire day on purpose not doing it. 
 
At the high point of the death and resurrection drama, it all grinds to a quiet halt, candles are lit, stories are told, prayers and naps and holding one another and reading alone and recalling the faithfulness of God and practicing the gratitude of belovedness happen. A sabbath day.  
 
My friend Phil shares that in the hours after the 9-11 attack, in the midst of the world in chaos - people leaving work, stores closing, all bets off - he noticed cars pulling into the parking lot of the church he pastors.  At first he thought there was a need or emergency, but the people got out of their cars, headed inside and tromped down the stairs to the basement, where they began setting up folding chairs and brewing coffee, because it was time for AA. And you go to AA, no matter what else is happening in the world. You come together to remember who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing. 
 
Even in the midst of a world-altering moment, a moment that will become “before” and “after” for the whole world, you are already living your own after and your before has happened.  You were dead in your addiction, in the grips of something that took away your life before, and now you live after.  And the freedom of life afterrequires practice, it needs a fulcrum around which the rest can balance, a practice that helps you remember that all life is already only in the grace of a loving God.
 
So there is a sabbath day in the Easter story. 
Because God is still God. And we are not God. And no matter what happens, you do this thing that reminds you who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing. And you do it because all life is already only in the grace of a loving God. So even though God was absent, and all hope had died, they still rested as God commanded.
 
Then, when the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
 
I wonder, they said, who will roll away the stone?
They went not knowing. They went facing an obstacle too great for them, but they went anyway, not knowing how it would work out. They went to grieve, to care for Jesus’ body, to figure out how to move on without him, to let him go.  Who will roll away the stone? The barrier that symbolizes death - the finality of it, the judgment of it, the permanence of it.  Depression, division, hatred, what are the stones in our lives and world that we cannot roll away?
 
When they got there the stone was gone, the obstacle was no longer an obstacle, indeed, death was no longer death!  The strange man dressed in white told them Jesus was not there but was alive, and go tell the rest of the group that Jesus would meet them in Galilee, just as he said, already there, awaiting you. 
 
I will never forget when my friend Lisa said to me, “That’s like saying, ‘Tell them I’ll meet them in St. Louis Park.’”  Nowhere important, nowhere fancy or powerful, just where their ordinary life happens. Tell them I’ll meet them back in the neighborhood. Tell them I’m waiting for them in the day to day, where I said I would be. 
 
This is how God saves the world. Not through powerful leaders, influential networks and proper channels, but in the regular, everyday lives of ordinary, everyday people. You. Me. If you want to see Jesus, look around your life. He’s already there, up to something.

So did the women go back then and tell everyone joyfully what God was up to? No, they didn’t take the news well.  Who would? Death we get, letting go we can do. But resurrection? We’ve got nothing for that. 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. 

And it ends like this. In fact, the whole book of Mark ends this way. If you open your bible and look you will see that there is more there, to be sure, but scholars agree that what comes next was added later, because people couldn’t bear ending the story this way, a dissonant note in a song left hanging in the air, just begging for someone to walk across the room and play the chord that resolves it.
 
But nobody accepts resurrection at first, not anywhere in the gospels. Nobody can get their head around life coming after death. It’s not possible, it’s not believable, and to pretend it makes sense and they just took it in stride diminishes it, reduces it into an idea instead of an encounter. Besides, the risen savior is a song that keeps going. There is no end.
 

So the discombobulated and bewildered women flee in terror and say nothing to anyone, and the narrative of Jesus Christ the risen Lord stops right in the middle. 
 
Because it’s still the middle.  We are in this story too; it lives on in us.  We find the Risen Jesus out there in our own Galilees, in our homes and families and places of work and neighborhoods, alongside one another in our struggles and our fears, wrapped up in the lives of friends we love and strangers we run into. Jesus is here, among us.  God is always here, always at work, always moving stones too heavy for us to move, always turning death, impossibility and nothingness toward life and love.  
 
There is a lot right now that feels heavy and impossible.  There is a lot that feels hard and confusing.  So taking a page from our Easter story, here’s what we’ll do:

 We’ll show up in the places of death with our spices and our plans, ready to face the obstacles in front of us without knowing how they will be resolved. 
 
And even when the world is ending, or the pandemic isn’t, we will rest. No matter how big things feel or how long they go on, or how strongly they demand our fervent attention, especially then, we’ll rest.  We’ll let ourselves be put back into the story, where God is God and we are God’s children. Because all life is already only in the grace of a loving God. And life run by love requires practice. And we need reminding who is in charge of the whole thing. 
 
And when we’re afraid and confused, and can’t wrap our heads around the possibility of transformation, when we freak out and flee and forget momentarily to do the part we’ve been given to do, that doesn’t slow the story down at all, it just keeps it real.  

Because the story keeps going, and pretending to resolve what isn’t resolved doesn’t make the truth any less true: that God is relentlessly bringing life, life that death itself cannot stop. And we are part of that; our ordinary little lives join in that. Even now, every now.  God is breathing new life into the world.  
 
There was a before, and this is the after: Christ is risen. 

And he’s waiting for us right where he said he’d be. 
Amen.