Resurrection Unresolved

Mark 16:1-8

Happy Easter!

Once a year we like to make a super big deal out of resurrection, even though none of our gospel accounts show us anything about it. What they do show is an empty tomb, mostly, and a bunch of disciples who do a pretty terrible job of getting even close to as excited as we are on Easter Sunday. 

The words Matthew, Mark, Luke and John use for the initial reactions of those first told of the resurrection are: “alarmed,” “trembling and bewildered,” “afraid,” “disbelieving”, “terrified,” “doubting,” “startled and frightened,” “wondering,” and “it sounded to them like nonsense.”  Not a single “Hallelujah!” among them!

 

So, I submit that maybe we’re a little removed from the whole story and invite us back to the whole resurrection thing today with fresh eyes.

 

First off, I’d like to point out that, knowing he’s going to rise from the dead, we don’t even pause to wonder why it took so long.  We just fill the Saturday of a Dead Savior with last minute Target runs for Easter tights, vacuuming the house, and preparing the ham for tomorrow, and don’t really give a single thought to the unsettlingly long delay between the death of Jesus and his resurrection. At the precipice of despair, when the worst thing ever has happened, it all just stops and stays for a while. 

 

In any world-altering project we competent humans undertake, this is the moment we would be 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, God – and every single human in this story, made in the image of God - leaves the building and turns out the lights. They go home and crawl into bed and spend an entire day on purpose not doing it. Luther says Jesus sabbathed in the grave. Dead guy not in any hurry to get this show on the road.

 

We race to resurrection. We’d actually prefer to skip the death part completely, if possible. And if it must happen, let’s just dip our toe in and move on quickly. 

 

How strange it is, that in the wake of Jesus’s violent death, when all is utterly lost and darkness has triumphed unequivocally, the greatest drama of the cosmos grinds to a quiet halt. And another story takes center stage and demands precedence. 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 are what happens.

 

Centuries later we know where this story is going, so we skip the pause and just boogie ourselves on to the celebrating. But while it’s easy for us non-stop, state of the art, capable modern creatures to miss that that the whole salvation story stopped at the most disastrous moment to remember God is God and we are not, uncooperative Mark makes jumping to victorious, joyful resurrection celebration super awkward.  

 

Because, after Jesus’ most faithful followers are told to spread the news of his resurrection, and then go meet the risen Jesus back where they began--in the ordinary places of life--Mark actually ends his whole gospel account with them backing slowly away from the weird stranger in the corpseless tomb, stumbling into the daylight, hiking up their skirts, and high tailing it out of there as fast as their legs can carry them, keeping mum about the whole crazy situation. 

 

This is such an uncomfortable ending that by the 3^rd century a short new ending was tacked on, and by the 5^thcentury an even longer one, where everyone did what they were supposed to and believed in the risen Lord, because people couldn’t bear the story stopping with the dissonant note left hanging in the air, just begging for someone to walk across the room and play the chord that resolves it.

So not only does the salvation story stop and stay a while at the worst part, like it’s not at all concerned about getting things sorted for us, but then Mark leaves the whole narrative of Jesus unresolved and unsettling. 

 

Let’s just say a fair-minded teacher would hesitate to give a passing grade to this project. The comments might say, “lacks clarity of purpose and audience, central idea not well presented, participants could show more effort, completely missing a conclusion, C-”. 

 

The truth is, in no universe, does what God is doing here make sense to our cause and effect, good guys/bad guys, earning and proving, comparing and competing, winning and losing sensibilities. In fact, we might say that God’s project upends all of that entirely.  

 

Here’s how we do Easter: a few typical options

Option 1: Easter is for later. It means we’re given an individual get-out-of-hell-free card, an eternal win on the uncompromising board game of life. So, if we play our cards correctly, we reap some well-earned rewards! (And we can help others get their cards too).  

Option 2: Easter makes us feel better. Jesus died and rose to calm the existential dread that meets us in the night, the voice that whispers we are not enough, that somehow, we’re failing at life. We’re honest enough to know we actually can’t do it on our own. And we hear Easter saying, You are enough.

Option 3: We’ve had it with all the gobbly-gook of religion and have washed our hands of it, except when we’re dragged to church by our smiling in-laws who are crossing their fingers that this time, we’ll change our mind and come back to faith.

 

Here’s how God does Easter: 

Instead of rescuing some people out of it, God plunges right into it all, right alongside us all. Instead of backing our self-improvement projects, Jesus goes right for our sin – which is just a shorthand way of saying, whatever blocks us off from God and each other, whatever tells us we are not worthy of God’s love, or that we are but someone else is not, whatever breeds fear, isolation, self-centeredness and destruction – this is what Jesus takes on for us and brings to the cross.  There is nothing - no suffering, sorrow, or loss, no horror done to us, or by us, that Jesus does not carry us directly into the heart of God, even the final terrible divider, death itself. Jesus was defeated and broken by all that defeats and breaks us. He was dead and buried. It was all over. For a while. Except it wasn’t. Jesus rose from the dead, and the end of the story has been written: there is no death so great that life is not greater, no evil so powerful that love will not prevail. 

 

And perhaps this is a message not yet felt on Easter morning, but maybe tasted earlier, in the moment the sabbath began and they all turned back to the truth that God is God and we are not, and practiced trusting God even if they weren’t feeling it, because it’s what we do. And they waited. With God, and with one another, they waited to see what God would do next. Maybe in their waiting, they remembered whose story this all is. And then the next morning, a few of them reached empty tomb to put spices on Jesus’ body. And they forgot again. Because

here’s how the first followers of Jesus did Easter: 

alarm, terror, confusion, skepticism, trembling and bewilderment. The idea of Resurrection did nothing for them whatsoever. Being told about it just freaked them out.

 

Because resurrection is not an idea or belief. It’s what comes after death. It’s the new life that comes after what was, has died. It’s the hope that is born from a place of loss and despair. It’s when tragedy is shot through with overwhelming love and inexplicable peace, when patient grieving abates and washes away and something new and unexpected wakes up and yearns to be born in us. It’s when you find that fear’s hold on you has been broken and you are free.  It’s when you find yourself able to love, able to reach out and be with and for another despite all the risks of heartbreak or failure.  It’s life, life, life. 

He was dead. The tomb was empty.  Resurrection didn’t mean anything until Jesus met them later, alive. Then they too were resurrected. Back in the ordinary places of life he told them to follow him into, they found God bringing resurrection all over the place, and began their new life of trusting in what they could not make happen, waiting and watching for what God would do next, in them and through them.

 

Except Mark doesn’t show us that part. 

 

What God is doing is beyond our capacity to grasp. So maybe it’s helpful to us that Mark stops while it’s unresolved and people are freaking out and confused and keeping 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. 

 

The story of the Living Christ is still going. God’s still writing it with the ink of our lives. Our job is not to jump to resolution and hide from the discomfort and dissonance, but to wait and watch. God is always here, always at work, always turning death, impossibility and nothingness toward life and love, always bringing resurrection, always inviting us to join in.

But there can be no resurrection without death. So we go to the places of death, and we wait.  Jesus came in to this life to be with and for us. When we are with and for each other, that is where we find the risen Lord.

 

If this Easter finds you in the darkness of despair, I invite you into the great surrendering pause of practicing trust even if you don’t feel it, that is, to wait and watch for what God will do next. Please allow some of us wait there with you.

 

If you come to this Easter ready to heed the call of the messenger in the tomb and join in resurrection, I invite you to back into your ordinary life. Jesus said to follow him there. That’s where he will be. Go into your week and wait and watch for what God will do next and be ready to respond.  

 

If you’re here today to make someone else happy and you think none of this applies to you, I’m sorry, it actually does. You are already loved and claimed by God, and your life is just as much a conduit of God’s love and justice, hope and healing, as the person sitting next to you. I invite you too, to wait and watch for what God will do next.

 

Resurrection happens!  

We’re invited to surrender into the story. To trust that Jesus is out there ahead of us in the completely ordinary places of our lives, and the utterly ordinary lives of everyone on this planet. And when we’re over our shock at the whole thing not going at all how we think it should, and ready to find him, that’s where we should look. That’s where we’ll find God bringing resurrection all over the place. So we will practice trusting in what we cannot make happen, remembering together whose story this really is, and waiting and watching for what God will do next, in us and through us. 

Christ has risen, Hallelujah!  

Amen.

Even so, and forevermore

Mark 16:1-8

They fled from the tomb terrified and bewildered and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

This is it, folks.

This is how Mark tells the story.

It’s so awkward and jarring that some time around the second century a few other endings were created for the book that smoothed it out - made it more clean and palatable, with the disciples and the women on board with it all, and Jesus appearing so it could be validated that he had indeed risen.

But it is nearly universally agreed that originally, this is just how Mark ended not just the passion narrative, but the whole book of Mark.  They fled from the tomb terrified and bewildered and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

Alleluia!

I actually love that Mark does this. And that it makes future Christians so uncomfortable.

We like to read the bible for how we’re supposed to be; we compare ourselves and think it is meant to tell us what we should believe or should do, but Mark doesn’t really let us do that, because in Mark all of Jesus’ followers are such terrible examples of faith as we like to think about it, that there isn’t much to aspire to.

Because this isn’t a story about us. Or about them. Or about a religion, or a belief system, or a way to live and behave.

This is the story of God. God with us. God who keeps on breaking through all our expectations and rules for how God should be.

First God comes in, to share this life with us. What?

And then God dies, by literally allowing those God created and loves, torture, betray and kill him. Who is writing this script? 

And then just when it’s all over, when these dear women are in grief, with all the comforting and familiar rituals that attend to it, and adjusting, as we do when death rearranges the future, when their hopes and aspirations have been reduced to literally what is right in front of them – how will we move the big rock? –suddenly the fabric of all that makes sense is ripped open before them.

And I love how it’s told. When they get there and the rock is already moved for them, they step gingerly into the tomb and see this young man, calmly sitting there, and the text says, “they are alarmed.”  And so he says with a steady, even-keel voice, “Do not be alarmed.” And then he walks them through it gently and carefully as possible:

“You (pointing at them) are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

He has been raised; he is not here.

Look, (pointing across from him) there is the place they laid him.

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’

And they back out of the tomb slowly, perhaps stumbling over each other and tripping at the entrance, where adrenaline kicks in and they drop their parcels, hike up their skirts and high tail it out of there. And then, they said nothing to anyone because this is the most terrifying thing to ever confront them.

And I don’t think those women fleeing are so different than we are, because we flee too, just in semantics and symbols - we sing of victory and triumph, and turn resurrection into another thing to make us feel secure or safe – like eternal insurance, a policy we start paying on now that will pay off in the end, and make the risen Jesus into an idea that helps us back to the security, safety and success that we really worship.

But Mark’s telling of the story doesn’t let us do that.  He makes us sit in the discomfort of their fear and confusion, and shows us that the gospel is anything but business as usual. And this is uncomfortable.

Because is no human logic in any of it.

Why should God come among us?

Why should God die with us, for us, by our hand?

It is only love. The logic of love.

God is determined that nothing, not ever, can separate us from God.

And when we say that Jesus came to save us from sin, we are not saying that we are bad and dirty people who need to be washed by a blood sacrifice to be saved.  We are saying that given the choice, we will most often choose ourselves over others.  Given the choice, we will most often choose comfort over generosity.  Given the choice - and we are given the choice - we will most often choose to protect and preserve or placate ourselves at the expense of anyone else. Safety. Security. Success. We will claw toward those things even if it eats our souls out, and we will step on others’ faces to keep our own above water.

This is what sin is.  Sin is whatever blocks us off from God and each other, whatever tells us we are not worthy of God’s love, or that we are but someone else is not. Sin is what breeds competition and fear, isolation, self-centeredness and destruction..

God made the whole world to be a reflection of God’s love and creativity – every part fitting together, all the wild and wonderful variety of creation and humanity lifting up and supporting one another so that all are fed, all are clothed, all are known and seen and valued, and every voice gets to speak and every person gets to feel what it means to be seen and known, and to see and know others, and to be lavishly generous and fearlessly open-hearted creatures made in the image of God.

But we are suspicious of such things, and we’re pretty sure that if we let our guard down we’ll get screwed, so we turn on each other, and insulate ourselves, and shut out God, and that is what sin is – it is that thing that says, I don’t need you, to God, and to each other. 

And I don’t know about you – but I need saving from that. 

And when I look at this world – this precious, breathtaking world, and I hear the languages and music and see the faces, so alike and so different, reflections of souls, and let myself begin to witness the astonishing ways love is lived all over this planet,

when I stop and recognize God’s creativity poured out and painted in vast canvas and intricate detail of color and noise and tastes and smells and more beauty and joy than any one of us could take in in a thousand lifetimes,

and appreciate that it’s all given freely, it’s all a giant welcome to us from God, a gift to enjoy together, that it’s all meant to be shared with all these fellow creatures made in God’s image, capable of incredible depths of love and pain and hope and vision –

and instead I see people fleeing across oceans from villages decimated by violence and brutality, and putting up laws and walls and barriers and blockades to protect the strong from the onslaught of the weak, and steeping ourselves in cruelty and corruption and callousness and killing and cutthroat competition, oh my God, save us please! Jesus, come and save us!

God does. Not by rescuing some out of it but by plunging right into it, right alongside us all. There is nothing - no suffering or pain, no sorrow or loss - that God does not take directly into God’s heart. And the biggest threat of all, the one all others are designed to either mimic or combat, is death. And so, Jesus goes there. He goes right to the furthest most terrifying place. 

And by our logic, it makes no sense.

But our logic is flawed.

Because we think it’s about climbing, and advancing, and avoiding death, and pain. But that’s not what it’s about. We’re made to sink in and slow down and open up and be with each other in whatever comes, because that is where love is. That is where hope is.  That is where truth is.  And life.  And Jesus.

Jesus is right there. In those places.

I love that the women fled in terror and bewilderment and didn’t say a word to a single soul because they were afraid. Of course that’s what they did. Who among us would do otherwise?

But reality doesn’t hinge on their reaction in this moment. They don’t hold the reigns, God does. They don’t have the power to change the story or take the truth off course.

Christ has risen!  And it’s nobody’s job to convince anyone of that. Because a risen Christ means a living God and God is out there, out here, meeting us in the flesh, summoning us to love, releasing us from sin and bondage, reorienting us to the real reality, the Kingdom of God that endures forever.

Watch for the risen Jesus! If he looks like fear and condemnation, that’s not him, keep looking. 

But where you see forgiveness and mercy, there he is. 

Where you see compassion and generosity, Jesus is there. 

Where you notice people coming alongside each other and bearing each other’s burdens – there is the body of Christ, God’s kingdom in the flesh.

I’ve started tagging things I see on Facebook with ‘The kingdom of God is like…” 

...Pope Francis washing immigrants’ feet, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and calling them sisters and brothers, children of God.

The kingdom of God is like… a woman on a subway sitting next to a stranger who is agitated, talking to himself, eyes darting around in fear, his body rocking, and because she’s a mom and recognizes that this man is someone’s son, she gently reaches out and takes his hand in her own, and he calms down and rests beside her. 

The kingdom of God is like… 300 union plumbers volunteering a whole weekend to install water filters in homes in Flint, MI, because they have this skill to give and this community is filled with people who need it. 

The kingdom of God is like… a cook and a janitor staying on when the rest of the staff leaves an assisted care home that has closed, but a few residents remain with nowhere to go, so these two men care for the patients around the clock for several days until the fire department and sheriff take over, and when asked why, one of them replies,  When I was a child I was abandoned, and I know what that is. I was I was not going to do that to them.” 

The kingdom of God is like… locals at the Mexican- US border using the border fence- meant to keep people separated and secure - as a giant volleyball net, connecting them like neighborhood children.

The kingdom of God is like… 40 farmers with tractors showing up one morning on the fields of a neighbor who is laid up with cancer, and while he and his family look on, harvesting all their crops, because we all belong to each other.

The kingdom of God is like… my own neighbor, on a day when life feels fragile and scary, telling me to come over and bring a bowl, then filling it with soup from a giant pot on her stove, and then the two of us standing there hugging, feeling the truth that we are not alone, and that life is for sharing.

Jesus embodies and brings the kingdom of God, and when he dies, and rises from the dead, the kingdom of God persists and spreads and invades the whole earth and it is unfolding right now all around us and between us. 

This thing God is doing is not going to stop. 

God is never going to leave or forsake us, and this life is utterly infused with, and irreversibly headed toward, love, where it began and where it will end.

This is not a hypothetical thing.

God is here. Right here. In this room. Meeting us in the space between us, in the love within us, in the longing that draws us toward hope.  

And God is out there. In the very middle of every sad and scary thing, with each lonely and frightened person, in every corner of this earth: Jesus has risen, and there is nowhere that God is not present.

And if you want to see God, if you want to touch God and hear God and feel God, then join God.  Don’t turn your back on someone else’s pain or questions.  Don’t close your eyes to the beauty around you; don’t get caught up in the lies that seek to own you about your own worth or someone else’s, or what makes for a good life. 

But here’s the truth about our sin and our need for saving: You will turn your back on someone else’ pain and questions, and you will close your eyes to the beauty, and you will get caught up in the lies.  You will deny him three times before the rooster crows.

So hear the good news of the gospel: while we are still sinful, that is, while we are still buying into the lie and closing ourselves off from others and from God, Jesus comes into it all for us, with us, and takes on every single thing that divides, distracts and destroy us.  God takes on death and bears it into the very heart of God. 

And then, when death seems like the biggest and most true thing of all, resurrection interrupts the deceptive narrative and says, nope, you’re wrong - life wins and love prevails.

You and I are going to forget this, and even flee from it from time to time in terror and confusion, but nevertheless, it is true.  And it’s not up to us to make it so.  It keeps on being true, and God keeps on being here, and love keeps on being the most real thing, and no amount of our fleeing or fearing can keep us from being part of the true story. 

Because this isn’t a story about us, or about them. Or about a religion, or a belief system, or a way to live and behave.  This is the story of God. God with us, Jesus, who join us, whom death could not hold back, who is out there in the world waiting for us to join him.

Go now, the calm man sitting in the tomb tells the alarmed women, tell the disciples (and especially Peter!, the one who thought he made himself unworthy by denying Jesus!), tell them all, that Jesus is alive and out ahead of you.  Go home and you will see him there.

The kingdom of God is among us, it is between us and around us and out in the world, and it is not our job to make that so, it is so. 

 So go bravely into your life, go unreservedly into the world, and watch for the risen Lord; go and you will see Jesus there.

Amen.