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.

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.

Where the light is

Oh, friends. 

More death. More violence. And our tender hearts can barely take it.  Anger, sadness, confusion, despair.  It’s all swirly and urgent and raw.

But I want to tell you a story.

Yesterday was Maisy's Baptism Day.  The anniversary of the moment eight years ago when she grabbed the pastor's lapel mic in both chubby hands and wailed into it with gusto while water was poured over her and the truth about her was declared: Beloved. Child of God. 

All day yesterday she wore this awareness like a gossamer garment - regal and peaceful, a secret happiness.  Beloved. Child of God.  Slipping from my car and marching into school, she kept this reality inside, curled around it to warm her throughout the day.

When she got home that afternoon, she found a gift dropped off by her godmother sometime during the day.  It was a tiny fairy garden in a clear, glass basket, complete with a smiling gnome, a red, spotted mushroom and a miniature black horse, with a string of colorful prayer flags stretched between living plants, all nestled on a bed of soft moss and beautifully polished rocks. The note on it said, Happy Baptism Day, Maisy!  

She stood silently gazing at it, and finally whispered, "Oh! I LOVE it."

Upstairs she went, and clearing her bedside table of all accumulated detritus, she made a special place in her room for her new fairy garden.

While I watched the news.  And freebased Facebook. And fretted and raged and grieved. Again. And in between, I made dinner and helped with homework. It was a busy night. Daddy was out of town. We ate pulled up to the counter on stools and standing around the kitchen. I kept checking in on the noise. I kept pressing on the bruise inside to feel the ache.

But then her voice broke through my stewing.  

“Mommy, what about my baptism candle?"

So we lit it.  

And then she asked, “What about the water?”

And she guided me to the little bowls and watched while I took one down and filled it.  Then she dipped in her finger and raised it to her forehead, and nodded for me to do the same, tracing the mark of our baptism, the cross on our foreheads which the ashes will make visible not too far away from now.  

“What about a prayer, Mommy?”  

And she stood in front of me, the glow of the candle falling on us, and placed both her hands in mine. With absolute peace and confidence, she raised her face toward me, closed her eyes, and waited.

Thank you, oh, thank you, God, for this precious child.  She belongs to you forever and ever.  Today we celebrate. Today we remember. No matter what, and always, we belong to your love. Amen.

Then she nodded, satisfied, turned and blew out her candle, and scampered off to another room.

I sat down at the kitchen counter, grabbed my phone and sent this text to my friend Jodi, 

There is light in this world. And it’s busting inside my chest right now and leaking out my eyeballs.

Here’s what I want to say: A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, will not, ever, overcome it. Remember. 

So listen to the wisdom of my friend Meta, who said to us all last night, Don't spend too long in the rabbit hole tonight, friends. Call someone to say "I love you". Make weekend plans to be in community. Prepare brave kindness for a stranger tomorrow. Then go to bed. We still belong to each other for the sake of the good.

Yes. This.

What about you? Where are you seeing the light?