14th
Easter Sermon - The Next Chapter
I. Intro:
Precious Ramotswe is the only licensed female private investigator in the south African country of Botswana, so even though she is training herself while on the job it is entirely accurate that she named her firm “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” in the first episode of the BBC television series by the same name based on the novels by Alexander McCall. To drum up business for the agency, she has leaflets printed and passed around that asks, “Is there someone that you know and love who has mysteriously vanished?” This catches the eye of Petal Siphambe, whose husband Peter disappeared two Sundays ago. Petal is Catholic, but Peter had gotten involved with an apostolic church… though the wife is suspicious that it is another woman he is really involved with. Precious Ramotswe calls this “the case of the absconding apostolic,” and after some effort she finds the pastor of Peter’s church and confronts him at the riverside where he performs baptisms.
“He’s gone to a better place,” Pastor Shadrack says. “You mean he’s dead,” our lady detective presses. “Nope, he’s alive, in a way that you and I can only dream of. The good Lord has taken him… Two weeks ago I was baptizing sinners; there were six deacons in the water helping that day; Peter Siphambe was one of them. I immersed the young lady sinner, then I saw to my amazement there were only five deacons in the water; I counted again, but still only five. Peter Siphambe completely vanished… the Lord has taken him body and soul. But I made no report to the autorities of this miracle. You know, sometimes it’s difficult to explain these things to non-believers.”
A few days later, Mma Ramotswe concludes her investigation proving that Peter was eaten by a crocodile, which stragely is a relief to his wife. What sticks in my mind though are the pastor’s words: “I made no report to the authorities of this miracle. You know, sometimes it’s difficult to explain these things to non-believers.”
II.
This morning we also have a story about a miracle going unreported – a body gone missing. The passage we have heard read from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark is the original ending of the book. In my opinion, it’s an awkward and unsatisfactory ending, listen again to Mark chapter 16, verse 8:
“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.”
That’s not the way to end a book! This was supposed to be the climactic moment. The hero, whom everyone had counted as dead is dead no more. We are supposed to end this story on a high note, right? We are here for a celebration, not a funeral… we sing of joy, not of fear. And what do we hear? That the women who gather at the tomb that very first Easter don’t seem to get it, instead when they encounter the angel at the empty tomb, they get scared and run away. While the traditional “they all lived happily ever after” might be an inappropriate way to end a book of the Bible, at a very minimum, aren’t we entitled to a positive, inspirational conclusion to the story of Jesus’ life. The word “gospel,” after all comes from the Old English meaning “Good News.”
III.
Imagine memorizing the entire Gospel of Mark and performing it as a broadway-style one-man show. Donald H. Juel, the late New Testament scholar, spoke about a student of his who did just that. During the first performance, the actor got to these last verses of Mark and shifted from foot to foot… kind of sputtering to the end. The tension in the auditorium as he finished, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid…” was so thick that after a few moments he said, “Amen.” And the relieved crowd broke into loud and appreciative applause. As satisfactory as this “Amen” was to his audience, in subsequent performances he decided that sticking to the text, with all the tension of its original ending would be a more faithful reading, so he stated those words in what could be called a confident whisper, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” He then paused for a breath and walked off the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were obvious,” said Juel, “and as people exited … the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the nonending.”[1]
Mark did not have to end this way, in fact, the other gospel-writers – those responsible for Matthew, Luke and John – take a considerable approach in ending their books. They each have unique conclusions that include Jesus himself appearing to the women… and they don’t stop there. Jesus eats breakfast with the disciples, appears behind locked doors, travels with friends on a dusty road; in one famous example, Jesus even allows Thomas to touch the holes in his hands and side. These are what the experts call post-resurrection appearances. These stories are placed at the end of the Gospels to prove a point: Jesus is alive and he is reaching out to his followers to comfort, encourage and forgive them.
But Mark is different. Mark’s ending leaves us feeling like a child enchanted by her favorite TV show to have it end abruptly with the words “stayed tuned for next week…” or “to be continued…” It is a let-down.
And whose fault is it that we feel let down? We could blame the gospel-writer, it’s as though he was pulled away from his desk just at the moment he should have been working on the grand finale – or his deadline came and the story had to go to print before he could formulate his conclusion. We could blame the women for not getting it, for letting their emotions get the best of them. But at least they were there! We could blame Peter, James, John and the other disciples, for not understanding Jesus’ teaching from the beginning, for being there that Sunday morning in anticipation of such an event – someone could have at least accompanied the women to help them move the huge stone which had stood at the entrance of the tomb. Any number of people could have intervened and kept us from such a “non-ending.” In fact, at least two other ancient Christian writers tried to resolve this non-ending by providing their own ending to the story, but these fall flat and seem incongruous with the original. In the end, we still have Mark’s non-ending.
That is how Mark leaves us, really, with an experience of a “nonending.” I would say it a little differently, though: the way Mark ends this story of Jesus is with ellipses – the dot-dot-dot that we often encounter in our communication with friends. It’s an indication that the story really isn’t finished, yet – that there is a next chapter to be written. And this is Good News. To understand this, we should take just a few steps back into the sixteenth chapter of Mark.
IV.
The absolute power of Mark’s gospel is contained in the fact that it even has a sixteenth chapter. The fifteenth chapter ends with the crucified body of Jesus being wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a borrowed tomb. A heavy stone is then rolled in front of the sepulcher to seal it. That is it. The story might have ended there… and the story of any other person probably would have ended there, but this is the story of Jesus Christ. The stone, the tomb, the crucifixion were not enough to end this story. The sixteenth chapter shows that Jesus has defeated death… that his story continues.
The women who come to Jesus’ tomb are there to attend to his dead body. They bring spices for embalming, to cut the stench of death and dry the flesh; their concern is both practical and tenderly compassionate. Their conversation as they walk to the garden is about how they will get the stone away from the entrance of the tomb. We know that two of them are named Mary and the other Salome. They have anticipated their task so eagerly that they arrive at the cemetery at sunrise. This is where their stories and our story changes. The stone has already been rolled away and inside the tomb there is no lifeless body of Jesus, but a stranger dressed all in white. He is seated quite casually and seems to be expecting these women. The man – an angel, we assume – tries to comfort the women, while passing on an important message: “Don’t be alarmed… You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
We get the sense from Mark’s Gospel that the message of the angel is lost, never forwarded by the women to Peter and the other disciples. The angel’s message is fool-proof in a way – which is necessary because Jesus’ followers are always blundering and blubbering and “not catching on” in Mark’s Gospel. We need to remember that Galilee is where these women, and most of the other disciples, are from in the first place. This is where they would have ended up anyway, even if they didn’t receive the message given to the women in the empty tomb. And there they will see the resurrected Jesus, just as they attempt to pick up the lives they had had in the years before they dropped everything to follow him.
Galilee is also where the Gospel of Mark chapter 1 begins. So, in a very significant way, the angel’s message to the women is telling you and me to go back to the beginning and read the story again. To reevaluate Jesus’ ministry in the light of his resurrection, even if we do not fully understand the significance of these events. What the Easter angel is offering to the women is the instrcution to start over again. The Easter message for us this morning is that we too have a chance to start over again… to turn the page to the next chapter.
V.
The famous radio personality Garrison Keillor tells the story of an encounter he had with the even more popular radio personality Paul Harvey. They were sitting next to each other at a stuffy dinner in Chicago; Keillor said the highlight of the evening was “When the salad plates were whisked away and the entree brought in, he leaned over toward me and said, ‘Page … 2,’ just like he does on the radio.”
Who among us does not need to turn the page to the next chapter in our lives? And this is what is possible. Mark’s Gospel does not end with a satisfactory exclamation point, or even a period. Instead we get this dot-dot-dot that invites us in to help finish the story, to be part of its next chapter.
In the end, or should I say, at this point of beginning we are quite a bit like the three women who went to the tomb that early Sunday morning. The women came bearing spices, expensive perfume to preserve Jesus’ rotting flesh, or at least disguise its odor. Similarly, many of us have arrived at this place this morning reeling from the personal cost of trying to cover-up the decay of our flesh, our relationships and our planet. We pay an enormous price to cover our blemishes and anesthetize ourselves against the effects of our own destruction. Keeping up appearances, play-acting that we are fine when our world is crumbling around us… these are costly pursuits. There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter that recognizes that God has defeated death and we can face it head on ourselves.
The women’s conversation as they walked toward the garden that first Easter morning was about who would roll the stone away from the tomb. Many of us are here this morning with a similar concern; stones have blocked our way. Huge stones that we cannot seem to move out of the way ourselves. These are stones that stop up our relationships making it nearly impossible for communication and affection to get through. For others our stones are addictions that are preventing us from moving forward. And for still others, these stones are the barriers that have been flung in front of us by mounting debt, the loss of a job, a child who seems to be spinning out of control. There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is the time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter that recognizes that God moves stones, God can make a way where we see no way, or as Paul teaches in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:38-9)
Finally, if we are honest with ourselves, we – like the women at the tomb —are stricken with fear. Our anxiety levels have us in that constant place of either fight or flight. We are paralyzed and perplexed. We try to end violence with more violence, or find ourselves in the place of constant victimization. Fear is real, but it is not the most powerful force at work in our world today. “He is not here, he has risen!” Death and fear have been defeated. There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is the time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter in which life rules the day. It is time for us to understand what Jesus has been trying to show us all along, that the opposite of fear is not courage or the ability to cause fear in others, but love. The “war on terror” is not a military campaign. The Bible teaches us that “Perfect love casts out fear,” and in the story of the empty tomb we see it realized: God’s Love Brings New Life. “God’s Love Brings New Life.” Perhaps that should be the title of your life’s next chapter.
[1] Thomas G. Long, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1944
