Chetwynd Shared Ministry
April 1, 2018 - Easter Day
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
He
is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
Christ is risen
indeed, but I have to ask – isn’t that a very strange ending to the gospel
reading we just read together? And it
becomes even more strange when you realize that this is actually the original
ending to the Gospel of Mark. Mark
doesn’t give us any stories about the appearances of the resurrected
Christ. Instead we have the empty tomb,
and the women fleeing in terror and dread.
If you open your
bibles when you get home and take a look at the end of Mark’s gospel, you will
probably find more words coming after verse 8, but you will also probably find
footnotes telling you that these are the “Shorter Ending of Mark” and the
“Longer Ending of Mark.” Because the
very oldest manuscripts in existence have Mark’s gospel ending here at verse
8. Apparently the early church also didn’t
like this ending that leaves everything up in the air, and so they added new
endings on to what Mark had written.
But I have to confess
that I love the ending of Mark’s gospel – in fact, I think that Mark is my
favourite out of all the gospels – partly because the ending ties back to the
very beginning of the gospel. If you
were to flip back to the beginning, right back to chapter 1, verse 1, the
opening words of the gospel act like a title for the whole book: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.” The good news
only begins with the words that are printed on the page. The good news continues on after the women
run away from the empty tomb in fear.
The good news continues through decades and centuries right through to
today, and it will continue tomorrow too.
The words in this book are only the beginning of the good news, of the
gospel of Jesus Christ!
But what about those
women? What about Mary and Mary and
Salome? They had been with Jesus through
his ministry in Galilee – Mark tells us that they had helped to finance Jesus’
ministry. They had been with Jesus when
he was crucified, watching from a distance.
They had watched Jesus’ body be carried in to a tomb after he had died, and had watched a large
stone being rolled across the entrance to the tomb, sealing his body in.
Jesus died on a Friday
afternoon, the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath. He was laid in a tomb, and nothing happened
the next day. From sunset on Friday to
sunset on Saturday is the Sabbath for the Jewish people – a day of rest, a day
when no work is done. For those who had
witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, it was also likely a day of mourning, a day of
waiting in fear, a day of waiting to be able to do something, anything.
But now the Sabbath is
over. And the three women, Mary, Mary,
and Salome, are finally able to do something.
And they decided to take spices to Jesus’ tomb so that they can anoint
his body. They are so desperate to do
something, anything for Jesus, that they decide to tend his body. They are caring for their body even though
they are likely afraid of the officials who had put Jesus to death. They are caring for his body, even though the
Jewish faith forbids contact with corpses.
They are willing to risk their lives, and they are willing to become
ritually unclean in order to show their love and care for Jesus.
Mark tells us that they
were asking one another how they would move the stone that they had seen seal
the tomb, but I imagine that most of the walk to the tomb was in silence. When I think about times when I have been
grieving, I don’t want to fill the air with meaningless babble, with words that
won’t change anything.
Can you imagine their
surprise then, when they arrived at the tomb and saw that the stone had already
been rolled back, away from the door of the tomb? Now I tend to be a logical thinker – if I
were in their shoes, I would probably start looking for reasons right
away. Did the Romans who crucified Jesus
take his body and put it somewhere else, worried that his tomb would become a
symbol of resistance? Did wild animals
drag his body away for dinner? Maybe someone
else had died, and the tomb had been opened up so that another body could be
placed there. So I imagine that their
first reaction might have been confusion or curiosity.
But then they step in
to the tomb. And where the body was
supposed to be – the body that they had come to tend – there was nothing. All of their worst fears had come true.
But there, there on
the right-hand side of the tomb was a young man. Was he an angel, a messenger from God? He was a messenger of some sort, and he had
an important message for the women who had come to tend to the dead. He told them that Jesus of Nazareth, the same
Jesus who had been crucified has been raised.
He is not here, for he is risen.
Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
He
is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
I wonder how long it
took for the women’s fear to turn to joyful Hallelujahs? Even though Mark’s gospel leaves them in a
state of terror and amazement, we know that they can’t have kept silent
forever. If they had, we wouldn’t know
the gospel today. The women who had come
to the tomb to care for the dead eventually came to spread the good news of
resurrection and new life.
And with the
resurrection, with the new life, the world will never, can never be the same
again. It’s like the moment in the movie
version of the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy arrives in Oz and the world changes
from black-and-white to full Technicolor.
The world has been transformed.
The same God who created the world in the beginning has now re-created
the world, giving us a hint of the glorious time that is coming when God will
be fully present with and in all of creation.
And this resurrection,
this time when God broke in to creation and raised Jesus from the dead, is the
source of all of our hope for resurrection and new life; for if Jesus of
Nazareth, who was crucified has been raised from the dead, anything is
possible!
Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
He
is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
The resurrection is
our eternal source for all of our hope.
Our hope for new beginnings; our hope for new life; our hope that the
winter will end and spring will come again; our hope that God’s kingdom is
coming. This is not an empty hope or
wishful thinking – this is confidence that what God has done in the past, God
will do again. All of our hope is
solidly grounded in the resurrection.
One of my professors
at school used to tell a story with the punch-line, “What better place for
dancing than the church?!” I would add
to that, what better time for dancing than Easter?!” The cross is empty, the tomb is empty, new
life is here! God has played a giant
cosmic April Fool’s joke on death itself, and death has lost its power! We can sing, we can dance, we can shout it
from the rooftops:
Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
He
is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
Remember that the
words on the page of Mark’s gospel are only the beginning of the good news of
Jesus Christ – we today, in Chetwynd in 2018, continue on with the good news of
Jesus Christ. We are in line with all
those who carried the news before us. So
what do we do with it now? Where do we
take it now?
I think that we can
learn from the women in today’s reading – from Mary and Mary and Salome. They came to the tomb to tend the dead, to
hang on to what was dead and gone; but instead they were given a message of new
life. Do we cling to what is past, or do
we search for new life?
Because new life is
all around us. We can see this in the
small things – a couple of my house plants didn’t do well with my move to
Chetwynd, but in the past week, my shamrock plant has put out flowers for the
first time since I got here. And have
you noticed how the tree branches are thickening and changing colour in
anticipation of the spring coming?
And we can also see
new life in the big things. I heard last
summer about a Presbyterian church in a big city in the US that realized that
they weren’t going to be able to survive in the form that they were. And so they realized that hanging on to their
money until it all ran out or they all died wasn’t going to do anything towards
God’s mission in their city. So instead,
they made a decision to sell their church building, and put all of their money
towards funding full-time chaplains at three different senior’s and nursing
homes in their city. The church has
died, but the church is risen, thanks to people who refused to fight the
resurrection.
The thing about
resurrection is that what is resurrected doesn’t necessarily look like what
came before. Death has lost its power,
but the resurrection has the power to transform. Even though Mark doesn’t give us any stories
about the resurrected Christ, the other gospels tell us that when Jesus’
closest disciples met him after the resurrection, they often didn’t recognize
him. He had been changed by God into a
new creation.
So how can we carry
the good news of Jesus Christ, who was crucified but who is risen into the
world? How can we too proclaim the hope
of resurrection in our world? How can we
too search for new life instead of lingering with death?
Hallelujah! Christ is risen!
He
is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
Let us pray:
God of the Easter
resurrection,
Fill our hearts with
joy today,
and with the hope that new life is
always possible.
Open our hearts to the
possibility of resurrection;
and help us to look
for you,
not
in what has come before,
but in the newness of
new life,
new beginnings,
new hope,
and new possibilities.
We pray this in the
name of the Resurrected One,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Our "Decorating Elves" filled the church with flowers today
Photo Credit: Richard Little
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