Home Sermons Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Easter Sunday

TEXTS: MARK 16:1-8

 

HOW TO TALK ABOUT EASTER?
The humorist, David Sedaris, writes about learning to speak French in Paris. He's in a class of many other non-French speakers and the topic is holidays. The assignment is to converse about Easter using their meager vocabularies. Here is an excerpt
The teacher asked: " Would anyone like to tell us what one does on Easter?"
The Moroccan student interrupted, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is, a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus ... and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber."

The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
"He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."
Sedaris writes, "Part of the problem had to do with [vocabulary.] Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp. Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead."
"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," the Italian explained. "One, too, may eat of the chocolate."
"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.
I knew the word, and so I raised my hand, "The Rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate." (Me Talk Pretty One Day.)

"Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we talked about food instead." I get that. The challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity has literally filled libraries, so I'm not going to be any more up to the task of doing it in a 15 minute sermon than was Sedaris's French class.

Anyway, Easter Sunday is a day for the heart, not intellectual analysis. Everything is heightened-more flowers on the altar and in the flowering cross, more people in the congregation, kids experiencing worship with the grown-ups, swelling hymns accompanied by trumpet, an inspiring mission moment.


INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
The rituals of Easter, the grandeur, the "specialness" does not come from today's scripture reading. Each of the Gospel writers tells the resurrection story differently. Mark has no ascensions into the clouds, no walking through walls. No Jesus at all, actually.

His story is so "unfinished," that later biblical scribes added to it to make it more satisfying. Most Bibles include the late additions with the note that they are not found in the oldest manuscripts. Here is Mark's simple story:

Mark 16 The Resurrection of Jesus
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. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?' When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, 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.' 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.

THE GOSPEL OF SECOND CHANCES
Some say Mark ends on a downer-they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. But remember the context. The Gospels were written in the midst of active early church communities. People were gathering together to hear these stories told. They knew it didn't end there ... with the terror and silence. They were proof of it. The women at the tomb went back and told or there would be no story at all.

Throughout Mark's Gospel, failure and fear us a constant theme. He portrays the disciples as utterly ineffective-lacking in courage, understanding, and commitment. Peter is especially singled out. "Get thee behind me, Satan," Jesus lashes out at him. And, of course, his denial, "I never knew him," at the crucial moment. But look, who is the message for-the disciples and Peter. "Tell them," the young man commands the women. "Tell them he is going ahead. Tell they will find him in Galilee." Subtle as it is, I see this Easter story as the ultimate expression of second chances.
BACK TO GALILEE, BACK TO THE BEGINNING
Galilee is where everything begins in the first place. The Gospel is a circle. And here, at the end, it's time to circle back and start over, to try this whole thing one more time. Jesus died ... and yet, he didn't. He'll be meeting them back at the beginning, joining up with them again to try it one more time.

This time, they are wiser; they know the end. The first time around, they thought their journey with Jesus might transport them to realms of glory, but now they know he is sending them back to their ordinary lives of being fishermen, tax collectors, rebels, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. Not thrones and temples, but kitchens and the marketplaces.

MARK'S UNDERSTATED RESURRECTION
I have been reading about Holy Week observances around the world and I have discovered that in many places, the emphasis is not on Easter but on Good Friday.

A colleague who was a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa in the violent days of apartheid reports that the stadium in Johannesburg was filled for the Good Friday observance but among the ordinary folk, nothing much happened at Easter.
People who lived in the midst of war, poverty, hardship and pain can understand Good Friday.  They can understand betrayal, desertion, beating and the grief of death itself.  The fact that God in Christ has experienced these things too gives them much comfort. (From an anonymous source quoted in a posting from "Preaching the Common Lectionary," an on-line clergy group.)

I know that is the experience of many of you as well. You are carrying burdens. Illness or a chronic condition, problems at home, tenuous jobs or none at all. When we hit those time, Easter celebrations can seem more like an insult than a help. One of my friends who is an Episcopal priest wrote about this disconnect. "When my first marriage was coming to an end and for quite a while afterwards, I often felt like telling people what they could do with their hallelujahs when Easter Sunday came around.

Whatever the calendar said, it didn't feel like Easter to me. ... I was eternally grateful, at that time, for these women at the tomb, women who somehow told me that to be "Easter people" we don't necessarily have to have smiles plastered all over our faces and hearts full of sunshine. Choosing hope is not always easy, choosing life is not always easy." (Anne LeBas via internet correspondence.)


IT TAKES TIME AND WE FINISH THE STORY
Mark acknowledges the fear. He gives resurrection time to work. And he gives us an unfinished account. The resurrection stories will come. The women will gather their courage and tell. Others also who met the risen Christ will testify to his presence with them. Some of them are in this book. But thousands more resurrections stories have been told by people since.

They came too late to be included in the Bible but they are every bit as persuasive. There are the records of prisoners like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who found hope and serenity even on the day of his execution. There are social activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day who were inspired by Jesus' teachings and sustained by his presence. And there are people whose names are not household words but we all know them, who live in despair, loss, illness, and pain with grace and good humor.

Mark's narrative invites us to be part of the Easter event. He doesn't supply the stories, we do. The resurrection encounters that matter are the ones we experience in our own Galilees. He is going ahead of you; there you will see him, just as he told you.