1 April 2018

"Christ is Risen" (Sermon for Easter)


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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