Mark
16:1-8
Easter
April
1, 2018
William G. Carter
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 alarmed; 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.
I heard about a church somewhere south of here,
way south of here. It was a big church in a large city. On Easter they had a
tradition of filling the chancel with lilies. Five hundred lilies, in fact.
Sometimes they were arranged to form a large wall, other times in the shape of
a cross. They were beautiful.
Each was offered in memory of a loved one for $8
each, so the insert of the Easter worship bulletin had a list of five hundred
names, each remembered by the giving of a lily. Five hundred lilies, eight
dollars each. They were beautiful.
In the sixteenth year of that tradition, it
came unraveled. After worship was over, a woman who belonged to the church went
forward. She announced, to no one in particular, “I’m going to visit a friend
in the hospital. Can I take one of these lilies? I know I can’t tell which one
I gave. They all look alike.” Before she got an answer, she went up to that
enormous display, five hundred lilies, to get one. Then she turned to those who
remained in the sanctuary and said in a shocked voice, “They’re plastic!”
A gasp went up from around the room. You’ve got
to be kidding! At first, the concern was they were plastic. Then somebody said,
“But we have paid eight dollars a piece for them. If they are plastic, they
might be the same lilies used last year, and we paid eight dollars each last
year. There was an instant buzz. Coffee hour was interrupted. Huddles formed.
Somebody came up with a figure: 500 lilies, $8 each, 16 years; that’s $64,000
for the same lilies.
As I recall, the minister was new, and just as
surprised as anybody. He gathered those who were upset and said, “I know the
money has been put to a good use. It’s underwritten an emergency fund that
helps folks in our community.” There were murmurs around the room, some
approved, others did not.
To dispel the criticism, he tried to defend the
practice another way: “After all, the plastic lilies are appropriate for Easter
because they always bloom. They never die.”[1]
What do you think? I am thinking two things.
First, these flowers up here are completely real. They are fragrant, they are
beautiful, they remember the people we love, and they bring honor to the God
who created them. Second, that story I just
told you is made up. April Fool!
Yet even though it is an invented tale, it can
instruct us. There are more than a few “gotta be kidding me” moments in the
Easter story we heard from the Gospel of Mark.
First, the big stone in front of the tomb is rolled away.
Mark says it was a “mega stone,” very large. I once saw one of those ancient
stones outside a grave in Jerusalem. It was designed to keep robbers out of the
tomb, with the benefit of keeping someone inside. When the women arrive, the
heavy stone is moved away. It’s hard to believe.
Next, there is the young man in white. Is he an angel? We don’t
know; Mark has enough reverence that he doesn’t say. But this young man is sitting
inside the tomb. He is calm, matter-of-fact, and completely in control of the
moment. That doesn’t happen every day.
The three women are interrupted from their task. They had
gone to anoint his body out of love and respect. His death had come so quickly.
The burial was rushed because the Sabbath was at hand. So now they go to the
tomb, and he’s not there. The women see this, women whose voice was silenced by
a men-only culture. It reminds me of a Facebook notice that a friend put up:
“Let’s have a more Biblical Easter. Only women can attend!”
And then, in the greatest “you’ve gotta be kidding me” moment,
these women run away and don’t say anything to anybody. Really? Is that so?
Then why are we here? How did we get the news?
Mark tells the Easter story in such a way that
we are left scratching our heads. Is it true? Could Jesus be alive? He doesn’t
say so conclusively, because that would reduce it to a mere fact, effectively
shut it down, and dismiss it as a curious event of history. Rather, he tells
the Easter story in such a way that it opens the whole thing up
Because what if it really has happened? What if
Jesus is alive and still busy? What if the promise of the man in white is true
– that if we go to Galilee, the place where Jesus did his work, we will see
him? What if this Easter thing is more than something that happened a long time
ago, and rather a way to unlock what God is doing here and now?
I will be the first to admit how I would love
to have some tangible proof of the Resurrection. Wouldn’t be a relief, like
Doubting Thomas, to put your finger in the nail holes and then watch his lungs
rise and fall as he breathes? If that were the case, we could dispute his
death, not his resurrection.
Every few years, some hotshot tries to do that,
tries to out-think the crucifixion and say it didn’t really happen, that Jesus
didn’t die – at least, not right away, that the whole thing was a scam to win
over his feeble-minded disciples. My favorite sceptic was the so-called scholar
who claimed the sponge dipped in vinegar that they handed to Jesus on the cross
was dosed with a sedative. He swooned, they thought he was gone, they took him
down, and then he revived sometime later. That’s an awful lot of speculation
when everybody else agrees Jesus was dead.
The centurion said it. The small crowd nearby
watched it. The authorities declared it. The man who donated the tomb knew it.
Jesus was dead.
That, by the way, is what’s wrong with that
goofy minister who had the five hundred plastic lilies in his church on Easter.
Plastic lilies cannot die because plastic lilies never lived. If something or
somebody never lived, then it cannot die. But here is the question that Easter
raises: if someone dies, can they live again?
It is an unsettling question. Why else would
these three women run from the tomb, traumatized and tongue-tied? That’s an
easy one to answer: because everything they thought was settled is now actually
unsettled. Jesus is not where they expected him to be.
It
would be really easy for me to stand up here today and make a lot of noise,
saying “He is risen from the dead! Be joyful. All is well. Don’t be afraid.
Don’t worry, be happy.” I could keep saying that. I ask the choir to sing
something loud and ask the organist to let it roar. We could all depart, put on
our white shoes, eat a lot of ham, and go about the same old business.
But
what if it is true? What if it’s all really true?
What if the work of Galilee is now our work?
What if we joined Christ in feeding the multitude, in restoring life, in building
relationships? What if we joined him in confronting the addictions and the
illnesses that destroy life? What if we sat with those who are sad and prayed
with them beyond their distress? What if we stood up for those who are
plundered by the powerful, declaring that all God’s children have equal worth? What
if we marched with the kids who don’t want to be afraid when they go to school?
What if we lived as if we are alive with
Jesus? There would be nothing plastic about it, nothing artificial, no hype, no
self-congratulatory nonsense – just authentic expressions of love and
self-giving service. If we could live like this, the confirmation will come,
that Christ is risen and Easter is real. The life of the Risen Christ would infuse
our lives.
That’s when we shall see him. And in that
moment, Jesus will look us in the eye, smile, laugh, and nod in quiet
affirmation.
Then he will look at the powers of death and
say, “And you thought you were in charge? April
Fool!
(c) William G .Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Thanks
to Fred Craddock, who invented the story in “The Waste of Easter.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment