Sermon: “Go Where?”

Do you like to skip to the last page of a story to find out how it ends?  My daughter likes to do that – drives me crazy.  I prefer to be surprised.  Well, if you like surprises too, you might have enjoyed this ending of the 16th and final chapter of the Gospel According to Mark.  It’s surprising.  His version of the Easter story doesn’t end with earthquakes and angels, zombies and special effects, as Matthew’s does.  His Easter doesn’t come with BBQ fish and a miraculous ascension to Heaven, as in Luke.  His Easter doesn’t even show us the Risen Christ, as in John’s Gospel, when Mary Magdalene at first mistakes Jesus for a gardener.  Mark ends with nothing but an empty tomb and these three women disciples running away in fear.  It’s not a very happy ending.  It was so unsatisfying, that most Bible scholars think verses 9 through 20 were just tacked onto Mark much later, by an editor trying to tidy up some loose ends.

Now the first verse of the first chapter of Mark, in case you’ve forgotten, announces “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  That’s a great “lead,” as they say in the news business.  It’s a banner headline.  If you were sitting in an early Greek church, like the one in Corinth that heard Paul’s letter first read aloud, you’d probably be thrilled to get to hear a story start out like that.  Even you kids –because back in the old days, before cartoons and movies with special effects, people loved hearing a good story.  And this one starts off like it’s going to make the tales of mighty Hercules sound pretty tame by comparison.  The Son of God comes to earth.  You just know it’s got to end great – he’s going to rule the world, right?  He might even destroy that evil King Herod with a magic lightning bolt, or at least chop off his head – as Herod did to John the Baptist.  And then Jesus would take over for Caesar in Rome and reign as King of the World forever and ever.  But no!  The last verse says the women “fled from the tomb” and “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” 

It’s a terrible ending.  Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross.  And the women who loved him and followed him up to Golgotha – that awful hill piled high with human bones and skulls – the women who had watched him die knew what they had to do next.  They’d seen other political prisoners tortured and killed there already – maybe even other friends, or members of their own families.  The Romans were even killing boys as young as 12 or 13 there.  So after the Sabbath ended, the women could get to work doing the job that we would hire a funeral home to do for us. Mark says “very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.”  Even though we know they loved Jesus, we have to remember that this was an act of holy obligation – this bathing and anointing of his body – you can bet they weren’t looking forward to what lay ahead. 

They didn’t want to get up before dawn and go to the tomb that first Easter – maybe not any more than you wanted to get out of bed and come to church today.  They were actually complaining out loud.  Mark says, “They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’”  So, sure, they were doing all this for him gladly, as he had done so much for them – but you know they probably would have preferred to do just about anything else that morning but roll the boulder aside and re-open the tomb of their executed friend. 

Nobody wants to go there.  No one wants to walk the way of the cross, even when we know it is the way to Easter.  When we are faced with a terrible loss, it’s just human nature to try to find ways to deny it, or avoid it.  When Jesus calls his disciples to “take up their cross and follow” him, you have to understand their reluctance, right?  And yet, most of us have times in our lives when we’re forced onto that road, the one that winds so painfully through “the valley of the shadow of death.”  When we see a dark way of tears stretching out before us, we are tempted to freeze up in fear – “Go where?” we ask God.  “Go where?  Oh no.  Not there.  Not now.” 

Many of us felt that way, I know, two weeks ago when we heard of the very unexpected passing of our good friend and Church Moderator, Tom Eaker.  I know many of you said you didn’t quite know what to do, or where to go.  And yet, a kind of “homing beacon” led many of us back here to this meetinghouse, to church.  When we stood still in our grief and shock and asked God that question, “Go where?” the answer seemed obvious: “Go to church.”  “Go to church.  Go sit with Christ’s Living Body, the church.”  As people of faith, we are called to be together, to share “the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.” And that is not a tie that is easily broken, even when individual hearts are breaking.  And sometimes – and this is the miracle of Easter – sometimes we are surprised at the joy that can be found there, when the dawn of resurrection begins to bring us safely through to the other side of our grief.  God’s love has a way of flooding into the empty spaces that are carved into our lives by sorrow. 

When those three women get to the tomb of Jesus, deep in their worry, the stone had already been rolled away.  A strange young man in white was sitting there, and he startles them by speaking out of the dark.  “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. …But …he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’”  “Go where?” those women had to be asking themselves.  Go to Galilee to find Jesus?  Go where now?  Go home?  You have to wonder if something like a “homing beacon” dawned on them as they ran away in fear – if their shared experiences with Jesus in happier times somehow did draw them back to Galilee, where they had first grown to know and love him.  And there, perhaps, they finally found the words to tell the story to a trusted friend like Peter.  Peter, after all, was the Rock.  He would reassure them.  Peter would never run away in fear as they had done, would he?  I wonder…did he confess to them that he had denied Jesus three times on that dark night before the crucifixion?

We all run away in fear at one time or another in our lives.  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  But Easter turns all our worldly expectations inside-out.  Where we dread and expect death and punishment, we find instead grace and New Life.  Like the women approaching the tomb, we may come to church in religious duty, but we may be sent forth surprised by the very real sense of hope that Christ offers us.  Like St. Paul, we are not any of us perfect saints.  Paul, you remember, at one time not only had failed to embrace Christianity but had actively worked to get Christians killed – so we can share his amazement that God could still use his gifts as an apostle.  When we stand to sing together – to proclaim the Good News of Easter once again – we may feel a little shaky, a little unworthy, or a little afraid – but we stand in a long line of Christians who have been telling and retelling this story for generations – still in trembling and awe of the great mystery of Resurrection.  Like them, in spite of our faults, we see and proclaim Jesus alive again in our shared life together as the church, his Risen Body. 

“Go where then?” we may still ask.  “Go to church.”  And after church, go where?  Go out into the world and see him, Mark would say, and share the Good News of God’s grace.  Where do you go to find the Risen Christ alive and at work with the power of redeeming love?  Where do you go to find Him?  To jobs or schools?  To the roads or trails or lakes of our beautiful state?  To the family tables where we gather to share meals and laughter and pass down to new generations the stories of our faith?  To urban slums and prisons and hospitals where people cry out for the healing love of God? 

We go as we are called.  Ordinary Christians like us have been called to carry the light of the Living Christ within us – to love our enemies, to reach out and befriend the friendless, to encourage the discouraged.  Whether it’s in a pub with friends after work or in a church fellowship group, we ordinary Christians listen to confessions and strengthen the fainthearted.  Whether it’s in a grocery store parking lot, or in a church committee meeting, we ordinary Christians offer comfort and counsel.  Even our children learn in church how to welcome the stranger and befriend the outcast.  That new kid nobody wants to play with will see Christ in our children when they offer a kind smile and reach out a hand in friendship.  It’s no small thing, the work and ministries of an ordinary church like ours.  Like those first disciples, we are on a mission too – we are called to go out there to our own Galilean countryside and transform the world, as we have been transformed, by the power of Divine Love stronger even than the grave. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

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1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, ²through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. ³For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Mark 16:1-8

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. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But 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. ⁷But 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.” ⁸So 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.