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Easter Day, 04/05/2015
Sermon on Mark 16:1-8, by Paula L. Murray
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. [NRSV]
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Despair is easier than hope. Despair is easier than hope because it deals with the predictable. When despair sets its icy claws in us than there is no question of how the day begins or ends; it always ends as it begins, with the same defeated set of expectations of life and of ourselves. Day after day, as evening follows morning, dread expectations of unhappiness and disappointment are met; despair is in the business of fulfilling its own prophecies. There are no surprises when despair rules our roosts. Every word spoken to us, every botched communication, every misplaced deed confirms what we already know; we are doomed to unhappiness and hopelessness. The future will be the same as the past, and life is reduced to a weary waiting on death. Despair makes us all keepers of our own graveyards. Every hope is buried, and we circle the graves, tending to them, tamping down the dirt, lest hope break out, and the grave be opened.
It was not hope that took the two Marys and their companion Salome to the grave where Jesus’ body had been laid. They knew the way, having followed Joseph of Arimathea and those with him who brought Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it, and then carted it to the cemetery and its resting place. Rather like a pot roast purchased at the local grocery store, wrapped, and then deposited on the shelf in the refrigerator, Jesus’ remains were placed on a slab and left alone in cool and utter darkness when the stone was rolled across the opening to his stone tomb. Jesus was buried hastily as Jerusalem prepared for the Sabbath, and without the customary respect accorded the dead, so the women sought no more than to rectify the dishonor necessarily done him.
And so these women walked to the cemetery in the early hours of the morning of the day after the Sabbath. They had no expectation that they would find the living among the dead. In fact, they were not even certain that they would be able to complete the task they had given themselves. The stone rolled across the opening of the tomb was heavy, and they did not think themselves strong enough to roll it back so they might have access to Jesus’ body. That stone, emblematic of humanity’s powerlessness in the face of death, demonstrates the depth of these faithful women’s hopelessness. So sadly certain were they of what they would find, they gave no thought to how they might get the stone rolled away from the opening to the tomb. Spiritually exhausted, they were powerless in the face of their diminished expectations.
They had no hope, these three women, that they would find anything, at best, other than death and decay. This was an exercise in despair. They were off to tamp down the dirt on the graves of their hopes for redemption through the man they thought the Messiah, the Savior of Israel. What they could do they would do, a matter of appeasing their own grief and sense of violation of their teacher and their relationship with him. But there was no hope to it, no expectation that Jesus’ future, or their own, was different than what they knew of his immediate past.
They most certainly did not expect a grave break. Indeed, even after seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb there is no sense that they thought Jesus had been raised, though he had told his disciples three times that he would die and be raised from the dead on the third day. Seeing the stone rolled away already, they simply entered the tomb to complete their task of preparing a body already two days in the grave for its burial. It was not until they found the young man clothed in white that their expectations were revealed to be without foundation.
Let’s take a detour around the tombstones for a minute. The Evangelist we know as Mark does not spend words on descriptions of the people around Jesus. Mark is very much a waste not want not sort with language. So when he tells us a young man dressed in white clothing waits for the women in the tomb we must sit up straight in the pews and take notice. Another man in this Gospel was recently called young. If you were here Palm Sunday or you’ve read the Palm Sunday texts you will remember the young man who ran away naked at Gethsemane the night that Jesus was betrayed to his enemies. He lost the simple linen cloth with which he was covered when the soldiers grabbed at him to arrest him with his Lord Jesus. More than his body was exposed when he ran; his spiritual cowardice was exposed also, and his escape at a time when Jesus had asked his disciples to wait with him was as real a betrayal as the betrayals of Peter and Judas. Cowardice is not the issue with the unexpected occupant of Jesus’ tomb. This young man’s white raiment reveals his divine origins, and Jesus’ too. He is an angel sent from the heavens with a message for the disciples, and he starts the same way all such divine messengers begin, with the words, “Don’t be afraid.” The rest of the angel’s reassuring words are prophecy, a description of a new reality that is present now and will be forever more. Jesus is raised from the dead, and the resurrection of Jesus has put an end not only to death, but even to the fear of it.
Despite his reassuring words this angel might be a bit on the grumpy side, for, after all, he delivers a message Jesus himself had already given to his disciples on the other side of the cross. At the celebration of the Passover Jesus had said to his disciples, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Mark 14:28). But the disciples are, like the women hearing the angelic message, full of despair, certain of one and only one thing, the dead do not rise up from the grave. The angel rejects despair and preaches hope. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him.” Everlasting hope walks the earth; in the person of Jesus, hope has not been trapped by the rock hewn walls of the grave, but has been freed from sin and death by the Father. Jesus was not, as he feared as he prayed Psalm 22 on the cross, forsaken by his Father in heaven. Jesus’ willingness to drink the cup of suffering for humanity’s sin and to make of his life a sacrifice for the redemption of the many was both received by the Father and vindicated in the resurrection. “But go,” continued the angel, “tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
The disciples were not in Galilee or even on their way to Galilee when Jesus’ messenger spoke to the women in the tomb. When Jesus spoke to them of life they did not hear the words and understand them, for their heads were convinced that death suffocates all words and buries life under the weight of the grave. Despair governed their hearts, even as everything Jesus did and said begged them to let his life fill them with a bright and everlasting hope.
Despair is ever so much easier than hope, for hope never stays in one place; it refuses to stay buried. It is unpredictable and uncontrollable, seeking to transform the living who would, for reason of fear, live as though they be dead on their feet. Even as the angel spoke of the death of death, of the resurrection to life everlasting, the women fearing the implications of the resurrection fled, immolating themselves in fear and despair. Told to tell Peter and the disciples that Jesus was risen, that he walked the earth yet again, even the earth of his childhood home, the Galilee, the women spoke to no one of the miracle promised by the Son and fulfilled by the Father.
Now there are words after verse 8 that suggest that Mary Magdalene, at least, eventually preached the resurrection to Peter and those around him. These words were added years after the Gospel was originally written. These words are not lies, for clearly, according to the other Gospels, some of the women who were the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ proclaimed he was risen. Indeed, Mary Magdalene is known to the whole Church as the Apostle to the Apostles, meaning she saw the risen Christ and witnessed to the others who had followed him that he lived. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! But Mark was a dramatist who wrote his Gospel to bring all who heard it to one place, to the place where they could, in place of the silent women, give witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It takes faith, and the hope faith gives, to let go of the peculiar and life destroying security of despair. The Christian life is one of courage and an otherworldly strength, given by God the Father through the Holy Spirit to those who see life in Christ and not death. The challenge of the days ahead for you and me is not finding the hidden Easter eggs before we mow over the smelly things in July, or staying awake through the Easter ham dinner. It is rather to let that faith transform our daily lives, so the hope that is within us is a beacon for those who live with a secret despair and a nagging hopelessness. The resurrected Lord lives in you, and for you. The joy that is Easter is for you an everyday miracle, not simply the matter of a single day.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!