Easter Text: Mark 16: 1-8
I wonder what it’s like to hear that story for the first time.
For myself, I don’t remember the first time I heard it.
I don’t remember being stunned by it.
I don’t remember it taking my breath away.
I don’t even remember it awakening my curiosity.
So maybe I just don’t remember … or perhaps more truthfully, at this time in my life I’m picking up on the desire of my heart to feel the shattering impact of the news it bears.
Jesus who was crucified is alive. It startles me that I can say such a thing without feeling my body quiver with awe. I’m worlds away from those women who were so completely flummoxed by their journey to the tomb that early morning. I find myself wondering how could something so wild become tamed somehow … almost ordinaire?
In part I imagine some of it has to do with familiarity.
Before we ever get here today, many of us, we know how the story plays out … we know it ahead of time. But so did those women that first Easter morning … they knew so well ahead of time what happened. They knew he was dead. They knew where to find his body, and they knew what they needed to do with it. They knew what they needed to do for the sake of their own broken hearts. And yet what they discover is that for all their certainty, they didn’t really know at all. So what if our knowing -- knowing how this story goes-- is as incomplete as theirs was?
I want to suggest that we come back to the story that we have this morning from Mark's Gospel, because I wonder if there aren’t some clues for us there.
It would seem that the night before, when these women are busy gathering up the burial spices and ointments, something else is going on. In the darkness before the dawn, unbeknown to them, out of their sight -- out of everyone’s sight --something powerful was happening. It’s only as they were making their way to the tomb in the early morning that it occurs to them “the stone! … how will we ever move that great stone that seals the tomb?” Before they ever get there, they can see it … this great obstacle in their way … bigger than anything they could hope to move, even the three of them working together. It will be impossible to reach him. They know it.
Except that when they got there, the stone had already been moved.
It wasn’t their’s to do. This immovable weight in their way -- it was rolled back. The way was open.
Not only that, when they went into the tomb, they were met by a messenger … “don’t be alarmed,” he said. Jesus who was crucified is not here but has been raised! He has gone ahead of you to Galilee … there you will see him.”
Not only was the stone rolled away … but their beloved friend who was dead is alive! Something far more than stone-heaving power was at work … before they ever got there! … quite apart from anything they were able to do or even thought to imagine.
This mystery we call resurrection … this raising up of life out of death … this unimagined new beginning out of sure and certain ending --it was happening in the darkness before the dawn. It was underway ahead of them … hidden from view …without their knowing.
They were so certain they knew …they knew it was over … they knew where to find him … they knew what they had to do … they knew what to expect … they knew … they knew … of course they knew. It’s not that they were wrong. It’s that something new was afoot ... a power for life loose in the world such that tombs become womb-like; as though in the terrible event of the cross, the world cracked open and a new reality dawned --something so new as to be utterly disorienting.
Of course it made no sense to them … the light of God’s new day was only beginning to dawn.
So here’s what I wonder: for all that we know the story, know it well, know it ahead of time … where do we put our trust?
Do we put our trust in the grave? Do we assume, deciding for ourselves ahead of time, that injustice and violence will prevail; that poverty and hopelessness are here to stay; that reconciliation is a pipe dream; that the grief that haunts us will never lift; that failure will burden us forever.
Do we put our trust in the grave?
Or do we allow that earth shattering power of resurrection to break us open and shimmer within us? It’s the difference between picking up from where we left off the night before, assuming there’s nothing more tomorrow’s dawn will bring than the same old same old … it’s the difference between that and allowing ourselves to be picked up and ushered into the light of God’s new day … the new reality that the power of love has opened up to us.
“He is going ahead of you, to Galilee, where you live.”
That’s what the messenger announced to these women that early morning. “There you will see him.”
Who knows exactly what they saw? What we do know is “before that day, the disciples were fearful, ashamed, broken, hiding and confused. And afterward they were joyous, confident and fearless, and gathered together to proclaim what they had seen. Somehow, the Living One met them and called them out of old lives into new ones. In whatever form he came, that is the Risen Christ.
I have known that presence in my own life … in my own body … not so very long ago, when I was broken, empty, laid low wondering if I would ever know what it is to be alive again. And a loving presence walked me into the darkness, laid me down, made me over and brought me out. Whatever that is, that Change, that Power— that's resurrection.
Where have you seen him?
Whatever transforms you is resurrection. Whatever mystery makes you let go of the old life and makes you more loving, more joyful, more hopeful, trusting and grateful, is God’s power, right there where you live. It is all you need. Whoever forgives you, whoever carries you through, in life and in death, is the risen Christ.” [1]
As hundreds of thousands of people gather across the U.S. and around the world rallying against gun violence … a movement for radical change that has arisen straight out of the shooting deaths of yet more students … is this not resurrection!
As ordinary people continue to gather on Burnaby Mountain regardless of the arrests … is this not God’s power for life rising up!
Wherever we find ourselves reaching across old divides, being befriended by a stranger, accompanying someone in a restorative justice process, being supported by a friend in the grip of depression; when harm done to us finds such healing that gentleness is who we are, in the compassion that rises as we allow ourselves to truly see another … truly see ourselves -- this is God’s unbounded love breaking out for life’s sake!
This is the wonder we affirm today:
there is finally no containing God’s life-giving love. The risen and the rising Christ is already there ahead of us, to meet us in the new reality that has already dawned upon our world.
So may we leave our jugs of burial ointments behind and walk with courage and grace into the light of God’s new day, that we might know the rising in our own lives and be part of the rising in life of the world.
[1] Steve Garnaas Holmes, “On the Third Day He Rose”, Unfolding Light
