A Sermon Based Upon Mark 16: 1-8, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Easter Sunday, March 27th , 2016
An American novel from the early 1930’s tells of a man who life ends tragically. But the tragedy is not unexpected, because the man destroys his own life prematurely by doing some really stupid things.
In order to point to the inevitability of self-destruction, the author retells ancient story from the Babylonian Talmud about a merchant in Baghdad who sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells his master that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death. Death made a threatening gesture at him.
Borrowing the merchant's horse, the servant flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles, where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why ‘She’ made the threatening gesture toward his servant. Death replies, "It was not a threatening gesture, I was only a startled in surprise. I was astonished to see the servant in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_in_Samarra#cite_note-1
Maybe death can be startled, but it can't be fooled. None of us will fool nor escape the visit from death. The Easter story in all for gospels begins ‘while it is still dark’ (Jn. 20:1), with the women walking toward the tomb. Isn’t this the ‘walk’ we all have to make--not just walking toward the death and burial of our loved ones, but also walking toward our own coming death that will end everything we’ve ever known? How can we human beings, who are capable of reasoning, contemplation, or making plans for the future, have any real hope when we know that ‘death’ is the same direction of ‘darkness’ in which we are all walking?
“THEY WENT TO THE TOMB” ( 16:2)
Mark’s gospel tells us that when the three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, finally arrived at the tomb to ‘anoint the body’ of Jesus, ‘the sun had risen’ (16.2). I find it interesting that the conversation they were having along the way was not about how ‘dark’ it was or how depressed they were. For these women, who had been active in the ministry of Jesus, the problem death first presented to them was not philosophical, but practical. They were wondering ‘who would roll away the stone at the door of the tomb’ (16:3) so they could 'anoint' the body with spices and perfumes. Only in the gospel of Mark, the shortest, most brief telling of the gospel story, which most always gives us less details, does the gospel to take the trouble to elaborate on what was going on in the minds and hearts of these women as they approached the ‘stench’ of the tomb. Perhaps Mark was also reflecting upon what goes on in most minds as we also move closer to our own inevitable encounter with our mortality. And while not many of us may make an effort to wonder about the philosophical ‘why’ it is coming, like these women, most of us do wonder about ‘how’ will we ‘deal’ with and try to get through it.
By having these women ask ‘Who would roll away the stone’, Mark is keeping it practical. These women were wondering how they could gain access the decaying body of their beloved teacher so they could him a proper burial in the midst of such humiliating circumstances. We also need to ask the most ‘practical’ questions. We must ask and answer those questions like, “which kind of casket do you want?” “Do you want metal or wood?” “Do you want to be buried or do you want to be cremated? “Who do you want to be the Pallbearers?” “What Scriptures to do want to be read?” “Do you want the music to be up tempo and celebrative, or slow and reflective?” We certainly understand all this, but when the grieving family goes to the funeral home it still almost sounds ‘sacrilegious’ when the funeral director comes to ask, “Are you ready to go pick out the casket?” Of course, you’re not ready. How can you get ‘ready’ when you are still wondering how you can get through the loss, hurt, and the loneliness?
When I returned to the United States, after serving as a missionary in eastern Germany, as an ‘only’ child I had to return to care for the most practical reason of caring for my own ‘dying’ parents. In that first year of re-entry, I had took a job at a large cemetery in Greensboro, where I spent most of my time ‘cold calling’ on people in Guilford County, Greensboro, and High Point, trying to get them to think about ‘pre need’ burial plans. Having been a pastor and missionary gave me needed skills for trying to ‘sell’ such a hard ‘product’ that few wanted to talk about. But I still met much resistance. In a High Point neighborhood, going to the door of a very nice gentlemen, who, when I introduced myself and why I was at his door, politely told me, that he “didn’t want to talk about no cemetery plot.” When I told him that we all need to think about things we don’t want to think about, he explained to me again, “I still don’t want to talk about no cemetery.” Finally, when I asked him to just tell me why he didn’t want at least ‘talk’ about it, because it would save him money, if he would at least start to make some plans, his final word to me was, “It doesn’t matter, I just don’t want to think about no cemetery!”
As much as it ‘hurts’ to think about the ‘practical’ things we ‘should’ do to prepare for dying or death, we still should. We should think, not just about the ‘deep’, relational, or philosophical, but we also should think about the ‘practical’. We have to ‘make our wills’ and we ‘have to think about the ‘what if’ of our own death or how we might have to ‘live’ without those we love? In another period of history, families and friends would have had to ‘drop everything’ else when death came. They had to care of their own all on their own, by tenderly washing, dressing and preparing the body, or by having to dig the grave with our own shovels. They might even have to make their own coffins too, or they would have come from their own community---who ‘stopped everything’ to share the questions, the grief and loss together.
But our own ‘practices’ around death, seem to isolate us more and more from the ‘real’, and most practical matters concerning death. As pastoral theologian Tom Long has recently written: “It used to be that burial was a major funeral event. The whole community attended the funeral—including the deceased. Funeral rituals were built around picture of a baptized saint traveling from this life into God’s presence.” At the funeral, Long continues, “funeral goers mourned publicly, raised a fist at death… praising the God who raised Jesus from the grave… and honored the body and life of the saint who died.” “Now more people attend visitation than the funeral. Memorial services even happen without a dead body”, which, to one ‘undertaker’ (Thomas Lynch), “seems like…having a baptism without (a baptism candidate), or having a wedding without the bride.” Long concludes, “Services are often brief, simple, highly personalized and improvised. They focus on the life and lifestyle of the deceased, emphasizing the joy, celebration, and goodness of the person instead of the grief and somberness of death,” forgetting, I might add, about the ‘victory’ over death only God can give. (http://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/christian-funerals-going-to-be-with-god/).
Whereas, funerals and burials will continue to reflect changes in our culture, for good or bad, the most practical reality does not change. It is a reality also evident as the women almost seemed to be asking “who would roll away “this ‘stone-cold reality’ of death?
“HE HAS BEEN RAISED” (16: 6).
What interrupted this ‘hard’ reality that first Easter morning was more than just another beautiful sunrise, but it was the angelic assertion of the promise of a ‘risen’ son. We are told by each of the four evangelists that as these women arrived, they discovered with amazement that ‘the stone was rolled back’ (Mk. 16:4, Matt. 28.2), or even more expressively, ‘rolled’ (Luk 24.2) or ‘taken away’ (Jn. 20.1).
While each gospel tell us this stone either ‘moved’ or ‘missing,’ it is only Mark who gives such an emphatic description of a stone was still ominously present which they ‘looked up’ to see ‘was very large’ (Mk 16.4). In order to look into this ‘tomb’ had to pass this enormous obstruction to get to what they ‘might’ or ‘might not’ see inside. According to Mark, there was no ‘greeter’ outside sitting ‘on’ that stone (Mt. 28.2), but the angelic messenger appeared inside as a ‘young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe’ (Mk. 16.5). After bypassing the stone, and entering the tomb in bewildering amazement, this ‘young’ stranger becomes a messenger of an even stranger irony: While these women have come ‘seeking this Jesus who was crucified,’they hear an improbable message with an even more unexpected invitation, declaring: “He is not here, for he is risen, see the place where they laid him” (Mk 16.6).
It is still ‘troubling’ to some modern readers, that the earliest ‘broadcast’ and first ‘breaking news’ from the empty tomb came to us with such vivid variations; wavy lines, apparent distortions, or even with some blarring static sounds. But shouldn’t we ‘observe’ such broadcasting challenges when the raw, the real, the unrehearsed breaks ‘new’ into time? Most of you have experienced the ‘unpolished’ almost amateur-like camera angles of ‘reality TV’, that seems closer to ‘reality’ than traditional Hollywood. I’m even enough to remember those small, black and white, rabbit eared, ghost-imaging televisions, only promising what amazing quality images that have come. In comparison, shouldn’t this first fresh message of ‘resurrection’ have rough edges exactly because it was so ‘new’ is must seem also so ‘surreal’ to us? What should you see when you look straight into a story that is promising “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” of which “God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9-10 NRS)?
Easter is the specific day on our own calendars that we are still asked to celebrate this very ‘spiritual’, dynamic, but also historical moment, when God vindicated Jesus by raising him up and releasing the power of his ‘life’ into the world. It was this very affirmation by early Christians that “He is risen” being proclaimed every Easter, which according to Athanasius of Alexandria, ‘freed Romans from their own feverish fear of death’ affirming that even ‘death’ must bow this ‘Living Lord.’ (As quoted in Kate Sonderreger, “The Doctrine of God, Fortress Press, 2015, Kindle Edition, Location 2941). Since this ‘affirmation’ Easter was written into their ‘Roman calendars’ which were foundational to our calendars, we are still invited at least once annually to hear and to affirm this angelic message, that indeed, “He is risen!
This day we call “Easter” should still be most important to us, because as God raised Jesus from the dead, God has promised one day to raise us from the dead, by that same power that can be released to us through faith in Jesus Christ. Even though most people have more sentiment about Christmas, when you finally realize that babies are not just born, but that all babies are born to die, Easter becomes the most promising celebration. While Christmas reminds of us with past ‘dreams that come true’, it is only Easter that holds the promise of the ‘dream’ that true and still to come.
“TERROR AND AMAZEMENT HAD SEIZED THEM” (16:8).
But how to you celebrate what hasn’t yet happened for us or to us; is perhaps a hope that is obvious, but is also an oblivious ‘reality’? For like no other gospel, Mark tells us that after hearing the announcement of this angel and being charged to ‘go tell his disciples …. that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him…. (Mk 16.7), we read the most frank, raw, and realistic response of all. Mark tells us that these women, rather than doing immediately what they were commanded, “….fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid (Mk. 16:8 NRS).
Afraid of what? What were these women ‘afraid of’ when they had just heard that Jesus had been raised and they could ‘see him’? Well, as the late Karl Barth once asked, how else would you react or ‘recollect the pure presence of God?’... The content of Easter is not that the disciples found the tomb empty, but when they had lost Him through death they were then sought and found by Him as the resurrected…living Christ (As quoted by Wiliam Placher in “Mark”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, WJK, 2010, p. 244, 245).
Their 'strange' reaction to the resurrection is same kind of ‘shock’ which Abraham and Sarah had when they were told by their own ‘strange’ visitors that “Sarah” was a 90 year-old woman about to have a baby. It is also the reminiscent of that moment after Joseph’s brothers had sold their brother into slavery, only to find out later, that their own brother Joseph is, next to the Pharaoh, the most powerful man in Egypt. What might they be afraid of? It is also the same kind of language used when “Moses, Elijiah” appeared with a ‘transformed’ Jesus on the mountain we call, Transfiguration, and when suddenly, Jesus was the only one left, with a heaven from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, Listen to him! Is it also not also the same ‘terror’ which called Moses to ‘take off his shoes’ on holy ground, and not ‘approach’ the God of Sinai without an invitation? This might all sound strange, to say or think that a loving God who can save is also not always safe. It's kind of like the experience a comedian once joked about while flying in an airplane: "Do you realize that you are sitting in a seat up in the air, suspended in clouds in the sky?” It's a miracle, but are you safe?
Most Bible scholars will tell you that the ‘terror and amazement’ that ‘seized’ these women, left the ‘hope’ of resurrection exactly as it must still passed on to us. Although these women did hear the angel say “He is Risen!”, as Paul later wrote, the ‘terror’ is that ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 15:50). Even though Christ is raised, they, and we, remain ‘suspended’ in ‘terror and amazement’ because hope in this world, in our flesh, remains ‘open’ ended. Because our hope is Christ is still unrealized, it still has unanswered questions which demand our faith and our life, before all that will be can be realized.
Like those women, we still live between an ‘empty tomb’ that can’t be the full answer as we wait for Jesus, who is God’s only final and full answer to life and in death. As John wrote: “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure (1 Jn. 3:2-3 NRS). It is this kind of open-ended hope that not only ‘saves’ us, but should also ‘purify’ us while we remain suspended between what once was, what is, and what is still to come.
The ‘answer’ to hope is guaranteed, but it still remains unfulfilled until we are fully in Christ, so what we must now do is to live into it, and to live toward it, just like steering your sliding car into a skid, so you can straighten it up. Having hope in Christ while ‘leaning’ into death goes against all ‘logic’ in your mind just like ‘steering’ your car in the wrong direction doesn’t make you think you’ll end up in the right direction. But when God’s new ‘logic’ of hope gets into you, it will seize you, just like it seized these women. Then, you will can keep on living and believing, even without all the answers, because in Jesus Christ, you have found a life that matters because in him, you have found the only true hope. Amen.
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