Charged with Resurrection

Mark 16:1-8

We shouldn’t be here this morning, you and I, dressed in our best, in a bright church full of lilies and trumpets and alleluias and joyful anticipation. Shouldn’t be like this, because if we took Mark’s story literally, Easter would be a scene of uncertainty and stunned silence, less a celebration than a step off the cliff into the unknown.

In the tentative light of early morning Mary and Mary and Salome go grieving to the place where they saw Jesus’ broken body buried, and find themselves confronted by an avalanche of miracle that tears down everything they knew:

The heavy rock the three of them could not have moved is gone.

There’s a young man sitting there – living among the dead – a stranger, who seems to know an awful lot about their business.

And Jesus is gone. His body is absent, and he himself – if the strange young man is to be believed – has gone back to Galilee. Gone back to meet his friends, RISEN, LIVING, after he died and was buried.

Amazing! Wonderful! Terrifying!

I’d hate it if this happened to me, at the grave of someone I loved and grieved; if the fragile balance of my acceptance of death were smashed, and I was left staring at my beloved friend’s grave open and empty. Even the message that I’d see them again would be at least as disturbing as it might be welcome, because you’re not supposed to see dead people, and now it all starts again, and I don’t know what to think, or hope, or do.

It’s no wonder Mary and Mary and Salome are stunned to speechlessness. 

They fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

And that’s where Mark stops writing, in the silence of astonishment and dismay.

Yes, when you open your Bible, there’s an epilogue after this. Mark’s editors didn’t think much of the terror and amazement ending, and wanted to fix it for him so the readers didn’t worry. But Mark stops here.He stops where the beauty and the challenge of resurrection confront us, all at once.

Resurrection absolutely shatters the certainties of death. Not just that old chestnut about the certainty of death and taxes, but all the ways our mortality limits us and comforts us.

Mortality means we can’t do it all, that we have limits, and we can stop. The certainty of death means that our lives have some kind of closure, even if it’s not the closure we want or would have chosen; and there is in some way, at some time, an end to effort, or to waiting, or to pain, or the hard work of sustaining hope.

Resurrection means the story doesn’t actually end.

That’s good news. Really good news. But it’s shocking when you confront it truly.

Resurrection – the breaking of the power of death – makes not just Jesus, but all of us both more powerful and less certain than we were. Because now if the impossible is possible, then everything impossible is possible, and we can’t live within limits any more. We have to live more life, and more, and more, and more.

For the last month, the news and the internet have been full of the faces and voices of young people who, in shock and tragedy, have discovered that they are suddenly more powerful than they ever dreamed, even while the certainties and limits that are supposed to belong to their lives have been ripped away.

Students from Parkland, and survivors of gun violence of every kind, at far too young an age, even in the middle of grief and uncertainty, have discovered their power to live beyond the limits that belong to adolescence, and they are leading their friends and their families and their nation to more life, to seeing and upholding the holiness of life abundant, here and now, and challenging the certainties of death.

And they are not the only ones to have gone to the tomb, confronted the certainty of death, and found themselves charged with resurrection: with the unexpected power to do the impossible, to go beyond the certainty of death and carry the gospel of more life for all.

In the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, in June of 2015, a group of mothers pulled out their lawn chairs and began sitting day after day on the corner of 75^th Street and Stewart Avenue, the exact site of a recent gun murder.

In a neighborhood where every weekend was rife with the probability of shooting and death, where the world had largely accepted and ignored the death of black men and women and children for years, they sat on that dangerous corner, in bright pink t-shirts, doing the impossible. Without any weapon at all, protecting their neighborhood from violence.

In a city and a neighborhood that had become famous for the level of gun violence and death, that had become a tomb, these women, and others like them, who had buried too many loved ones, faced resurrection. They found themselves on the far side of the limits of death, more powerful than they had ever expected to be, a shield against violence and pain and evil for neighbors and strangers alike.

They aren’t alone. 

In other neighborhoods, in other cities and towns, people - maybe you - have gone to the place where you buried identity or hope or love, and found that grave open empty, and yourself confronted with the responsibility of resurrection. People have accepted God’s unexpected power to do the impossible; going beyond the certainty of death and carrying the gospel of more life for all.

At that empty tomb in Jerusalem, so many years ago and miles away, Jesus’ messenger calls not just those three women, but every friend of Jesus, all of us, to receive and accept God’s power to do the impossible.

And that can be terrifying.

Because knowing what’s impossible keeps us safe as much as it as limits us. And when we accept that resurrection means we can’t live within those limits any more, we do do the impossible. Not all by ourselves, but as God’s hands and feet and heart.

Those terrified, silent, wondering women did not transform the world by themselves. God did it with them, with their terror and their silence and their running, as much as with whatever words they eventually said, and whatever they eventually did.

So you and I are here this morning, dressed in our best, in a bright church full of lilies and trumpets and alleluias and joyful anticipation, because of all the people since those women who have accepted the shocking challenge of resurrection, and have done the impossible, not by themselves, but in the power of God.

Mark was right to leave us in suspense, in the cliffhanger shock of resurrection, not quite sure how the impossible will be accomplished.

But Mark’s editors were right, too, to add in that epilogue, to assure us that the impossible did in fact happen: that the disciples knew the risen Jesus face to face, and that in the power of resurrection they could lay their hands on deadly things – serpents, murderous intersections, political third rails – and heal the poisons and bring forth life.

And so it is right to be here this morning, with fanfare and finery and flowers and Easter chocolate, because with those things we assure the world that uncertainty and upset and even silent awe can indeed bring joy and grace. 

And we assure ourselves that we stand on the far side of death already, here and now, free to do the impossible, not by ourselves, but by God, until life and joy and healing pour forth from every grave in this world as we proclaim:
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!