What Are You Afraid Of?
Easter Sunday, 2015
Mark 16:1-8
So, I saw this headline the
other day: Easter Doesn’t Have to Be a Diet Disaster. Well, whew, I thought,
that’s one less thing to worry about. Now, I can scoff, but actually, if
overeating is the main concern, then we’re doing pretty well. After all, what do
we have to be afraid of, if that’s
what we’re worried about?
On the other hand, when I look
at the other headlines it seems that the world still stands in need of good
news on more than the diet front. In fact, I’m pretty sure that our concerns
and our fears are not all that distant from those of the women who went to the
tomb.
Listen for a word from God,
from the Gospel of Mark:
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.
Mark’s account of Easter has
always been my favorite. Originally, the gospel of Mark ends right where this
reading does. “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.”
I get it. I appreciate it
deeply. I am right there with these three women; confused, amazed, and
terrified. In the grip of something I cannot fathom, and thus reduced to silent
wonder. Terror. War. Climate crisis. Where is the good news? Rome. Herod.
Crucifixion. Where is the good news?
But then this: the stone is
rolled away. The tomb is empty. What the what?
This is the point in many
sermons when I would ask you to share a time in your own life when you’ve
experienced whatever it is I’ve just described, but I’m fairly confident that
y’all would remain as silent as the empty tomb in this case. This sort of thing
doesn’t happen just every day.
Or, to be sure, if we broaden
the question a bit and consider times in our own lives when we’ve been reduced
to silence by the shock or wondrousness of an event, we can probably name a
few. Sometimes overwhelmingly bad news brings shock that silences us, and we are
afraid to speak for fear that the moment we give words to the new reality that
so shocks and frightens us we will forever have to live in the world. If I do
not say that I am coming apart at the seams then perhaps I will not have to
live in a world torn asunder by some unspeakable tragedy.
Awe and wonder at the beauty and
grandeur of creation can also leave us speechless. Happier, for sure, than
tragedy, but often no more able to give words to our experience.
Spring has come to these parts,
and in the past few days I’ve marveled at the daffodils blooming in our yard.
There are so many more of them sprouting now than the number of bulbs I planted
a few years back. I know that there is a precise botanical explanation for
this, though I don’t pretend to know what that is. I also know the truth that
William Blake articulated, perhaps upon observing his own garden:
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.
There is rational, scientific
truth, and it matters, of course. But there is also metaphorical truth. It is
no less true for being metaphor, and it is no less important. Indeed, I want to
suggest on this Easter morning, such figurative language is more important
because it allows us to grasp truths that escape the literal.
Incredible beauty – in the petal
of a flower, in the light of a distant star, in the smile of a newborn child –
incredible beauty is rendered flat and banal when reduced by literal
descriptions, but can be raised to rich meaningfulness in metaphor.
When the world shifts, we try to
find words to stand on – or, better, to stand under so we may understand. When
the shock is great, it takes a while to find words. When the ground of reality
shifts suddenly under our feet we reach for words that let us stand again.
When the shock is the violent
death of the one you believe will save your people, when the shock is an empty
tomb … well, that doesn’t happen just every day and it demands a vocabulary
that transcends the every day, as well.
If we understand the Easter
story with our 21st-century minds as being about the literal, bodily
coming back from the dead of a human being who was hung on a cross to die,
then, no. This doesn’t happen every day.
In the same way, if we read the
whole of gospels as if we’re reading the front page of the New York Times then we’re going to be confused at best by what we
find in scripture.
The words matter, and the words
we choose to describe what we experience arise within a cultural context.
Moreover, the words also frame that cultural context. All of which is to say,
the past is a foreign country where people speak a foreign tongue. When we dip
all the way back in time to 1st –century Palestine the past is more
like another planet.
As James Carroll puts it in his
most recent book, Christ Actually,
“It is impossible for us, bound by a very different cosmology, to know what
kinds of events lay behind reports of such activity, and it misleads us to
obsess about ‘miracles’ as essential to the meaning of Jesus.”[1]
We can, though – and maybe we
even should – obsess about the words.
Take, for example, the words the
women heard at the mouth of the tomb:
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.
Remember, this is Mark’s gospel.
It begins almost as abruptly as it ends. There’s no birth narrative in Mark. We
find, instead, the proclamation of John the Baptist, and then, in the 9th
verse of the opening chapter, the simple declaration: “In those days Jesus came
from Nazareth of Galilee …”
At the tomb, the followers of
Jesus are instructed to go back to the beginning, back to Galilee. In other
words, back into the world, for whatever the resurrection experience is going
to mean, its meaning will be written through the lives of the disciples.
That is to say, for us,
followers of Jesus in the 21st century, the meaning of the
resurrection will be determined by the manner of life we live in response to
it. Our lives will be our testimony to the reality of resurrection, the reality
of rising up in the face of even death itself.
For what is ultimately revealed
in the story of Easter is the love of God, which stands triumphantly over
everything that stands against love. As Maya Angelou wrote, “love recognizes no
barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its
destination full of hope.”
I would add to her litany that
love finds new life even where hope itself seemed to have died on a cross.
So fear not. Don’t be afraid. Go
forth and be just like the women at the tomb. Yes, Mark’s story ends with their
fear and silence. But we know that was not the end of their story. If it were,
after all, there would be no gospel – no good news. It’s not news if never gets
spoken.
They found their voices, and
their love of Jesus – and Jesus’ love for them – both of those combine to give
voice in the world to the love of God. Their lives stood as their testimony to
the continued reality of the risen Christ inspiring them, filling them with the
Holy Spirit, such that all those around them said of them, simply, “see how
they love one another.”
They were terrified into
silence, until they remembered the one who said so often, “be not afraid.” Then
they found their voices.
Because they did, we can sing,
with the apostle Paul, the great proclamation of our faith. In the book of
Romans, Paul spends a great many pages trying to explain the meaning of the
resurrection, but it is as if he finally gives up expository writing and turns
to poetry, concluding with what I take as the ultimate meaning of Easter and
the words I stand on when the ground shifts under my feet:
“For I am convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed.
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
9:06 AM
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