“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.” (Mark
16:7)
Once upon a time Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia had a well-beloved and
much venerated pastor named Johannes Skarsten. I’ve heard it said of him that
he was in the habit on each Easter Sunday of announcing the worship schedule
for the following Christmas Eve. This he did as a courtesy to those members of
the congregation who only showed up on Easter and Christmas and were MIA the
rest of the year.
Like the late Pastor Skarsten, I have a sneaking hunch I’ll be seeing
some folks in the pews on Easter morning whom I shall probably not see until it’s time to croon “O
Come, All Ye Faithful.” For such individuals, I’d like to say the following:
First, I don’t consider you to be slackers, lukewarm Christians,
backsliders, unbelievers, or any such unflattering epithets. I’m not accusing
you of figuring you can suffer through a sixty minute worship service once or
twice a year to please an elderly parent or grandparent. I’m acknowledging that
this world is messy and full of demands and an elective activity such as church is easily squeezed out by the
stuff that isn’t so elective.
Secondly, even though it would tremendously massage my ego—to say
nothing of what it would do for the church finances—if you were here every
Sunday, I further acknowledge that you might still be very holy and pious
people in your own way. You still pray, you still ponder the meaning of your
life, and you still wrestle with ethics and the nature of God. You just don’t
require a building like this or a ritual like this in which to do those things.
Thirdly, if you do find you have doubts and serious questions about all
that jazz you were taught in Sunday School—welcome to the club. There may be
people who sit in these pews week after week who might have exactly the same
questions and doubts you have. This doesn’t make you a bad person or any less
of a brother or a sister in my eyes,
and certainly not in God’s eyes (however you conceive of God).
But perhaps you’ve come here on this festival day to hear a story. I
think it’s a pretty good one. Every Easter in our formal liturgy we get the
option of reading either John’s account of the resurrection narrative or the account
from the synoptic gospel we’re focusing on this particular year. I love John’s
very sentimental story of Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb before
encountering the risen Jesus, but this year, other than John’s melodrama, I
think I want to hear Mark’s unsolved mystery.
Does it sound odd to you that Mark’s account of the Easter story (Mark
16:1-8) ends the way it does? I mean, if the women were seized with terror and
amazement and told no one what they’d seen because they were afraid, just how did the story get out?
Perhaps we should back it up a little. Mark’s story begins with Jesus
coming as a disciple of John the Baptist, being obediently washed by the senior
prophet on the scene. Then he felt the spirit of God upon him, but, instead of
glorying in that feeling, he was pushed out into a wild and deserted place to
know hunger, fear, and temptation. He began is his ministry when John was
arrested—not running from the danger of the authorities, but returning to the
place where he was needed. He taught, he healed, he made friends and
detractors, he taught that God was not far off but near. And he humbly ordered
his followers not to speak of him as the Anointed One of God, because the
people just wouldn’t understand.
He told the truth in love, welcomed those who had been left out of
society, and confronted the powers that oppressed the poor. Jealous leaders
denounced him, a friend betrayed him, another denied him, and almost everyone
except a few faithful women deserted him. A tyrannical regime put him to death.
Then, when the Sabbath was over, three faithful women came to do the
thing women did in those days. They came to anoint his body, but they were told
by a mysterious young man in white that God had raised him from the dead. They
were given the instruction to tell this story to the faithless men who had fled
from arrest when Jesus was captured—even singling out the one who, in shameful
cowardice, had denied he even knew Jesus.
What strikes me even more than the overture to the ones who have
deserted Jesus is the instruction to tell them “he is going ahead of you to
Galilee; there you will see him.” They are reminded—as are we—that Jesus has
gone ahead through everything. He’s gone ahead through joy, through temptation,
through hunger and frustration. He’s gone ahead through love of friends and disappointment
and betrayal. He has gone through adoring praise and lonely abandonment. He’s
gone through pain, immobility, despair, and death. And there is no place we
will ever go where he hasn’t gone. And yet he rose.
He’s also calling his friends to go back home. Back to the place where
they were just plain fishermen, back to the place where they first recognized
there was something special in the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. They are
called back to their first ideals, back to the mission they believed in before
the fame and the politics and the persecution and disaster happened. They are
called back—as we are on Easter—to the things they most valued and believed in,
and they are called to start over again.
The Easter story is a story of renewal. It’s the story of death giving
way to new life and new hope. For me, it’s a reminder that the shrinking of our
American Christianity is really just a precursor to a new life for our faith.
We’re going back to the margins of society, back to where the outcasts and the
poor, and the needy are waiting. Back to where Jesus wanted us to be. Back to
where we shall behold him in all the unexpected people and moments God will put
in our path. Back to where we shall experience his joy.
Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment