{"id":242,"date":"2012-04-09T09:43:46","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T14:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=242"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:33","slug":"easter-sunday-homily-no-ending-here-april-8-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/04\/09\/easter-sunday-homily-no-ending-here-april-8-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Sunday Homily: No Ending Here April 8, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Text<\/span>:\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Mark 16:1-8<\/p>\n

Mark began his gospel with a man, John the Baptizer, shouting in the wilderness, and ends it with three women, in a city cemetery, shaken to the core of their being, made silent by their fear and holy terror.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God\u201d, Mark says in his opening phrase\u2026.It\u2019s more\u00a0 of a title, certainly not a complete sentence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The last sentence, also, if read in its original Greek, is\u00a0 also not a complete sentence.\u00a0 It is as if in the midst of everything, something totally unique intrudes and nothing can put an end to it.\u00a0 There is no period to mark the completion.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s another important truth to be culled from this peculiar ending, as well as from the accounts of the other gospels.\u00a0 None of them know quite how to tell what they feel has happened.\u00a0 Matthew tells us that even at the last of the so-called resurrection appearances of Jesus that \u201csome doubted\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 So if you come to Easter each year with mixed thoughts, you aren\u2019t alone.\u00a0 Even among those immediate followers of Jesus, the understanding of what had happened ranged from outright disbelief to confusion, to warm fuzzy feelings, to a kind of certainty that came only by trust, not by any proof, that something extraordinary had happened.<\/p>\n

Without Easter, of course,\u00a0 we wouldn\u2019t know about Jesus at all.\u00a0 If his story had ended with his crucifixion, he would most likely have been left in history\u2019s dust bin\u2026.just another Jew executed by the Roman Empire in a bloody century that witnessed thousands of such executions.\u00a0 So Easter is utterly central, and yet it can\u2019t be pinned down, fixed, captured in time.\u00a0 It intrudes with its mystery.<\/p>\n

No wonder then the women fled the tomb in terror and amazement\u2026and no wonder, that even today, we find ourselves a bit afraid of Easter.\u00a0 We know how to deal with dead Saviors. We honor them with perfumes and spices so that we can return to the sanity and predictability of our normal lives.\u00a0\u00a0 We know how to deal with God\u2014erect stone monuments that enshrine some holy words so that we won\u2019t have to carry the words around in our consciences.\u00a0 Erect them at our places of Government.\u00a0\u00a0 We remember the past with awe, but we prefer our present less unsettling, thank you very much.<\/p>\n

Far more terrifying, or at least confusing and puzzling, is the prospect of resurrection that comes with new expectations of us.\u00a0 Resurrection, you see, is a word that means to be stood up again; to be put back up on your feet, after life has knocked you flat.\u00a0 The world seems to think of death as tragic, when in fact, the tragedy of life is rarely death, but what we let die inside of us while we live.\u00a0 So it is comforting, I suppose, to live flat, boring lives.<\/p>\n

If the cross means anything, it means that that the rule of domination and the power of might makes right represents the defeat of the idea that might makes right, and that violence solves problems.\u00a0 Be clear about this:\u00a0 Mark calls him \u201cLord\u201d\u00a0 to make the point that Caesar, the world with its self-aggrandizing ideologies, is NOT <\/strong>Lord..<\/p>\n

Far more provocative than religion contained in rules and boxed up in a particular set of words, is the quiet invitation to go on to the Galilees of our lives with a promise that we will be met there by one who was crucified, who died, and who was buried.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was Ogden Nash who penned these strange little lines.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure where I picked them up, but here they are:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey nailed his hands and his feet to a tree<\/p>\n

that day and after that, well after that,<\/em><\/p>\n

everyone wore hats!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

We could just as easily say, of course, after that, we colored Easter eggs and hung plastic eggs from our dogwood trees.<\/p>\n

Sadly, much of Christianity as articulated today would rather embalm God in the certainty of the past, entombed and contained in the surroundings of the familiar than to entrust our lives to the transformation of resurrection power, that always, always, asks something new of us.\u00a0 A dead God may be safely approached, honored at any distance, near or far.\u00a0 A God confined to the Bible, and especially a certain translation of the Bible, or defined in dogmas and creeds, is far less scary than one who asks us to relate to nature, to ideas, to every living creature and person as holy, and sacred\u2014a way of relating to life that would make everything else in our lives secondary to that relationship.\u00a0\u00a0 A living God explodes into our present and reeks havoc on our assumptions, our expectations, our living.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder if the church has paid\u00a0 more attention to Good Friday, and the notion of Christ\u2019s sacrifice for us, because it is so much easier, so much more welcome to feel pity for that poor wretch hung on that awful tree to die in agony, and to think that the sacrifice was for me, for us.\u00a0 Notice that our attention gets stuck on ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0 And it places all the responsibility on the actions of Christ.\u00a0 All we are asked is to accept it rather dumbly.<\/p>\n

But Easter is not for the dumb.\u00a0 Easter cannot be blindly accepted.\u00a0 Easter escapes finality.\u00a0\u00a0 Easter says things are not doomed;\u00a0 our\u00a0 lives can be different;\u00a0 we can be new persons;\u00a0 we can move from living death to life abundant and eternal now.<\/p>\n

In the gospel stories of the resurrected Jesus, the intent is to show us the world according to God.\u00a0 In Jesus Christ, the story doesn\u2019t end, it is open to the future.\u00a0 It is a story that goes forward, and in going onward, we will meet him.<\/p>\n

If, however, we want to keep him entombed, we will act like we are the only ones who have the Truth.\u00a0\u00a0 Bill Coffin once warned in an Easter Sermon given at Riverside Church 30 years ago that \u201cit is acknowledged ignorance that unites us, while acknowledged possession of The Truth divides us.\u00a0 Only seekers of the Truth,\u201d he said, \u201c can create a community for all; those who have<\/span> The Truth seem to have only a bottomless enmity for those who do not have it, or who have another truth.\u00a0 Beware of Truth Possessors,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026Possessors of The Truth don\u2019t believe in the Word made flesh, they believe in the Word made words.\u201d<\/p>\n

But back to my point:\u00a0 In the gospel stories of the resurrection of Jesus, we now have\u00a0 a world where the meek will inherit the earth, even when they don\u2019t have a deed to it registered in the courthouse.\u00a0 We have\u00a0 a world where the poor in spirit, which is to say not<\/span> those who are arrogant about their faith and wish to force it on others, but the poor in spirit have the only riches, and among them the bread is blessed and broken and everyone has enough.\u00a0 We are given a new world of the resurrection where those who mourn are more than comforted; they dance before the Lord with their dead\u2014often while they are still grieving.\u00a0 It is a world where the peacemakers know themselves, and everyone else, as children of God, and the merciful know what mercy does\u2014it turns our enemies into our sisters and brothers and causes weapons to rust and corrode or be transformed into tools.<\/p>\n

Too much of what is said this weekend will miss the stark power of that empty tomb, and will hide it behind a lot of pap whose aim is to make us all feel good.<\/p>\n

Easter isn\u2019t a story to warm the cockles of our heart and make us feel good.\u00a0\u00a0 It is a story that has no ending because we are meant to be part of it, which means that we too must be turned inside out and upside down.\u00a0 Whatever happened on that first Easter morning, we are left with only two choices, really:\u00a0 we can either fight and guard against this day\u2014as did the religious leaders and political leaders of that time\u2014or we can embrace it even amid disbelief or puzzlement,\u00a0 and give it a chance\u00a0 to claim us, and\u00a0 then, after we have been silent long enough to let God\u2019s word replace our stuttering, to share it.<\/p>\n

The women went to the tomb that morning filled with grief, expecting nothing extraordinary.\u00a0 But their faithfulness in honoring Christ placed them at the center of something wonderful.\u00a0 And that is the way it often is with faithfulness.\u00a0 God meets us there in the Galilees of our lives where we strive to be true to the love of God that we have seen and known, and, over time, and occasionally all of a sudden,\u00a0 we may receive the gift of faith, which is trust where we cannot understand\u2026.faith that resurrection is loose in the world.<\/p>\n

We arrive at the wild impossible truth:\u00a0 this story can\u2019t be closed up, finished.\u00a0\u00a0 We human beings may be able to kill God\u2019s love, but we cannot keep it dead and buried.\u00a0 The power of God is loose in the world, defeating death, and bringing new life.\u00a0 Once it touches you, creeps into your awareness, moves your stony heart\u2014O my God, then everything is forever different, forever new.\u00a0 Alleluia!\u00a0 Thanks be to God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Text:\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Mark 16:1-8 Mark began his gospel with a man, John the Baptizer, shouting in the wilderness, and ends it with three women, in a city cemetery, shaken to the core of their being, made silent by their fear and<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}