Mark 16:1-8
I’ve preached a lot of Easter sermons, and have always wanted them to be the best of the year for two reasons. First, I’ve thought of those who are here on Easter but not on other Sundays who’ll be so wowed by the sermon that you’ll want to be here every Sunday, and help us to flourish. Second, I think of the fellow who walks out many Sundays and dryly remarks: “You done good… you can stay another week.”
But this year I said “Aw, nuts… I won’t change anyone’s life just by preaching a really good Easter sermon; and no one’s going to fire me… I’m retiring in ten weeks!”
So, then I looked back over years of low-mileage previously-preached Easter sermons. No good – I’ve changed too much to preach today what I preached 40 years ago, or twenty, or even ten. Most kids can’t really grasp Easter, because you need to live long enough to get your dreams shattered and your heart broken.
Only when you’ve experienced little deaths can you imagine the good news of the resurrection. I actually said that in a sermon one year and got scolded for being disrespectful of children!
So rather than a rerun or a collection of highlights, I want my last Easter sermon to be simple and clear. In that hope, I offer four points that represent how I experience the power of Easter right now, and in that the core of…
FIRST: “Doubt is not the enemy of faith; certainty is.” I don’t know who first said that, or when or why, but it rings true. When you try to lock faith down, or lock it up in a tomb, or prove it in some way, it’s no longer faith but a false claim of certainty. It’s the opposite of faith, the enemy of faith.
Doubt, on the other hand, is the restlessness of the spirit that keeps looking for God. Faith lives and breathes and (yes) changes. You can hold faith and doubt at the same time. That leads us to:
SECOND: We don’t know what happened in the empty tomb – there were no witnesses. So we have to choose what to believe.
If you’ve worshiped regularly during Lent you know we’ve walked a long way together exploring the Last Week – Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, and the book of that name by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
Many of you have shared your agreement that it’s an eye-opener, lifting up the hidden story of what was really happening in Jerusalem as the Realm of Caesar and the Realm of God collided. It was big, it was powerful, it was frightening. And when we came to Friday of that week it looked for all the world that Caesar had won, that Caesar had trumped God.
And then we, and the disciples, and the whole world waited in silence and fear.
Now we arise on Easter morning, so early in this new spring that the crocus and daffodils are still in hiding. And we hear the shouts of the fragile, hopeful belief: “He has been raised; he is not here. Go to Galilee and you’ll see him there!”
So what happened? How did we go from the utter despair of Good Friday through the utter silence of Saturday and arrive at sunrise on the day after the Sabbath, now lifted by this claim?
Whatever happened, I don’t know; you don’t know. History apparently doesn’t. God only knows. There were no eye-witnesses and no recorded accounts other than the scriptures themselves. And as we’ve heard, even the Gospels don’t agree, each telling the story from its own perspective.
Even Mark had it editors. And as you can see in the pew Bible, the first account of Easter from Mark ended with verse 8. It was so unsettling to early editors, that they added two endings, a short one and then a longer ending,
Borg and Crossan, in their book, suggest the Easter story was really a parable – a powerful truth wrapped in a teaching story, so it doesn’t matter whether it was factual and historical. That works for me… though it may not for you. I’ll explore that further in two weeks. But wait:
THIRD: While we don’t know what happened in the tomb, we DO know what happened in the lives of the disciples. God trumped Caesar…
The evidence we have of just what happened is the record of transformed lives… on the day of resurrection, two thousand-some years since, today, and tomorrow. Lives continue to be changed by each encounter we have with the living God who is not confined by skin and bones, by breath and atoms; and certainly not by soldiers and tombs and or by Caesar himself.
This is the God not only of those living right now, but those who have died and those not yet born among us.
So, what happened way back there and then? We can’t have certainty, but we can have faith; and it’s OK if that faith is touched with doubt.
The first witness, according to Mark’s account, the young man at the empty tomb told the terrified disciples that Jesus had been raised, and had already returned to Galilee, and that they should go there and see him again.
What we the church can say with certainty is this: the timid band of faithful disciples found their voice and their courage and let the truth of Easter transform their lives.
You don’t believe as they believed, risk as they risked, and act as they acted based on a memo or a rumor. Really! But Easter changed their lives, and they knew Jesus was among them, and together they changed the world.
FOURTH: We know that we’re here, we’re the church, because we’re witnesses to what happens in our lives through Easter. We can share so many stories and give so many real-life examples from our lives and the headlines and the news reports. We are the living proof of Easter.
We have known forgiveness and healing and joy and new life in powerful ways. That’s what makes this day the central event for all Christians. And that’s why we gather…hungry and anxious, fearful and lonely, joyful and thrilled… all mixed together, just like the first witnesses on the Easter morning, awaiting the resurrection just as the disciples did so long ago.
Like them, we’re commissioned by our baptism to embody the Realm of God, to be persistent in our call for justice, peace and redemption, and to point to what the Realm of Caesar will always try to do.
There. That’s what I want to say on this glorious day, likely my last Easter sermon ever:
1) Doubt is not the enemy of faith; certainty is.
2) No one knows what happened inside that tomb, so we have to choose what to believe.
3) We do know what happened in the lives of the disciples – and because they believed in the presence of the risen Christ there’s a church today.
4) We gather as the church, because we’re witnesses to Easter. It’s up to you and to me to live that Resurrection. We are the proof of Easter!
May God bless you today and always with resurrection moments –
light in the darkness,
hope in the face of despair, and
God’s joy as your daily companion.
Love’s redeeming work is done. Alleluia!