Is It Still Easter?

Is it still Easter? Where are the frightened women and the astonished disciples? Why hasn’t Jesus walked through a locked door, or asked his disciples to touch his old/new body? Why this Gospel for today? Curiously, today’s Gospel reading takes us back to a pre-Easter time frame. In our Revised Common Lectionary, the fourth Sunday of Easter is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday. Every year at this point in the liturgical calendar, we hear from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to John: verses 1-10 in Year A, today’s lection verses 11-18 for Year B, and verses 22-30 in Year C. In each case, Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd and the sheep who know him. In this celebratory time between Easter and Pentecost, how does this image help us to comprehend the risen Christ? Since most of us know very little about shepherds and sheep and would resist being compared to sheep, what does the church want us to hear in this Gospel?

Let’s remember the context of John’s gospel. Remember that this version of Jesus’ life was written in the ‘90s, when conflicts between the ethnically diverse Christian communities and the more orthodox Jewish religious leadership were increasing. John’s gospel is filled with Jesus’ long speeches emphasizing the contrast between those who follow him and those who don’t. In this gospel, Jesus intentionally uses language that points to his divine status. He makes key statements that begin with “I am,” echoing God’s name for Godself. Remember too that in this section Jesus is not speaking to his own followers, he is speaking to the Pharisees. And he is saying something important about himself.

Actually, when Jesus called himself the “Good Shepherd,” the Pharisees knew exactly what he was saying to them. They knew their Scripture. They knew that Jesus was using an image that went all the way back to Genesis. They knew that in chapter 49 of Genesis Jacob reminded his sons that Joseph would be protected “by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, by the God of your fathers…. (Gen. 49:24). Of course, they knew the Psalter, especially the declaration in Psalm 23 that “The Lord is my shepherd.” Perhaps most important they knew Ezekiel’s use of the image of God as shepherd, especially Ezekiel’s assurance that, “’You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God,’ says the Lord God” (Ezek. 34:31). Hearing Jesus use this image of the Good Shepherd, the Pharisees knew immediately that Jesus was asserting his divine status, and that he was reminding them that he was God’s own Son.

In an Easter tide context, Jesus’ self-description as God the Good Shepherd gives us another way of thinking about resurrection and its importance in our lives. If you think about the resurrection appearances we’ve heard about this Easter tide, one of the things that might strike you is Jesus’ freedom to appear wherever and to whom Jesus chooses. In his resurrection life, Jesus demonstrates that he will respond to the needs of his followers, whether those followers need to be released from their fears, whether they need to be convinced that he has been raised, or whether they need to understand that he has fulfilled God’s promises. However, Jesus’ appearances also clearly demonstrate that Jesus takes the initiative and comes to those in need – even before they ask him to come. Our texts for today also remind us that God gives God’s gifts, including the gift of Jesus’ death on the cross, of God’s own free will. In Psalm 23, clearly God does all the giving. The psalmist cannot make God provide nourishment and protection. God cannot be compelled, but God can be relied on to provide. In the same way, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that he will go to the Cross – and regain his life – freely and through his own power: what Jesus will accomplish through his death and resurrection will ultimately be God’s freely given gift. The gift will be on God’s terms and at God’s initiative, and there is nothing they – or we – can do to compel or retard God’s power.

One of the gifts that God’s Son promises us is the gift of community. In today’s Gospel, Jesus also reminds the Pharisees – and by extension us – that God the Good Shepherd does more than know the sheep by name, care for them, protect them, and even die for them. God the Good Shepherd also gathers the sheep. God the Good Shepherd draws the sheep together into a single flock. As the new Christian communities of John’s day struggled with ethnic, social, and economic diversity, the Gospel writer reminded them that, God’s promises were made not only to the Jews but ultimately to all people. All, regardless of who they are, are known by name, cared for, and invited into membership in the community formed by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Because the relationship within Jesus’ flock will reflect the love between Jesus and his Father, Jesus’ flock will be a community unified by mutual love.

Do we live in such a community of mutual love? Certainly, one can survey the world wide church and wonder when we might see Jesus’ promised blessed flock. Perhaps the church from its very beginning was fractured. We know from Paul’s letters that early communities experienced tensions between Jews and Gentiles. Even largely Gentile Christian communities struggled with social, economic, and ethnic differences. The Council of Nicaea, which hoped to put to rest much theological conflict by crafting a comprehensive statement of faith, did not settle all the theological arguments of its time. The Western Church, centered in Rome, split with the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, in 854. The Reformation shattered the unity of the Western Church, and Christian bodies have been splintering ever since.

Do we live in such a blessed community here in Gallipolis, here at St. Peter’s? In our 24/7 world, many of us have virtual communities. But do we have real community? Do we have real community in this parish, or are we hollow within? We might ask ourselves what kind of community God yearns to create here. God’s community, as we see it in the Gospels, is an open and inclusive community. Jesus did not exclude anyone on the basis of their ethnicity, wealth, health, or disability. Are we an inclusive community, a diverse community, a community where those who need God’s nurture, care, and protection might hope to find it? How are we cooperating with God in helping to create a flock whose members are clearly able to hear Jesus’ voice? John’s Gospel is clear: the work of gathering the flock belongs to God and Jesus; our work is to provide a place where all may feel welcome, where all may grow in love, where all may deepen their relationship with God and with each other.

How might we strengthen our bonds as a Christian community? Worshipping together regularly is one way. Participating in Christian formation is another way. We know that we cannot command God to nurture and care for us, any more than we can compel each other to come through the red doors. However, there is one thing we can always do. We can pray, we can make our needs known to God. We can let God know that we care about this parish, its health, and its future. We can assure God that we care about the people in this parish, and that we are prepared to share with them our own experiences of God’s love. We can ask God to fulfill God’s promise to create a strong healthy community is this place.

So here is my challenge to you for the coming week: pray! You might start by thanking God for all God’s gifts to us, as individuals and as a parish. Next, choose one person in the parish. Look around you: choose someone whom you see right now. Commit to praying for that person all week. You don’t need to say long complicated prayers. Simply lift that person up to God during your regular prayers or whenever you can. Then, think of someone who is not here but might be. Commit to praying in the same way for that person too all week. Finally, pray for this parish. Start with prayer number eleven on page 817 of the Prayer Book. Try saying it daily, if you can. In fact, let’s say it together now. [Turn to page 817, read the prayer together.]

It’s still Easter. As we are reminded yet again that we are a community led by a Good Shepherd, we continue to be assured of God’s free and gracious love for us as individuals and of God’s promise to draw all those who love God into a single, blessed community in Jesus’ name.

It's Still Easter

It’s still Easter! Of course, it’s still Easter tide in the church and will be until Pentecost on May 27th this year. It’s also still Easter in our Gospel for today – although Jesus and the disciples seem to be keeping very late hours. And what a tumultuous day it has been! It began at early dawn as a group of women went to Jesus’ tomb, found it empty, and met two men in dazzling white clothes who assured them that, just as he had promised, Jesus had risen. Although no one believed the women when they went to tell the other disciples, Peter ran to the tomb, looked in, and was amazed. Then Jesus caught up with two of disciples walking to the village of Emmaus, about six miles from Jerusalem. Although they didn’t at first recognize Jesus, he explained to them how God had delivered on all the promises God had made in Scripture. Since it was evening, they invited him to stay with them. When he took bread, blessed, broke, and gave it to them, they recognized him. When Jesus vanished, the two disciples leapt up and ran back to Jerusalem, to tell the eleven and their friends what had happened. Late as it was, Jesus came among them again. He still had more to tell them – even on this first day!

It’s not easy to make sense of all the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. The Gospels clearly don’t agree on what or how it happened that Jesus was alive again after his execution. Our reading last week from the Gospel according to John suggests a slightly different series of events from Luke’s portrayal of that first Easter. Certainly resurrection was and is hard to get our minds around. Yet, if we look at the resurrection accounts, especially those of John and Luke, we find that they are remarkably similar in what they tell us. Notice that in Luke’s account of the Easter evening meeting in Jerusalem, Jesus offers the disciples the same assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation that he had offered in John’s account. “Peace be with you,” he greets them, as he miraculously enters the room. He offers the disciples confirmation, even proof, that he is not a ghost but a truly, living body, by commanding them to look at him and even to touch him. Did they need further proof that he was not ghost? He told them he was hungry and ate a piece of fish. Then, just as he had done with the depressed disciples on the long walk to Emmaus, he explained how all that God had promised in the Scriptures had now been fulfilled in his resurrection. And, finally, and perhaps most importantly, he commissioned his friends to spread the good news to others reminding them that, “You are witnesses of these things.”

The disciples don’t speak in Luke’s account of this late night meeting with Jesus. Nevertheless, as Luke tells us, Jesus’ appearance among them unleashed a barrage of emotions in them. Hearing his greeting of peace, they were “startled and terrified.” When Jesus reassured them that he was not a ghost, invited them to touch him and ate with them, the disciples were joyful and yet also incredulous. After Jesus explained the Scripture to them, perhaps the disciples were enlightened. Perhaps they were now ready to take the risk of beginning to spread the good news about Jesus, to “proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins” to people of all nationalities and ethnicities.

Or maybe not. Perhaps that one encounter with Jesus wasn’t enough to dispel all their fears and to equip them as preachers and proclaimers of the good news. Surely they must have continued to have questions. Perhaps even some of the same questions we might have. What kind of a body did he really have, that the disciples could actually touch it? Why did the disciples at first have trouble recognizing Jesus, even though they had spent so much time with him? How could he just come and go as he pleased, turn up in different places at will, even walk through walls? How did he know what was troubling them, so that he could respond to their questions? And hardest of all: was that really Jesus whom they encountered? Surely, Jesus’ disciples and friends struggled with these questions long after the late-evening meeting described in our Gospel reading. After all, it took the original witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection years to come to grips with these questions: nearly thirty years for the writer of the Gospel of Mark, perhaps forty or fifty for the writers of Matthew and Luke, almost sixty for the writer of John’s Gospel.

We could ask our own questions ad infinitum. And scholars much more learned than I have written tomes, examining every point of the resurrection stories. While I have deep respect for Biblical scholarship, in the end we are not called to be merely intellectually convinced that Jesus was raised. Rather we are asked as followers and disciples of Jesus to put our faith in those original witnesses, to trust those who followed them, to look for evidence of Jesus’ new life in ourselves and our faith communities, and to share with others what we have experienced, the things to which we are witnesses. Yet we know that developing trust, recognizing the signs of Jesus’ work among us, and risking sharing our faith with others are all hard work. Conversion, new birth in Christ doesn’t happen overnight. Anglican priest David Runcorn tells of a woman who described the realities of spiritual birth. “Any woman knows,” she tells us, “that birth is long and slow, very painful and very messy. You expose the most embarrassing parts of yourself and are so vulnerable that you are past caring. If that is what real birth is like, then why should spiritual birth be any different?”1 If you still have doubts and questions about the resurrection, you’re in good company. Resurrection is a reality that takes us decades to realize fully in our own lives. Even so, we have God’s promise that Jesus continues to come to us, to reassure us, to teach us, to equip us to carry out his ministry in the world, and to transform us.

Our Gospel stories suggest that there is a way that that transformation happens most effectively in our lives. And that is when we remain in community with each other. Notice that in almost every resurrection story recorded in our Gospels, Jesus comes to a group of disciples: the women who heard the angel’s proclamation in Mark’s account, the group gathered behind locked doors in John’s account, the women whose outlandish tale of the empty tomb was considered nonsense, the pair on the road to Emmaus, and, finally, this gathering of the eleven and their companions. It is in community with each other that Jesus is most likely to come to us, to reassure, enlighten, and commission us, to transform us from spectators of the events of Easter into participants in them.

“You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus reminded the disciples, as he sent them out to proclaim the good news to all nations. To whom are we called to be witnesses? Now you might think that I am about to launch into another plea for evangelism at this point. Mission on the other side of the red doors is important, to be sure. Inviting friends and relatives to worship with us is also important, to be sure. However, I’ve been thinking about our parish as a Christian community, as a place where as a body we may witness to each other. It has become more and more clear to me that maturing as Jesus’ disciples and companions and growing in our ability to appreciate and share the good news of life in the risen Christ take place most often and most effectively in groups. It is in community that we share insights with each other, encourage each other in faith, and witness to each other of our day to day experiences with Christ. It is in community that we let others in on the struggles we have had with grasping the meaning of new life in Christ. It is in community that we pose our questions about Scripture to each other, and it is in community that Jesus helps us to see the relationship between the truths of Scripture and our own lives.

Which brings me to St. Peter’s. You have heard me preach a lot about mission and ministry to others. Our participation in the Common Ministry program is helping us understand better who we are, so that we can be better and more effective ministers to those among whom God has placed us. However, I also believe that God has called us to be more intentional about the kind of community we have internally, about what our in-reach is, if you will. Besides Sunday worship, what holds us together as a community? How are we nurturing and supporting each other? How are we witnessing to each other? I challenge you to reflect with me, to help us all find those ways in which we can share the doubts, sorrows, and joys of Christian life more intimately with each other. Are we willing to grow – as a body – in our ability to witness to each other?

If we are, then perhaps we can pray wholeheartedly, O God, we give you thanks for the gift of resurrection life. May we know in our lives, both as individuals and as a parish, that the crucified one is alive and comes to us: turn our doubts and disbelief into awe and wonder, until we all rejoice together in the glory and presence of the risen Lord.2
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1. Quoted in Donald Runcorn, Rumours of Resurrection (London: Darnton, Longman and Todd, 1996), 2).
2. Based on David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 67.

Conversation Not Condemnation

Have you eaten all the jelly beans? By now, you’ve probably made all the hardboiled Easter eggs into egg salad sandwiches or casseroles. Have you eaten all the Cadbury crème eggs, the Peeps, and the chocolate bunnies and put away the Easter baskets and the plastic grass? Easter is over, right? So, what’s wrong with us church people? Our festal paraments are still up, I’m still wearing my white and gold vestments, and the Paschal candle is still burning. My friends, we do all this, because it’s still Easter! Actually, it’s still Easter in two ways. This week we have been observing the Octave of Easter, the eight days following Easter, culminating in today. Why eight? In ancient Jewish tradition, the number eight symbolized completion, wholeness, and re-creation. After Easter for many new Christians, the eighth day, i.e., every Sunday, became a day to meet again the risen Christ and experience re-creation again. So during this week especially, the church invited us to reflect on how we meet Jesus in our own lives, and how God continues to make all things new.

But there’s another way in which it is still Easter. We are now in Easter tide, or Easter season, fifty days in which we celebrate the joy of the resurrection, fifty days in which we can shout “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” Why a whole season? Because, it takes us much more than a single day to have some inkling of what the resurrection, God’s victory over death, really means. It takes us more than one day to understand the transformation that God offers us in the risen Christ. It takes us more than one day to offer adequate praise and thanksgiving for what God has done for us. Presbyterian pastor L.P. Jones reminds us that, “Celebrating the season of Easter allows us to declare the appearance of the risen Lord too profound and life changing to limit our responses to a single day or week. We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound!”1

We need a week of weeks for news this good and hope this profound! No doubt those who first experienced the risen Lord needed much more than a week of weeks. Even those who had been closest to Jesus in his earthly life had trouble at first recognizing the risen Jesus. Perhaps like us, they had trouble getting their minds to accept the possibility that he had fulfilled his promises to them, and that he was actually alive again.

Just look at the various Gospel stories. Last week, we heard how the three women were terrified and amazed at the angel’s declaration that, “He has been raised; he is not here.” Indeed, they were so terrified that, in the original ending to Mark’s Gospel, they just ran away. In Matthew’s Gospel we are told that “some doubted.” This week at our Wednesday Eucharist we heard Luke’s account of the conversation on the road to Emmaus. The disciples walked perhaps several miles with Jesus but didn’t recognize him until he broke bread with them. Just before today’s reading from the Gospel of John, we hear the story of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord. Having seen the stone rolled back from the tomb, she ran to tell Peter and the other disciple. They came, looked at the tomb and ran back. Mary remained at the tomb, and Jesus came to her. Did she recognize him? Not until he called her by name. But then she followed Jesus’ command and promptly told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And did they believe her? Clearly not, since later that evening they were still huddled together in fear behind locked doors! Then, after the disciples had seen Jesus and said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” did he believe them? Not at all!

Yes, they all had a hard time believing that Jesus had done what he had said he would do! And what was Jesus’ reaction to their doubts? He was a little sharp with the guys on the road to Emmaus. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared,” he said. But did he chastise Mary for thinking he was the gardener? No, he just said, gently, I’m sure, “Don’t grab on to me.” Jesus knew how difficult it was to grasp what had happened that day – it still is! And so, when he came to the frightened disciples that evening, he didn’t say, “What’s the matter with you guys, didn’t you believe me?” And he certainly didn’t say, “Where were you all while I was up there dying on that cross? How come you all ran away?” No, he said to them, “Peace be with you.” And this was more than a casual greeting. In effect, at that moment Jesus extended forgiveness to all his friends and disciples for having abandoned him at the cross. And more, he then gave them the signs that they needed to understand that he was really there with them. He showed them his hands and his side. At last they got it! They “rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

Apparently, Thomas needed something more than the disciples’ report of their encounter. When Jesus returned the following week, did he say to Thomas, “What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you believe them?” No, he offered the concrete proof of his risen reality that Thomas thought he needed. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” he said. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Then Thomas too got it! He didn’t even need to touch Jesus, he understood at last that he was truly seeing and hearing the risen Lord.

Do you notice any thread running through all these encounters with the risen Lord? In no case does Jesus reject or condemn people for not believing God’s promises or for finding it hard to come to grips with the resurrection. And in every case, Jesus takes the initiative. He comes to his friends and disciples and gives them what they need to believe that he has indeed overcome death and is alive again to them. This is the good news! Jesus does what he has to do to recall his friends to life. Their doubts and unbelief will not keep him from calling and caring for his friends. Their response? To joyfully go out and tell others – as he has commissioned them to do!

And so it is for us. For, today’s Gospel is not ultimately about the disciples and Thomas. It is about who Jesus is, and, more importantly, how Jesus comes to us, wherever we might be. We too may wonder. We too may have trouble getting our heads around the resurrection – or any other aspect of church life and belief. When we say the Nicene Creed, or even the simpler Apostles Creed, we may not be absolutely certain of everything that the church is proclaiming in those creeds. In the sorrows and losses of our lives, doubt may overcome hope, and Easter joy may disappear into thin air. Grief and tragedy shake the foundations of our faith. Serene Jones reminds us that it is in those very moments that God comes to us. “God comes seeking us, stepping through the walls that hardship builds around us, offering love at the very moment that grace seems nothing but a farcical ghost story told by not-to-be-believed friends.”2

Sometimes God may come to us when we grieve alone – as Jesus came to Mary weeping outside the tomb. Perhaps we will sense Jesus’ presence when his peace descends on us in prayer. Perhaps we will understand, despite the violence around us, despite our losses and our pain, despite the death of loved ones, that we are not alone, that, indeed Jesus has been coming to us, supporting us, and caring for us all along. More often, though, God comes to us in community. Even though the disciples to whom Mary delivered her report did not believe her, they remained together as a community. Thomas did not believe his friends, but he stayed with them the following week. And, as the writer of John’s Gospel reminds us, we are now part of that community, and Jesus comes to us as well. We may not have seen what they saw, but because we believed through their testimony, Jesus can be present with us.

Ultimately, it is the community of the church that holds the good news for us, and in that community, there is room for all our questions and doubts. For, rest assured, the church exists not just for those who are absolutely certain of what and who they are. Beware of the danger of pride and arrogance in that absolute certainty! The church exists for those who seek God, most especially a deeper knowledge of God. And we need each other’s support on this difficult journey of faith. We need each other’s support in recognizing God’s presence among us, and we need each other’s help in fulfilling the commission that Jesus gives us when we do recognize him. Thanks be to God that Jesus comes to us again and again and continues to strengthen our faith and our commitment to him. Thanks be to God that our brothers and sisters in the faith – and that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us – uphold us in our journey. “We may not touch his hands and side, nor follow where he trod; but in his promise we rejoice; and cry, “My Lord and God!”

1. “Easter,” in New Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012, 1).
2. In Feasting on the Word (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 402.

He Has Been Raised

[Challenges from plants: Where is Jesus? Didn’t he break bread with the disciples? I’m sure he went fishing with Peter and the others.] Wait, wait! You’re getting the stories all mixed up! This is Mark’s story, and Mark has told it the way Mark wanted to tell it. We know that each of the Gospel writers assures us that Jesus was crucified and then raised, but each of them tells the story a little differently. This is Mark’s story, and Mark tells the story the way his community understood it. Actually, Mark tells his whole story to make sure that we understand what it means to be followers of a risen savior.

Sure, the ending of Mark’s story makes us uncomfortable. The women were too terrified to believe what the angel had told them, and they just ran away? You’re probably thinking, “That’s not what I came to hear on Easter!” Where’s the good news in that? Actually, Mark’s story has a better ending than it might have had. Suppose, for example, that you had heard this story instead:

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus. 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. And when they went in, they saw the body of Jesus, just as it had been prepared before the Sabbath. With tears in their eyes, they took the spices, laid them on the body, and went to the disciples to tell them to find someone to roll the stone back. And then they went home.”1

You surely did not come to hear this story!

Even so, perhaps for you Mark’s story still isn’t good news. “He has been raised; he is not here.” Are we really ready to hear that story? Theologian Karl Barth reminded us that the resurrection is actually “a difficult and dark truth,” and a word that we can scarcely tolerate. Indeed, Barth insisted, we are “threatened by resurrection,” because we don’t want to admit that we are imprisoned in this world of sin and death, and that we can’t escape from it through our own efforts. “Admit it,” Barth dared us, “there is no way out of this life…. Nothing, except the possibility of a miracle can help us.” And don’t we resent the fact that we can’t help ourselves, that neither progress, nor evolution, nor hard work, nor adherence to the law, nor even enlightenment, can rescue us? Don’t we think that we are good, self-made, independent people, and that we ought to be able ultimately to rescue ourselves? And yet, we know that whatever paths our brief lives take, they lead inevitably to the brink of death. “He has been raised; he is not here.” The God who raised Jesus also calls out to us. In the depths of our suffering and dying, when we have finally given up any pretense of self-sufficiency, the God who raised Jesus says to us, “Rise up! You are dead, but I call you to live.”2Come Holy Spirit: Sermons, in Patricia Sanchez, Celebration, April 12, 2009, 1-2.Come Holy Spirit: Sermons, in Patricia Sanchez, Celebration, April 12, 2009, 1-2.Come Holy Spirit: Sermons, in Patricia Sanchez, Celebration, April 12, 2009, 1-2.

My brothers and sisters, this is the good news! This is the good news that you came to hear this morning! The resurrection is God’s doing, not ours! He has been raised by God! And we have been raised by God with him! We don’t have to save ourselves! God has fulfilled God’s promises to save us! Didn’t we learn that this Lent and Holy Week? Didn’t we hear about God’s covenants with God’s people? Didn’t we hear God’s promises to the people, that God would love them forever? Didn’t we discover that God is faithful, that God keeps God’s promises – extravagant as they are? Didn’t we discover on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday the unfathomable depth of God’s love for us? Do you remember Jesus’ promises to his friends as they were walking to Jerusalem? In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus promised them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again” (Mark 10:33-34). And Mark is here to tell us that God has kept God’s promises: Jesus has been raised; he is not here. God has kept God’s promises, and God keeps God’s promises!

To be sure, such evidence that God is truly faithful, such unexpectedly good news can indeed be terrifying and overwhelming, especially if, like these women, you had watched Jesus die on that cross. Would I have reacted differently from Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome? Probably not. Such unexpected good news can also be incredible. We didn’t have to wait until the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers, or the nineteenth-century Darwinists, or the twentieth-century modernists came along to find people who couldn’t believe that God had kept God’s promises. If you think about it, everyone we know about in all the Gospel stories had trouble recognizing Jesus after he was raised, had trouble really believing that he had done what he said he would do, and that he was truly alive again. Civil and religious leaders in the early centuries thought that most people who believed that Jesus had been raised were insane, treasonous, or, at the very least, dangerously misled.

Yes, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were terrified and overwhelmed. But for Mark it doesn’t matter. Or rather, for Mark, terror and fear are natural reactions. For Mark what matters is that God has kept God’s promises. God has acted. Eventually, perhaps the women must have told Jesus’ friends and disciples. Eventually, no doubt they all did go to Galilee, as the angel had told them to. They all told others, and those others believed them. Paul had an experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, and then he began to tell yet others, both Jews and Gentiles. And the message of Jesus’ victory over death, of God’s mighty act, God’s faithfulness, and God’s love spread like wildfire – despite the disdain for it in polite society, and despite the best efforts of the civil authorities to stamp it out. You and I are here because we believe – or perhaps yearn to believe – the testimony of the women who stood by Jesus as he was dying and were the first to hear that he was alive again. We are here, not because we like to hang out with nice people who like good organ music, but because we have heard for ourselves and believed the testimony of someone who told us that God has acted, that God raised Jesus from the dead and conquered sin, death, and evil.

Mark’s story ended with the terror and fear of the faithful women. But that should not be where the story ends for us, because God’s story has not yet ended. Jesus, raised and alive, is still going ahead of us to Galilee. And you and I are now part of God’s story. This parish is now part of God’s story. Our lives, both as individuals and as a parish, witness to God’s faithfulness, God’s love, and God’s mighty actions on our behalf. Can you find yourself in this story? In the fifty days that the church gives us to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, find some time – a few minutes here and there among the alleluias and the lilies – to reflect on your own story. Where has God acted to bring new life out of death and loss? Where have you shared with others your confidence in God’s promises and brought new hope and strength to someone else experiencing death and loss? When has this parish been a place of healing and new life? The God who raised Jesus from the dead is still among us, strengthening, empowering, and loving us. Can you see God at work? Can you see the signs of hope in the ending of Mark’s story? When we feel uncertain and afraid, we can identify with those women, and we can hear again those comforting words: “He has been raised; he is not here.” We can live the resurrection, depend on God’s covenants and promises, believe in Jesus’ own words, rely on the testimony of centuries of the faithful, and anticipate the possibility of new life in Christ, even when we cannot always see it.

I believe the stories of the witnesses to the resurrection. I believe the testimonies of all those believers across time and space who have taught others that Jesus was raised from the dead. And because I believe, I can shout with all those other faithful believers around the world, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”

1. With thanks to J.W. Moore, “Some Things Are Too Good to be True,” in David E. Leininger, Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2008), 126.

2. Come Holy Spirit: Sermons, in Patricia Sanchez, Celebration, April 12, 2009, 1-2.

Nine O'clock in the Morning

Jesus was crucified. There is no mistake about that. Jesus’ crucifixion is the most important part of the story we have just heard, and it is the point to which the whole story, as it is told in the Gospel according to Mark, points us. Perhaps some of you have seen Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” the film that came out in 2004. For some people it was required viewing during Holy Week. Unquestionably, crucifixion was a particularly gruesome way for the Roman state to execute condemned criminals – which they did quite frequently. So perhaps Gibson focused on Jesus’ agony and portrayed the last hours of Jesus’ life in such graphic detail in order to deepen our sorrow for our sins. Soon after the film appeared, a TV reporter interviewed people on their way out of the theater. Perhaps many could echo this person’s response: “Thank you, Jesus! Now I know how much you suffered for me. I never realized just how much you loved me.”

You know what? Mel Gibson got it wrong! If Gibson had actually followed the Gospel accounts, the viewers of the film might have come away with a very different response. We’d certainly all be better off if we realized just how much Jesus loved – and loves – us. But the Gospel writers were not primarily interested in encouraging us to focus on how awful Jesus’ death was, or how our sins put him on the cross. Mark was certainly not interested in the horror of Jesus’ death. Yes, the whole story leads to the crucifixion. But did you notice something interesting about how Mark has told the story? There is very little physical description of Jesus here. There is no mention of his suffering. There is actually only one sentence pertaining to the crucifixion itself: “It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.” And there is only one sentence spoken by Jesus himself, the first verse of the twenty-second psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark wants to lead us to a very different spiritual place from where Mel Gibson led his viewers. Mark’s intention is to encourage his readers, and by extension, us, to ask “What is the meaning of Jesus’ death for me? If I am a disciple of the one who was executed in this way, how should I live my life?”

When we consider Jesus’ death with those questions in mind, perhaps another question arises for us. Do I believe this story of Jesus’ death? “Well,” you may think, “I’m here. Of course, I believe it.” However, that wonderful sage Garrison Keillor reminds us that “Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music?”1 The Gospel and I are here to tell you that it’s OK if you answer Keillor’s question with, “I’m not sure.” Doubt is OK! Just look at the folks around Jesus in Mark’s story! Look at his friends and disciples. They had been with him since the beginning of his ministry. They had heeded his command to leave behind family and occupation, they had seen the miracles, they had heard him preach, and they had seen him face down the religious leaders. They had watched him welcome gentiles, lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes. But when crunch time came, where were they? They all betrayed him! His trusted friends fell asleep during his agony in the garden. Judas gave him the ritual kiss of peace in order to betray him. An unnamed follower was so terrified of the soldiers that he wriggled out of his robe and ran away naked. And, of course, Peter, the designated leader of the group, the “rock” on which Jesus would build his church, openly denied he even knew Jesus, not once, but three times. In the end, only a gentile centurion and a few women stayed behind to keep watch with Jesus. So if you have doubts about this story of Jesus’ death – or about any part of the Gospel story – know that you are in good company. Jesus’ friends and disciples were all there before you. And after Jesus’ resurrection, they were changed people. So know this: doubt is a good thing. As Keillor reminds us, it is “an antidote to smugness,” a caution against the self-righteousness that Jesus himself so roundly condemned.

But, ultimately, we are people of faith. We have heard again this Lent the many ways that God has covenanted with God’s people, we have been reassured yet again of God’s deep love for creation, and we have received again the promise that God will enable us to fully become the people God has created us to be. And so we allow ourselves once again to confront the stark reality of Jesus’ death. Throughout Holy Week we will hear the whole story, in all the different voices in which it is told. Today we have heard Mark’s version of it. And the real question to ask ourselves is not, “What did I do to put Jesus on that cross?” Yes, we asked for Barabbas, who we still hoped would lead an insurrection against the Romans, and yes, we shouted, “Crucify him!” when Pilate asked us about Jesus. Even so, the real question to ask about Jesus’ death on the Roman cross is, “What does it mean for me? What, as I sit in this pew in 2012, does Jesus’ death mean for me?”

There are a lot of ways to think about the meaning of Jesus’ death. Different theologians will give you different perspectives. Theologians writing out of African or Asian traditions, give us especially stimulating ways to think about this question. Here’s a way of understanding Jesus’ death that speaks to me. It’s not the only way, but it is a way that makes sense of what I know about God. In a sense, Jesus’ death on the cross has become what one commentator has called “a kind of paradigm of human suffering.”2 Jesus’ agonizing execution, assented to by religious leaders and carried out by the civil authority, stands for, represents, all those times in human history where “bodies are destroyed, minds are ravaged, and spirits are broken.” His death represents all those times when one group terrorizes and subjugates another, when families are destroyed through abuse, starvation, and war, when people are excluded or murdered because their skin color, clothing, sexual orientation, or customs are “wrong.” In the depths of physical and spiritual suffering, they too cry out, as Jesus did, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Were we listening when Jesus told us, “If any want to be my disciples, let them take up their cross and follow me”? If we were, and we take our call to follow him seriously, then we understand that “taking up” our cross doesn’t just mean enduring our own personal hardships. If we believe that Jesus’ death on the cross signifies in some way the sufferings of all humanity, then we as Christians have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with all who suffer. Certainly, the cross reminds us of every form of human suffering, of sickness, loss, aging, tragic accident. But given the time and place in which Jesus died, for Christians the most central kind of suffering signified by the cross is unjust suffering, the “kind of suffering that does not have to be; that cries out for … change.”

As we look to the cross, we acknowledge that we too have caused and participated in the kind of unjust suffering that Jesus’ death signifies. We accept God’s forgiveness, and we stand in awe, aghast, at God’s immeasurable love for sinful humanity. And yet, as Jesus’ disciples we also stand in solidarity with all those who suffer unjustly, we also cry out for change, and we also await the world in which Jesus has conquered sin and death. And more: if this story has any shred of meaning for us, it must surely be this: in Jesus we have an example of how we are to suffer and die for one another. What God has done for us in Jesus, we too are called to make real in our own lives and in the lives of others. This is truly the heart of the Christian understanding of Jesus’ death: less that Jesus died for me, and more that Jesus teaches me how to die for you, and for all whom I am called to love and serve.

And so, with all those who lead us forward to the cross and beyond, we pray, "O Christ, broken on the cross, we draw near to you, we come with broken promises and broken dreams, we come divided by sin and at war with one another. Yet we also seek to share in your salvation, and bring others into your loving embrace. Lord Jesus, as you give yourself to us, may we also give ourselves to others. Lord of the cross, we come to you."3

1. “Thinking Weaselish Thoughts at Easter,” 2008, quoted in Synthesis, April 1, 2012
2. Margaret A. Farley, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 182.
3. Adapted from David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 60.