April 1, 2018 (Easter Sunday) – Mark 16:1-8
Mark 16:1-8
Are You Joking, Mark?
Resurrection of our Lord – Easter Sunday
April 1, 2018
Boy are you in for a treat!
The last time Easter Sunday fell on April Fools’ day was in 1956!!!!
Is there anyone here who remembers that?
It doesn’t happen often.
The next time it will happen will be in 2029 and then in 2040 –
but after that . . . never again in this century.
So consider yourselves lucky.
It’s a day for jokes, April Fools’ Day.
And maybe the biggest joke of all is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
I mean really: what better way was there for Jesus to mock the powers-that-be that
killed him than to rise again from the dead?
Like one of those Bozo the Clown inflatable toys you used to be able to get that
no matter how hard you punched them always bobbed back up again,
mocking your every attempt to defeat them?
The resurrection is kind of like that.
It is God’s assurance that no matter what we do to love, love will win.
And life will win.
And that, at least, is no joke.
Well – that is all well and good.
And maybe I should just stop right there because let’s face it –
it is pretty killer to just end a sermon with that great sentence I just wrote,
“no matter what we do to love, love will win.”
Boom! Mic drop!
But no!
We come to worship and we read Mark’s account of Jesus’ resurrection –
where Jesus, remember, never even appears – and we read the last sentence which,
remember, goes like this and is not even a complete sentence in Greek:
The women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them and
nothing they said to anyone – afraid they were for. . .
And that’s the end of the Gospel.
That’s how Mark ends.
No boom.
No mic drop.
Just terror and silence.
And on April Fools’ Day you just think, Are you joking, Mark? Really? REALLY????
I think I’d rather stick with “no matter what we do to love, love will win. Amen”
But I gotta earn my paycheque. So here goes.
Although . . . since it is April Fools’ Day, I could distract you with some jokes first.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Goliath. Goliath who? Goliath down, thou looketh tired.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Hatch. Hatch who? Gesundheit!
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Police. Police who?
Police stop telling these awful knock knock jokes!
The man in the white robe in the empty tomb doesn’t tell the women any jokes.
No.
The man in the white robe in the empty tomb tells the women to go with the disciples back to
Galilee, where they will all see Jesus.
Go back home, he tells them.
Jesus’ll be there – he’s just gone ahead of you.
Go back together where it all started.
You will encounter him in the assembled community of Galilee,
back in the assembled community of home.
That’s where the risen Jesus is: among the faithful.
Who gather to hear his story and share his meal and heal the sick and feed the hungry and
include the excluded.
That’s where the risen Jesus is.
And that is no joke.
I have long puzzled over this instruction by the man in the white robe.
But this week I discovered something amazing, like the women.
See: when Jesus is raised from the dead, he takes us with him.
Mark says he is with the assembled faithful –
and Mark can say that because when Jesus is raised from the dead, he takes us with him.
When Jesus is raised from the dead, he takes us with him into resurrection life.
A picture is worth a thousand words, right?
I read an article this week about artistic representations of the resurrection.
In the western churches – whose art we are most familiar with –
Jesus is always represented rising triumphantly but . . . utterly alone.
Which is kinda sad.
There might be a few sleeping guards at the tomb, but they don’t really count.
Jesus is raised all alone. Sad face.
But – here’s the thing – in the Eastern churches like in Syria and Greece and Russia,
Jesus rises triumphantly and . . . never alone!
He is always taking somebody along with him!
Often he is shown taking Adam and Eve – who represent all of us – often he is shown
taking Adam and Eve by the hand and pulling them from Hades, the place of death.
Pulling them with him into new life, into a new day, into hope and meaning and love.
Okay: I was amazed!
Isn’t that amazing?!
Jesus is taking us along with him! Jesus is taking us into new life too!
And so the women are sent to the assembled faithful
because the assembled faithful have been raised too!
That is where the risen Christ is: with the others he has brought with him into new life!
The good news this morning is that no matter what your tomb is,
Jesus enters into it in order to pull you out.
No matter how dark the addiction, no matter how painful the pain,
No matter how deep the loss, no matter how meaningless the meaninglessness:
Jesus enters into it in order to pull you all out.
In order to pull all of us out together, from the realm of death to the realm of life.
Because no matter what we do to love, love will win.
See what I did there?
Jesus pulls us out together. Together.
Out of a great love.
And that is why we worship him.
That is why those first disciples worshipped him.
That is why those women trudged back to Galilee: to gather around him present in
the assembled community: to worship him.
Because the resurrection is not just about the resuscitation of a corpse,
but the giving of new life.
Yes: Mark’s Gospel ends with an incomplete sentence.
Nothing they said to anyone – afraid they were for. . .
It’s incomplete because Mark doesn’t believe the story of the resurrected Jesus is over yet.
It’s incomplete because Mark believes it has just begun –
with the sending of the women to the other assembled believers in Galilee.
With the raising of them with Jesus.
So they can continue the work of Jesus – which is raising people to new life along with them.
Raised to new life, they can take the hands of others and raise them too.
Raised to hope, they can take the hands of others and raise them to hope too.
Raised to meaning, they can take the hands of others and raise them to meaning.
Being fed they can feed.
Being healed they can heal.
Being included they can include.
And being forgiven they can forgive.
Being loved without conditions – they too can love without conditions.
You know what it’s like?
It’s like Mary Poppins.
No, really: it’s like Mary Poppins.
You know that part in the movie where Mary, Bert, and the children join hands and together
they jump into the middle of a sidewalk chalk painting?
You know how they emerge in a totally new, much more colourful world?
And then they take on the colours of their new world,
as if they are reborn in a new world that has the contours of their old world but it’s
wondrously different, where there is space for wonder, space for delight,
and space for love?
That’s what happens on Easter Sunday morning.
And the point is that they join hands and jump together,
like Jesus taking us with him out of death into a new life,
a life of service and laughter and wonder and meaning and love.
Jesus takes us with him – together.
Together.
Together at First Lutheran Church – if the young man in white robes were alive today,
he would, I think,
tell people if they wanted to see the risen Christ to come to Sargent and Victor.
Where there are people who have been taken by the hand, and pulled from death into
the realm of life.
Where there is forgiveness and grace and love.
Where there is laughter and where there is inclusion.
Where the hungry are fed every single week, where there is hospitality for all who long for it,
where the vulnerable are cared for throughout the year.
Jesus takes us with him into a new life of wonder and meaning and service.
This is a good day to ask: who are we taking with us?
Well – there are all the people at Food Bank every single week.
There are all the people at the Community Meals we serve 26 times a year.
There are all the children served at our summer Kids Clubs.
And all the people served by our Christmas hampers – and so many more.
And here’s the thing: we can take more with us.
I know we can.
But it takes an assembled community of those willing to meet week by week by week,
discovering the risen Christ in their presence, and willing to be taken by the hand and
be pulled into the realm of life and service and love.
Together.
Together.
Together.
Yes: no matter what we do to love, love will win.
But love needs together.
To assemble together, to worship together, to work together, to serve together.
To jump into a new world, God’s new world of life and love and laughter, together.
As Mark reminds us on this Easter morning, the story of God’s saving this world
had just begun on Easter morning long ago, and it’s not over yet.
And with that incomplete sentence, God invites you into it.
Maybe it looks foolish, but it’s no joke: your willingness to jump can change lives and
it can even change the world.
But you have to be willing to jump – together.
For the good news this morning is that no matter what we do to love, love will win.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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