Easter                                                  Mark 16: 1-8                                       April 12, 2009

When I sat down earlier this week to begin studying and pondering this morning’s Easter sermon I was not initially enthused to realize that this year’s scripture text was coming from Mark’s Gospel, a reading I must admit, that has not always been one of may favorites. I mean, come on, is this really the way to end the best news the world is ever going to hear? Talk about leaving one hanging! I mean, what was Mark thinking?
Was he planning a sequel? Did he run out of ink or did he lose the rough draft? Did he figure that the audience knew the rest of the story?

Granted there are some later additions to Mark’s Gospel that form a longer ending, but the language and the writing style don’t mesh, and the whole things seems like someone’s poor attempt to tie up loose ends, make nice, and leave nothing to chance.

While Mark’s account of the resurrection has not been my favorite in the past, it has begun to grow on me and I have slowly come to appreciate its abbreviated ending. It makes sense in light of what I what life and experience has taught me.

I don’t know about your lives, but I have to admit that not all of my endings are as neat and tidy as I might like and more often than not my resolutions are more apt to be untidy than fairy tale perfect. And then there is the fear, an emotion with which most of us are well acquainted. I believe this fact makes the announcement of Mark’s gospel all the more relevant for us today.

It has been my observation that fear in particular is a real and present emotion in our lives, especially now as we grapple with the reality that our resources are not infinite and we cannot continue with business as usual. Home foreclosures, corporate downsizing, hard earned pensions gone with little or no explanation or apology. That’s just on the economic front.

We are still sending troops to far off lands. Bodies are still coming home with flags draped over them. Terrorists still lash out on the innocent and vulnerable—taking hostages and sending out suicide bombers. Countries still feel the need to build up more destructive artilleries.

Closer to home we have how many people recently shot and killed by individuals who are motivated by fear and desperation? Turn on the evening news and we are bombarded by reports that almost seemed contrived to instill even more fear and paranoia. Even our churches feel the fear as numbers decline and congregations close.

Still, and maybe even in spite, of all the aforementioned, we come again to Easter and, in Mark’s account, the gaping, empty tomb. The operative emotions are terror, amazement and fear—not too different from our own emotional climate these days. And yet, the key lies in how we handle the rest of the story.
Will we be like those first century disciples who were bound by their fear that they dare not speak a word, or will we be empowered by the good news of Christ’s resurrection and the promise of hope that accompanies that good news?
 
So let’s start by addressing the fears we live with. Some of you might recall the words of President Franklin Roosevelt when he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” If that is the case, then we have even more to be afraid of, for as I mentioned earlier, ours is an age of fear.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the admonition to  “Fear not” is so frequently cited in the Bible. In the beginning of the Gospels the first thing the angels say to the Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph is “Fear not!
On that Galilean countryside the first words the shepherds heard from the angels were the words, “Fear not!” In our Gospel reading today, the angels address the women coming to the tomb, “Do not be alarmed!”
In Matthew, it is stronger, he says, “Do not be afraid!” The trouble is, like those women, we seem to miss those first two words. We miss the “Do not” part of the command and we only hear, “Be afraid.”

In the book, “The Zen of Golf” the author, Dr. Joseph Parent, writes, “If you say to someone, ’Don’t think about monkeys’, the first thing that pops into their minds is monkeys. The mind cannot comprehend the “do not” part. If you say to yourself, “Do not hit the ball into the lake.” You can be pretty sure you are going to hit into the lake.’ Fear of hitting the ball in the water puts a vivid image in our minds and then our body does a great job of producing that image and we do exactly what we feared we would. Fear is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. We produce exactly what we are afraid of. Fear can paralyze us and keep us from really living life.

Needless to say, some fears can be healthy. When the tornado siren goes off a healthy fear sends us to the basement where we will be safe. An unhealthy fear would keep us there and we would never come out.
Unhealthy fear can paralyze us and keep us from really living life.

A parent who has lost a child to death can become so afraid of losing another that he or she becomes over protective and ruins that child’s life.

A person who has experienced a broken love relationship can be so afraid of being hurt again that they don’t risk loving or trusting and end up living a lonely life.

A person who has endured a cancer scare can become so afraid it will return that every ache and pain makes them shudder with fear and they fail to enjoy their days.

Unhealthy fears can literally ruin our lives. We all have things that frighten us, but the message of Easter tells us that God can conquer our fears and give us new life. The message of Easter is that we need not be afraid because we have a God who is stronger than fear. We have a God who is stronger than the sin that messes up our lives and the lives of others. We have a God who is even stronger than death, and with his resurrection Jesus has defeated them all.

At this point I want to draw your attention to a line in our Gospel reading that I have to admit I have often overlooked until recently. I’m talking about the part where the angel tells the women at the tomb, “Do not be afraid” and here comes that line I want you to consider…”Go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee…”

Jesus is going to Galilee. What is that all about? Well, simply put, Galilee is the place where Jesus and the disciples began. And Galilee, by and large is a rather humdrum, ordinary place, but it also serves as a wonderfully convenient metaphor for that place where most of us make our homes. So what Mark is telling us is that Jesus is heading back to where his followers lead their everyday lives, workaday lives. This is where he shall meet them. Not on some mountaintop experience—but in the ordinary and the mundane.

This might not strike you as something earth shattering, but if you let it sink in I can assure you it will make a difference. Days like today are special. Days like Easter and Christmas have a way of drawing a crowd unlike other Sundays in the year. Days like today we crank up the music a little louder, we decorate with lots of flowers and we even serve breakfast. But tomorrow the place will be quiet. Most of you will go back to work or back to school in a day or two. In a sense you too will go back to the Galilee of your lives. By Monday or Tuesday we will all have gone back to the ordinary, everyday world. The fact that Jesus goes ahead of us there tells us that this service and this celebration is not the end of the story—or the end of Easter. Easter and the Christian faith live on in and through the realities of our sometimes very ordinary, often fear-filled, lives.

Because Jesus goes before us we do not need to live our lives in fear. Certainly there will always be things that frighten us, but we need not let them grip us so tightly that we are paralyzed in the face of them. I have been told that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to act and do what needs to be done even though we are afraid.  Yes, there could be terrorists and mentally unstable individual with death wishes, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay locked up in our homes. Yes, there are things that could threaten to scare us to death, perhaps even death itself, but we are called to live in faith—trusting the one who created us and who redeemed us. The one thing in life that is certain is that life is uncertain.
But that doesn’t mean we stop living it. As people of faith we are called to live until we die, and even then God will give us new life, a better life, an abundant life.

Earlier I mentioned that the key to this abrupt resurrection story lies in how we handle the rest of the story.
Will we be like those first century disciples who were bound by their fear that they dare not speak a word, or, will we be empowered to move forward back to Galilee? Mark leaves the story with us. He leaves us hanging, with more loose ends than we might be comfortable. We must decide how it will come out.
In its sometimes-frustrating untidiness, this Gospel reading invites us to become involved in the drama of salvation. Will we go to meet our master in Galilee? Will we share the story with others? Will we choose to live in fear, or will we face each new day with confident hope? A hope that does not fade, a hope that brings joy, and a hope that sustains us day in and day out.

I don’t know all about your lives and the circumstances you face, but I do know this and I believe this: Christ is risen and he goes before you. He goes before you into the Galilee of your life. He goes before you no matter where; no matter when; no matter what.

Good Friday tells us that he even goes before us in death.
Easter tells us he goes before us in the resurrection.

Thanks to Good Friday and Easter--we need not be afraid of anything--because Jesus has won the victory over every thing.
Thanks to Good Friday and Easter--we do not even need to fear death--because God in Christ has defeated death and promises us a resurrection like his.

So, as you leave here this morning--remember this: Jesus goes before you even into the ordinariness of every day life. And because he goes before us we can have peace, we can have comfort, and we can have joy, not just on this Easter morning, but every morning, as we go into the Galilees of our everyday lives.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Thanks be to God! Amen.

Pastor Stephen Blenkush
Zion Lutheran Church
Milaca, MN
www.ZionMilaca.org

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