First Presbyterian Church
"Afraid to Hope"
Sermon for Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Children's time: Easter joy

I told the children 10 Easter knock-knock jokes. We talked about all the paraments, banners, candles, flowers, and stoles that came in to the sanctuary during the first hymn. We practiced saying, “Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed!”

Our text from Isaiah is on page 652. It concerns life and death. It proclaims an end to grief. God affirms life for all peoples, all nations, all faces. This good news is not just for God's chosen people, it is for everyone. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Isaiah 25:6-9.

6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food,

a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

7 And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations;

8 he will swallow up death forever. Then the LORD GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

9 It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

 

This ends our reading from Isaiah. Let's listen to the choir speak about how God has swallowed up death forever.

Anthem “Rise, O Lord!”

Our gospel reading is on page 54. From a distance, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome watched Jesus die on the cross. The women had provided for him when he was in Galilee, and some had come up with him to Jerusalem. They had heard his teachings; they had hoped in him, and now he was dead. That Sabbath, they saw Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus' body to a tomb. According to Jewish custom, it was against the law to leave a dead man on the cross the day he died. Our reading begins the next day. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Mark 16:1-8.

1 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.

6 But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."

8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

This ends our reading of God's word.

This ending catches us by surprise sometimes. It disturbed some Christians so much that they added two different endings to Mark, a long one and a short one. The endings were taken from Matthew, Luke and John. Those gospels tell us about Jesus' resurrection in more detail. But the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of the gospel of Mark end at verse 8, so most biblical scholars agree that's where Mark's gospel should stop.

So today I'm going to talk about this sudden stop.

Why did the young man, robed in white, tell the women that Jesus was going to Galilee?

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus' ministry starts in Galilee. Jesus preaches the good news, calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, teaches in the synagogue, heals Simon's mother-in-law, cures the sick, casts out demons, prays, and heals a man with leprosy. And that's just in the first chapter.

Now the young man tells the women to tell the disciples, specifically mentioning Peter, to go to Galilee, where they will see him. “He has been raised, he is not here.” The women had the right tomb; the young man said, “Look, there is the place they laid him.” Jesus had told the disciples three times that he would be raised after three days. Maybe the women hadn't heard him tell the men disciples about that.

But they heard the young man, clothed in white. “He has been raised; he is not here.”

But they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

What were they afraid of? They were women. It was their job to wash and perfume the body of someone who had died; usually it was done before the body was placed in a tomb; remember Dorcas had been washed and placed upstairs when Peter came to raise her (Acts 9:37).

The women that sabbath morning couldn't do what they intended, without a body to care for. And so they were afraid.

We have a first century inscription from Caesar Claudius on the obligation to honor the buried. Anyone who disturbs graves or moves a corpse was sentenced to death. 1 So the women were in danger; they could be accused of robbing the tomb, or witnessing a tomb robbery, or being accomplices. The young man may not be much help; in a court, a woman's testimony wasn't admissible; the young man could have said anything about them on the record, and the women would have been trapped.

And if Jesus' body had been moved, how could the women find him? This was their last chance to demonstrate their honor for Jesus.

People need to have a place to go to mourn the death of their loved ones. They need a grave, an urn, a monument, a place to set flowers. If Jesus wasn't in the tomb, where could mourners go?

How would people know the women hadn't anointed the body? Since corpses were unclean, anyone who cares for a corpse had to purify herself afterwards. Mary, Mary, and Salome's families would have expected that the women would wash themselves when they returned, and would have to wait until the evening to be considered clean; if they touched anything they would contaminate it with their uncleanness. And so the women must have made some preparations to be unclean; maybe they asked neighbors to bring in a meal or tend their children. Perhaps they had arranged for some stone benches to sit on, since stone couldn't be made unclean by sitting.

So if the women went home how could they face all those people who had planned on helping them? How could they explain that there was no body, that they were clean, and didn't need their neighbor's help? Should they pretend that they had anointed the body after all, and if someone sees the empty tomb, well, maybe the theft happened after Mary, Mary and Salome had been there? No wonder the women were afraid, even when the young man said, “Don't be afraid. Tell the disciples he's going to Galilee.”

Galilee, where Jesus' ministry began. If the disciples go back to Galilee, if we turn to the beginning of Mark's gospel, we hear Jesus' call to discipleship again. We hear again the story of Jesus' life. He preached the good news, called the disciples, taught in the synagogue. He ministered and taught like other rabbis taught, emphasizing God's justice and mercy. He proclaimed the reign, the kingdom of God. He healed men, women, and children, and demonstrated that every life had worth: leaders, lepers, gentiles, Jews, children, women, and men.

The authorities did not value every life equally; they valued their own lives, and so worked to keep order, maintain power, and gain wealth. Jesus demonstrated different values. He spoke God's truth, even when he knew he was risking his life. And the disciples kept demonstrating that they didn't understand; they abandoned and betrayed him, except for the women, who stayed and watched. And even the women, when faced with the news, were afraid. Afraid to hope that what the young man said was true. There was just too much tragedy going on.

Some of us are afraid to hope. Hope is different from belief. We believe the sun is going to come up tomorrow; we don't hope that it'll come up. Hope is joyful. Without hope, we don't make plans for the future or bother to care for ourselves, much less other people.

Sometimes hope is just too much for our imaginations. We don't dare to hope that God loves us (we aren't very lovable), or Christ saves us (we aren't worth saving), or the holy spirit can work in us (we have too much doubt, sin, trouble, grief and darkness inside). When we are faced with tragedies – police shootings, family shootings, community center shootings, how do we dare live the hope that God's reign of justice and mercy is a reality? How do we dare do more than protect ourselves, take care of our own, and keep our charity at home?

Jesus dared, and he was crucified. And then he was resurrected. We dare hope because of the resurrection. And we don't have to completely understand the resurrection, and know what it means that Christ is risen. (Christ is risen indeed!) The disciples certainly didn't understand that first Easter. The women were afraid, not hopeful. Even the Apostle Paul wrote about the resurrection in a variety of ways; not just one way. We live into the hope of the resurrection, working our whole Christian lives trying to figure it out, how to live in resurrection hope rather than mortal fear.

We know that the women must have found some hope and gathered their courage and told, because we have their story. The good news of God's reign in Jesus Christ spread from the Roman Empire to the Mediterranean, to the rest of the world, so that even here, in Baker City Oregon, we know the good news. We don't know all of it, nor understand it perfectly, but we know enough.

We can live, knowing that God is with us, in the hope that the words in Isaiah are true: God will swallow up death forever and wipe away the tears from our faces.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

1 Zulueta, Claudius' ordinance, from an inscription near Nazareth, Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, p. 168, §223.