Understanding Easter (1 Corinthians 15:9-28)

In the first century CE, just two decades after the events of the gospels took place, an early Christian leader named Paul traveled across the known world of the time, preaching and teaching.  Much of the New Testament comes from Paul and his counterparts, writing in the form of letters (aka “epistles”) to small Christian groups scattered around the Roman Empire.   These epistles give us a glimpse of what Christianity was like in the early days.  From a historical point of view, the epistles of Paul and other early leaders offer a glimpse into a religion finding its voice, wrestling with questions of identity, and sorting out what it means to live as a follower of Jesus.

Last semester, I was part of a team offering a religious studies course at Southern Vermont College.  The instructors were largely local faith community leaders, who offered their time to share the wisdom and perspective of the religion they practiced.  As you can imagine, tackling a variety of religions in a course was fairly daunting to schedule.  Nonetheless, we were able to use the religious diversity among the instructors to model inter-religious dialogue, which we agreed was the most important “lesson” to impart to undergraduate students who have grown up in a time when “religion” (of any persuasion) has become less of interest, and for some, part of what ails the world today.

One evening, the course explored Judaism and Christianity with Rabbi Joshua Boetigger and myself serving as the lecturers.  The last of the three-hour class period was given over to questions of Jewish/Christian relations, and that was the easier part of our duties for the evening.  The first two hours were the more daunting.  Joshua and I had an hour each to introduce Judaism and Christianity. 

How do you explain Christianity in an hour?  For starters, how do you deal with 2000 years of history?  How do you explain why the Church is really comprised of a variety of churches, and within these varying movements, there are people within each tradition who come from just about every theological position imaginable? 

To explain Christianity in an hour is next to impossible, however, there is one core belief that can explain Christianity: Christians confess Christ as Lord.  We may vary in our doctrines, rituals, and ethics, yet Christians seek out ways to demonstrate how we are shaped foremost by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of our faith.   To understand a Christian is to understand the resurrection is the inner core of the beliefs we confess, proclaim, and live.

 At the end of First Corinthians, Paul offers a hearty defense and celebration of the Resurrection in the fifteenth chapter.  He tells of the many who were eyewitnesses to Christ himself, who passed down their testimony in support of what they believed God brought about in the resurrection of Jesus.  This belief Paul claims is “the” belief that grounds the faith in a way of believing and living in the world. 

For the first century Corinthians (and yea verily, even the 21^st-century Christian as well), belief in the fullness of resurrection’s promise was difficult to take in.  Some within the Corinthian fellowship believed in the resurrection of Christ, however, they struggled with the belief that the believer would be likewise resurrected someday.  Paul argues that Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of something new that transforms what we have taken for granted about this life.  What is an ending (our death) is just a beginning. 

Although the world as we know it is broken and mired in its own sin, Christ’s life, death and resurrection recasts the world in a new light.  The resurrection restores what Adam and Eve lost in Eden long ago.  In his resurrection, Christ becomes the first fruit of the New Creation, the first sign of what will be coming.  No more shall death be the final word.  In the end, Christ offers us a verdant hope where death shall be no more and the brokenness of the world as we know it shall be no longer. The follower of Jesus claims the Resurrection redefines the relationship between God, humanity, and the world.  The sorrows of humanity’s finite and flawed existence are given new hope in a New Creation.

Down the ages proclaiming and living this faith, Christians have created works of art, liturgy, and composed songs to celebrate the resurrection.  For we western Christians, we tend to imagine the scene drawn fairly literally from the gospel narratives:  an Empty tomb, persons standing around as the angels give their proclamation.  From the world of Orthodox Christianity, another image is quite common, less immediate from the gospels, however, quite in the spirit of other parts of the New Testament writings.  The German Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann observes,

The wonderful Orthodox resurrection icon [a holy image] shows the risen Christ as the head of the new humanity.  He is holding Adam and Eve by the hand, and pulling them with him out of the world of the dead. 

The Orthodox liturgy runs:  “Everything is now filled with light, heaven and earth and the realm of death.  The whole creation rejoices in Christ’s resurrection.” 

So Christ ‘descended into the realm of death’ in order to fill it with the jubilation of the resurrection.  The night of death gives way to the daybreak colors of the resurrection. (In the End—The Beginning:  The Life of Hope, English translation, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004, p. 149).

In Moltmann’s glorious turn of phrase, “the night of death” is no more.  The “daybreak colors” of resurrection cast the world in a different light.  No more should we live as if the brokenness of the world has the last word.  The Christian does not wait idly by for “the sweet bye-and-bye” of the End yet to come.  Instead, we believe a story so powerful that it can transform the world by its hope and those who carry the hope deep within. 

Hence, Paul calls the Corinthians to cease their conflict and focus on their calling to proclaim and live out the Christ story.  Hence this Easter morning is not just about the traditions of family and food and fun.  Rather, Easter worship is about the retelling of the story that gathers us here and summons us to live out the gospel in the world.   The Church is not meant to be a place for the chosen few or the needs of the fold.  The Church is a place where resurrection’s hope and power is encouraged to spread out through the rest of the world. 

A few years ago, it was Easter Sunday morning at my previous parish in Kansas City.  At one point in the service, the congregation was encouraged to greet one another with the traditional greeting and response for Easter.  One would say, “Christ is risen.”  And the other would respond: “Christ is risen indeed!”

The congregation rose up to greet one another.  This was a new experience for many, as we Baptists have tended not to have such formal liturgy in our worship.  After the exchange of greeting and response was given, people began to hug one another and talk animatedly to one another. 

Looking around the sanctuary from my place up on the altar area, I noticed one man moving through the crowd rather quickly.  He was shaking every single person’s hand during this time.  I was curious how he could do the exchanges so quickly.  Literally, out of a crowd of thirty-plus people, he finished shaking hands of the people in the pews and now headed for the altar area to greet the worship leaders and myself.

He came up to each of us, though he was in a hurry, he deliberately paused, letting us initiate the greeting (“Christ is risen.”) and then the man said, “Indeed!”  And off he went back to his seat.

That Easter morning the man summarized the good news so well.  Christ is risen!, he had been told, and he affirmed the faith, perhaps with the most brevity known in the history of Christendom, but nonetheless, he did it well.  The Christian is the one who hears the good news, and no matter where along the journey of faith one is at, in the newness of belief or the long season of keeping the faith thereafter, “Indeed!” is our continuing response to the good news.

When Paul encouraged the Corinthians to keep the faith, when the Christians down the centuries did the same, we are here this morning to carry that tradition and belief onwards.  This day as we hear the good news of Easter resurrection morn long ago, how can we not help but add our own alleluias to the generations before us?  Together with the saints in heaven and the global Church, this day, we celebrate the day when Christ was raised from the dead and became the first fruits of New Creation.   Christ is risen! 

May we always say, “Indeed!”

Mark Ends, Easter Begins (Mark 16:1-8)

Mark Ends, Easter Begins

The elementary school building hummed with anticipation all day. Just after lunch, a storyteller would visit for an all-school assembly. As we walked into the auditorium, we found him already there, sitting in a big easy chair, reading a book. He kept reading until the entire school was sitting at his feet. After a moment or two of silence, the storyteller looked up with a bit of a start. He leapt to his feet, tossing his book on the chair. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in! Would you like to tell a story with me?”

Over the next half-hour, the storyteller spun the story of a knight going off to save the damsel in distress. However, he kept pausing in the midst of his story and selected a child from the audience. “Can you tell me what happened next?” The child would offer a suggestion, and the storyteller wove the child’s idea into the story. By the end of the half-hour, the knight had defeated the evil dragon, and the damsel gave him a kiss. Thanks to the intercession of one child, the story even included the knight’s horse getting a carrot for being such a good horse.

I remember that afternoon story-time with great affection. The storyteller treated each child with respect, allowing us to feel like we had part in the great story of a knight, a damsel, and a carrot-loving horse. It was not “his” story to tell. Instead, it was all of us together, telling the story. In return, the storyteller pushed us to see the many different directions a story could go. He engaged our imagination. We learned that day stories take us so many wonderful places!

Today, we hear a story that ends with a screeching halt. The gospel of Mark ends with these words:

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.

Mark the storyteller gives us a gospel that seems a bit perplexing, even to grownups. Mark’s story of Jesus ends with fear.

The gospel ends with…fear? What happened? Was the original ending lost? Somebody must have thought so. Some scholars ponder perhaps the oldest scrolls of Mark were torn, leaving such an unpolished ending for future generations to puzzle over. Just a few years after Mark’s gospel began circulating around the first century Church, some versions of Mark began to appear with an extra verse tacked on (“the shorter ending”, or Mark 16:8”b”). By the time of the second century, other manuscripts had a “longer ending” added (Mark 16:9-16), adding some rather strange verses noting that believers could handle snakes and drink poison without consequence. (A friendly reminder: do not try this at home!) Surely, the gospel does not end this way!

A fear-filled ending is an oddity, considering how we have shown up in fresh pressed Easter dresses, Easter eggs hidden away for the children afterwards. Regarding Mark’s Gospel, Fred Craddock claims this ending is so strange to hear at Easter. What is the Church, after being encouraged to shout “Alleluia!” all morning long, to do with the gospel story that ends with “fear”?

Scholar Mitzi Minor notes these three women come to the tomb and get “three shocks”. First, they find the stone rolled away from the tomb. Second, they discover a stranger dressed in white. Finally, they hear his word that Jesus is no longer here: not dead but risen and on the move to Galilee. In shock, the women flee, stunned into silence, drenched in fear, overwhelmed by the enormity of what they have encountered. Other gospels go onwards, telling of disciples eventually understanding what happened, doubters turning to believers, and Jesus himself appearing to assure them of his resurrection. Mark’s gospel ends with the image of three women running as hard as they can, off into the distance. (The Power of Mark’s Story)

Just to keep it complicated, the Greek text of Mark’s presumed “original ending” is more maddening. The best translation of Mark 16:8a tends to render the text:

“So they went out and fled the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone. They were afraid for….”

What do we do with this? “They were afraid, for….” Puzzling, isn’t it? The last word of the most ancient copies of Mark’s gospel is “for.…”, the Greek word “gar”. Instead of a conclusion in the traditional sense, we get the impression that something has gone missing. The story ends with dot-dot-dot…, trailing off, and leaving things unfinished. What happened next? Did it end with fear? Did it end with belief? Mark’s gospel, the earliest version known, leaves us hanging! They ran away, terrified and amazed, saying nothing to nobody. They were afraid for….

Now go back to the storyteller from my childhood. A good story engages the mind, taking us to some wonderful places. Jesus himself was adept at spinning a parable that left his listeners, friendly and unfriendly alike, dizzy with the implications of what the kingdom of God is like. Jesus spent his life, indeed “gave” his life, to the teaching and living out of his message. Two millennia later, we gather week after week to learn how to do likewise. There is a power in this story called “gospel”, but what do we do when the gospel vexes us with less than straightforward storytelling?

Let’s do something more common for today’s child to do when caught up in the midst of hearing a story. Let’s hit the “rewind” button and watch the story again. The women come to the tomb, discover the stone rolled away, and encounter this strange male figure dressed in white (note: other gospels claim angelic presence. Mark chooses to be a bit more demure). The man in white tells the women,

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. 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.

Mark ends on vs. eight, however, it is really vs. seven that presents the narrative complication. Will the women run away and dismiss this word as a hoax? Is death the last word and resurrection a myth? What happens if we leave the empty tomb and, even though dizzied by what we have heard, we summon the courage and the curiosity to look towards Galilee? British scholar Morna Hooker writes,

The ending Mark demands that his readers supply—is the response of faith: it is only those who are prepared to believe and who set off on the journey of faith who will see the risen Lord. (Endings)

The gospel ends on an inconclusive yet demanding note. What comes next? Does fear or faith follow next? Rowan Williams suggests that the “lost ending” of Mark is the reader herself. Williams writes, “We have to discover for ourselves what difference is made by this life, this death, and this disorienting mystery after the crucifixion”. (Christ on Trial) Catholic storyteller Megan McKenna puts it a bit differently. At the end of Mark’s gospel, “it wasn’t enough to hear the words; [the disciples] had to live them”. (On Your Mark!)

The ending of this story, a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God, the good news He proclaimed, lived, and died for, the end of this story depends on the storyteller stepping aside and saying, “What happened next?”

Later this summer, Kerry and I will attend a continuing education program for clergy and their spouses. The program’s leadership asked for photographs of the church: its people, ministries in action, and the edifice itself. I went around First Baptist, taking pictures of people, activities, and finally, I headed for the sanctuary to take pictures of the altar, the organ, the pews, and the stained glass.

As I scurried around the sanctuary, I found myself standing at the back of the sanctuary, looking up at the four big stained glass panels that now stream with light on this lovely Easter day: these marvelous images of the annunciation to Mary, the child Jesus before the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord, and the Crucifixion.

Despite being minister for three years now and quite familiar with this sanctuary (or so I thought), I had never noticed that there was a scene missing. Where is Easter? There is no “empty tomb” image to be found in the stained glass: no Jesus greeting Mary Magdalene in the garden, no doubting Thomas placing hand on the wounds of the resurrected Savior, no Christ commissioning the disciples to go forth to the ends of the earth.

Where is the image of the resurrection in this place? Like an exasperated reader of Mark, I want to know: Where is the end of the Gospel?

Later, as I am uploading pictures to my office computer, I kept seeing all of the pictures of congregational life flash across the computer screen:

Alyssa and Joe teaching the kids at Vacation Bible School,

Byron, Lisa, and Fran praying at Ash Wednesday service,

The congregation singing in the midst of worship,

Cindy and Bob working at a Habitat worksite down in Louisiana,

The elderly, the young, and the ages in between sharing potluck together;

The children running through Willow Park at the church picnic.