Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Easter Sunday - 11AM Service - April 12, 2009
Mark 16: 1-8
Reflecting on Jesus and the impact Jesus had on people and the world around him, Old Testament professor, Walter Brueggemann, writes, "The people in the Gospel narrative could smell the danger in Jesus. They needed only sniff the air around him or notice the people who traveled with him to sense the threat. They had life arranged about the best way it could be. Jesus came into their midst as a threat of newness and deep change and massive transformation. Everywhere Jesus went, by his words and by his acts, he caused newness to emerge. He caused old things to drop off and die. He even dismissed some of what people most treasured."
People could smell the danger in Jesus... I kind of like that. But it's Easter Sunday. Do you smell anything like danger in the air? What could there possibly be to fear from Easter - unless you have some phobia about bunnies, or brunch or colored eggs. What Breuggemann says about Jesus' life and ministry is well and good, but today is Easter. And while the day is about many different things, we seldom associate it with fear...right?
"And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." Easter morning and they were afraid. There, before the empty tomb, they smelled danger in the air. Now is this any way to end an Easter story? The greatest day of the year, the happiest of happy endings, and Mark ends the story with women cowering in fear after learning that their Lord has been raised from the dead. What kind of an ending is that? I mean, I thought Easter was about lilies, butterflies, joyous music, lots of good chocolate. Why the fear?
Author, Reynolds Price, wrote a book a while back that touched many lives. He called the book, A Whole New Life, and that is exactly what he describes - a whole new life. It is his account of being diagnosed with cancer, having surgery, and ending up paralyzed from the waist down, forced to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It could have been the story of the end of his life, or at least the end of the life that he had known and loved.
But the story doesn't stop there. It is also the story of how Price learned not to be confined by a wheelchair or anything else. He was determined that his disability would not shape the horizons of his life. He started over. He wrote some of his best fiction during this time when life could have been ended. How did he manage to overcome, to continue on, in the face of such disappointment and disability? His response was to say one of the biggest mistakes we make, when we are assaulted by some great trauma or tragedy, is to think that we can just get up, brush ourselves off, and go right on living the life we lived before. The old life is gone. The only hope for us is to say, "The old me has died. There must now be a new me, reinvented." The old has passed away; the new has come. Only by letting go of the old do we have any hope of embracing the new. And that just isn't Reynolds Price talking. It also sounds a lot like the Apostle Paul. Sounds a lot like Easter.
And I wonder if that could explain the fear? Those women had to go back out into the world. Peter and the other disciples would eventually have to go back out into the world. And they would discover that, try as they might, they could not pick up their lives where they had left things off before Easter - they could not go on living the life they had lived before. The open tomb was a doorway to a new creation, a whole new world, a world demanding new people. It was a world where the Risen Christ was now at large, and it was the ever-present possibility of surprise and newness as he encountered people and invited them to join him. And perhaps, somewhere deep in their hearts, these women understood that; understood that walking through that door, joining Jesus in the new world, meant there was no going back. And so they were afraid. Who knows, maybe this morning as we sing our "hallelujahs" perhaps we should all be just a bit fearful. It might be a little dangerous for you to be here today. I suspect that most of us are pretty comfortable with the lives we have. How much newness are we prepared to embrace?
I recall the words of a young man spoken after he saw the Grand Canyon for the first time: "Boy, you don't want to mess with whoever made that!" Maybe we could say the same thing about Easter. You don't want to mess with whoever rolled that stone away from the tomb, you don't want to mess with whoever has the power to bring forth life from death, you don't want to mess with one who can make all things new...including us. Those women saw the stone rolled away and they were afraid. Their first inclination must have been to shout, "Don't open the door!" For again deep in their hearts they knew...it's no longer safe here, everything we ever believed about ourselves and our world is now in jeopardy. Says Brueggemann, "They sense, as Jesus surely knew, that resurrection is dangerous business. It is not just about a dead person being resuscitated. It's about God's power for life that moves into all our arrangements, shatters all our categories by which we manage, control and administer. It speaks about God's will for new life working where we thought only our old tired deathliness would prevail...It is the power of life in the midst of a world bent on death." You might say that the Easter word to our comfortable, no risk taking status quo is..."Be afraid...be very afraid." Something's afoot, something's on the loose, that just might shatter all our ways of control, turn inside out and upside down all our secure and safe world views. Are we ready for an Easter like that? Can't we just go home and have a nice meal?
A pastor went to visit a new family in his church. He couldn't help but notice, in the family photos, that one of the children always seemed to be just outside the smiling family circle. He later learned that this child, John, had cerebral palsy. He spent many days in his room by himself - in the family, but not quite in the family. And everyone seemed comfortable with this. A few weeks later the mother called the pastor. She had to see him right then. Noting the urgency in her voice, he went right over. She was quite agitated, didn't know exactly how to start. Finally, she said, "I've had a vision. I was vacuuming, John was in the hall. I looked up for a moment, and in that moment, I saw Jesus, I saw Jesus standing there with his arm around my son." In that moment, for her, a door opened. A new world intruded. Before long, she began an outreach program in her town for children like John and their families, a program that soon spread throughout the state. Was it really a vision of the Risen Christ? Or was she just tired, overwrought, feeling guilty about her neglect of her son...maybe all of the above. But she knew what she had seen. We psychoanalyze, she took action. For her it was Easter, an old life left behind and a new life embraced as she walked through a door opened by the One who makes all things new.
Now, I have spoken today of Easter as challenging, perhaps even a bit frightening. I mean, it is so much easier to just deny it all, to ignore it - to go to church, endure yet another Easter sermon, return home, wake up tomorrow as if nothing has happened, nothing has changed. I think of Snoopy, sitting under a tree as a leaf falls. He watches it fall to the earth, then says, "Well, the first falling leaf of the season. The first leaf to make the courageous leap. The first leaf to depart from home. The first leaf to plunge into the unknown....The first leaf to die." Easy to take that attitude. Easters come and Easters go. Not much changes, nothing really new under the sun. Tomorrow will look pretty much like today. The buds of today will be the dead leaves of tomorrow. C'mon, Gene, get real!
But what if reality is an empty tomb. What if reality is this new power of life in the midst of a world bent on death. Take another sniff of the Easter air. You know, what smelled like danger begins to smell strangely like new possibility. The shattering of the old just might be the beginning of the new. Could it be, all around us, that the new power of resurrection is already breaking out against all the old weary categories of oppression, intolerance, violence, hopelessness, despair and death? The good news of this day is that God's power of life will not be overridden or defeated. This is the source of our strength, our hope, our faith, our resolve. Easter dares to change our assumptions and expectations about life. You are free to do more with your life than simply protect it. You can offer it - you can offer it in the name of justice, peace and hope because the victory is already won.
He is not here, the women are told, he is going ahead of you. He will not take us back to the way things were. The only way out of darkness and death is to move ahead. And knowing this, we had best be ready for anything, ready for any closed door suddenly to burst open, because he is still alive and active, still busy, still going ahead of us, still blazing a trail for us to follow.
I've shared this story with you before on other Easters, but I return to it again because it's one my favorites. Charles Blondin, a Frenchman, was one of the world's greatest tight-rope walkers. A century and half ago, he crossed Niagara on a tightrope. After this great feat - the year was 1859 - he asked an onlooker, "You believe I can carry a man on my shoulders across Niagara?" The man, breathless with enthusiasm, said yes, he believed he could! "Then," said Blondin, "will you be the man?"
Well, the year is not 1859, and we are far removed from that first Easter Sunday. But a risen Christ comes to us still and asks, "Will you be the one? Is the new life of Easter for you? For I can raise up anyone from death to life and I can do it right now. Will you be the one?"