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“Along the Way: The Faithful,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 4/5/15 (Easter)

Along the Way: The Faithful”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

April 5, 2015

This morning, I am indebted to Matthew Skinner for his ideas on resurrection, which have inspired much of today’s word.[1]

You’ve heard the statistics, right? What’s the one thing people fear more than death? Public speaking. There’s no doubt that public speaking played a role in Jesus’ death.  He was a little too radical, a little too vocal, a little too forward. On the other hand, Jesus’ death – and un-death – left his disciples with nothing to say.

READ MARK 16:1-8

Death is an understandable fear.  It’s socially acceptable.  And yet isn’t there something about living that is also undeniably distressing?

I’ll confess, I’m not a fan of apocalyptic shows and movies, but I’ve seen enough of them under coercion to know that “it doesn’t take much for the lines between order and chaos, between civility and mayhem, between trustworthiness and falsehood to be exposed as thinner than advertised.”  Whether we like to admit it or not, we navigate a world in which it often feels like we exercise little real control.

Co-pilots aren’t supposed to crash commercial jets.

States can’t just grant individuals and businesses the right to discriminate against under-protected groups in the name of a damaging definition of “religious freedom.”

We may never learn where those two-hundred-plus Nigerian girls were taken. Remember the ones kidnapped from their school — from their school! — nearly a year ago?

We may not be able to find them on a map, but we know the names of places in the world that our country has bombed on our behalf.

We’re swept along by others’ choices – to say nothing of the fact that we often cannot see where our own choices will lead us.

Anxiety is not only pumped through the news IV of our TVs, computers, and handheld devices – it’s a reality that arises from life’s uncertainties. Anxiety is the way our bodies respond to the tension between our greatest hopes and ideals and the complexity of what it means to be finite, human and broken.

A life such as this requires faith.

Even if you wouldn’t describe yourself as a “person of faith,” who doesn’t live by some kind of faith?

Maybe it’s “a reliance on effort and intelligence, a willingness to surrender to risk, a retreat into the security of privilege, a decision to live for others, or a resigned acceptance that at least we’ll have company when disaster strikes.”

Faith, in its most elemental form, is that which compels us forward.  Remember that.

We joined Christians around the world this morning as we began worship proclaiming, “Christ is Risen!”  You know your part.

And yet when we read from Mark’s gospel, there’s no doubt in my mind that things were hardly so easy – and joyful – that first Easter.

The account we read this morning is remarkably brief.  That’s just Mark’s style: Gospel concentrate.  The stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, the women are told Jesus has been raised. Mark could’ve tweeted that – it’s only 87 characters.  #heisrisen #terrified

The discovery of the tomb – Jesus not included – doesn’t immediately evoke relief and wonder in the disciples.  The message that he is alive doesn’t stir joy, praise, and excitement in the women who got the word first, as women are prone to do.

Instead, the encounter generates silence and terror.  They “fled the tomb.”

“Christ is risen,” the angelic figure at the tomb says.

“Let’s get the heck out of here!” the first post-Easter congregation responds.

If you turn to the end of Mark’s gospel, you’ll notice something a little strange.  Fun fact: there’s a “shorter ending” and a “longer ending.”

We read the shorter ending this morning.  It may have felt a little awkward and abrupt.  The longer ending remedies that only ever so slightly, in case you were wondering.  Not to mention most scholars agree that the “longer ending” was almost certainly written by separate authors writing decades if not a generation or two after the original.  Those additions are merely an attempt “to tie a neat bow out of the strands the original ending left dangling.”

Why? One theory – and one that sounds pretty spot-on to me is: “the original ending might have seemed too willing to admit that the prospect of Jesus’ resurrection will unsettle us, then, and now.”

Listen – “when a guy executed for [treason] is raised to new life, the line between life and death suddenly grows paper-thin.  [When something like that happens,] we’re asked to reassess all our familiar assumptions. We’re asked to believe that there’s more to reality than what we can grasp.  That maybe there IS a future in which things like reconciliation, justice, forgiveness, peace, and genuine security are really possible.”

Easter says those things.

Easter says that reconciliation, justice, forgiveness, peace, and genuine security do come, although not through our own diligence or ingenuity.  Those things come through a Messiah that is betrayed, blamed, beaten, and buried.  A Messiah who was so on-the-edge that he was elusive in life, let alone in death and resurrection.

Talk about anxiety.

The tomb is empty, but notice what’s missing from Mark’s gospel:

There’s no earthquake.  No blinding light.  No appearance by Jesus to comfort a sobbing disciple.  No happy reunion.  No teaching moment.  No great commission.  No opportunity to touch crucifixion wounds.  Those details are left to the other Gospel writers – and they’re details that they clearly consider vital.

Mark, on the other hand, is a minimalist.  He’s not interested in proving that Jesus rose.  Mark puts us smack in the middle of an existential crisis: a faith crisis.

If Jesus’ death doesn’t end his (or our) story, if he goes before his followers to Galilee, then anything is possible.  God effectively pledges to make it so, opening wide the doors into a desirable future.   But it doesn’t just happen in a [jiffy.]   It’s a future that must be lived into — moving forward.

Maybe, just maybe, Mark believes that the story isn’t over yet. And because he believed the story wasn’t quite over yet, he writes an open ending to his gospel in order to invite us to jump in and take up our part in continuing it.[2]

N.T. Wright calls this our new job.  The job we get by virtue of serving the RISEN Christ.  Our new job is to bring the life of heaven to birth in actual, physical, earthly reality.  Jesus’ new life is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, so much as to [inhabit] earth with the life of heaven.  Remember the prayer Jesus’ taught us to pray?  “On earth as it is in heaven…”[3]

There’s no doubt that our lives often resemble Mark’s post-Easter reality: the place where the women – terrified, anxious, afraid, amazed – the place where they dwell at that moment is the place we live day in and day out.

It’s situated right between hope and fear.  Teetering between disappointment and attainment.  It’s wondering if we’re fools to hope for a world that’s reliable and a life that’s meaningful.

Like the women, we believe; or we’re trying to. Some days other people have to believe for us. But we’ve seen enough of the Easter reality to be enticed to dare.

Like the women, we know that resurrection is a game-changer. If it’s true, death has been bested. [It does not get the final word.]  If it’s true, then we lose our excuses for taking refuge in cynicism or hopelessness.

Like the women, we are going to need some help.  Leaps of faith are infinitely easier when someone else tests the landing site for us.

Jesus made a whole bunch of promises in this Gospel that proved true.  So we trust him to keep this one: that he will meet his disciples in Galilee in all the “longer endings” to this story that we construct for ourselves and our own lives— in the unforeseen consequences of Easter that extend forward to us – to all of us.

Maybe you came here today struggling to feel the joy of resurrection in your pinkie finger let alone in your heart.  Maybe you came here today desperate for the hope of resurrection that has eluded your mind let alone your soul.  Maybe you came here today barely clinging to the promise of resurrection as a reality that could be possible in anyone’s life, let alone your own.  Maybe you came here today with abundant love in your heart, the promise of resurrection sweet on your lips.  Maybe you came here today with peace in your spirit, the mystery of resurrection settled in your bones.

How ever you came here today, my hope and prayer is that you will leave here today with the assurance of resurrection in the place from which Jesus’ own compassion came – his guts.  May we know in our gut that resurrection is real and true.  That there are second and third and fourth chances.  That love does win.  That even in the uncertainty of our life and faith, the first promise Jesus makes when he returns from his forty day fast in the wilderness holds true yet today: “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15).

Take a look at the mirror.  Who do you see?  Maybe you don’t know their name.  Maybe you could introduce yourself after the service.  But I can tell you right now who you’re looking at – you’re looking at one of the faithful.  You’re looking at one of the ones who is being moved forward by the God who meets us where we are – wherever we are – and does not leave us where we were found.

[1] Note:  This sermon is adapted heavily from ideas and verbiage in Daring to Hope in the Stress of Uncertainty by Matthew L. Skinner. You can read the entirety of his piece here:  http://www.odysseynetworks.org/on-scripture-the-bible/daring-to-hope-in-the-stress-of-uncertainty-mark-161-8.  Where quotations are used, they are his unless otherwise cited.

[2] David Lose, Easter B: Only the Beginning at www.davidlose.net.  Posted March 30, 2015.

[3] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, 293.