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. Well, someone must have said something, because here we are....
How were they feeling before they ran away and said nothing? Their beloved leader has been murdered. Jesus told them that he would not die, and they believed him. They don't really want to see the dead body, because it is proof of their own mortality, and their own gullibility. It is in the moments when we feel most helpless that the need for little rituals takes over. They decide that they must anoint the body. This is something for which they can take personal responsibility, something they have control over.
As they are walking to the tomb, they are thinking about facing their own mortality. Are they talking through their fear? No, of course not. They are arguing about how to get the door open. These women are going to anoint the body, and no stone is going to stop them, if they can just figure out how to move it.
But they don't have to. When they get there, the stone is rolled away and the door is wide open.
This is really scary. Because who would have done such a thing? The only people that loved Jesus enough to care for his body are standing outside. Everyone else interested in him was calling out, 'crucify him!” a couple of days ago. They thought they knew what they would find at the tomb. They didn't want to see such a sight, but there is comfort even in the knowing of the unthinkable.
Now the women are standing outside wondering what to do? What is the right thing to do? Do they give into fear and run away, or do they go inside and face the fear?
These women are now standing on the fence of indecision. When we run out of minor details, we are left with only our fears of the unknown. When we are laid off from a job, there are so many things to fill our time, unemployment forms, COBRA invoices, updated resumes. But eventually, we must face the fact that we have lost our job. Our identity is very wrapped up in what we do, so who are we when we are not working, when we are doing nothing at all?
For the women, the fear of not completing their ritual, is greater than their fear of knowing what is inside the tomb. Come what may, they step around the stone and into the tomb.
And find a guy in a white robe, like some sort of supernatural information clerk. 'Don't be alarmed,”' he says. When has that ever calmed anyone down?
We all encounter things that we cannot rationalize away. We are all afraid of them. And we don't talk about them. The biggest difference between these women and ourselves-we have modern science to help us rationalize a lot more of the world than they did. But science answers questions about who, what and where. Science can never answer the question, why. Science can tell us all about the feeding habits of household spiders, but it can never turn that fact into something that alleviate our fear of spiders. Why are we afraid of spiders? We cannot answer that anymore than the women could explain the scene at the tomb.
Because the body was just not there. These women do not think that Jesus is anything other than dead. They saw him on the cross; they were probably the last to leave and they are probably the first to return. Something larger than their ability to rationalize is at work. Something larger than their ability to explain away is at work. The guy in the white suit is simply beyond their ability to explain. If they do try to explain, they are going to get laughed at, or ridiculed, or told they are distraught with grief, or crazy. No one is going to believe them, and if this guy is passing on the message, it means he isn't going to stick around. So of course they flee in terror. Of course they don't tell anyone. What else can you do with a direct connection to God and a prophecy come true?
That's it. The gospel of Mark is the first story of the life of Jesus that was written down. This story about the women is the end. We don't find out if the disciples met up with Jesus in Galilee, we don't find out about doubting Thomas. There is no Paul, yet. There isn't anyone saying, you have to see Jesus, or have a personal relationship with the resurrected Christ, in order to do what he said. This ending is up to us. Do we take up doing what is right as Jesus was doing, or do we say, tough break, having the leader of such a cool movement die like that. Mark is the perfect altar call, for those of you who know what that is. We finish the story. The action is all ours.
Gospel means Good News. And, strange though it may seem, this story is Good News. If this were just a story, it would never get published with an ending like that. But, Mark is part of a whole series of gospels and letters that make up what we know and believe to be the Good News of Christ crucified and risen. And what Mark leaves up to the reader, Paul enumerates in great detail.
In our lesson from Acts today, Paul gives us the good news. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
I need to offer an aside about translations here, and I am sorry, because I know it is boring, but fear is like love when we translate between languages-overused. So I want to clarify fear of God as opposed to the sort of fear we mean in our everyday conversations, the sort of fear I have been talking about. Fear is a bad thing that we don't want to have. We are afraid of things that are irrational, that hurt us, that don't make sense to us. But translators use the word fear to translate a Greek word that actually means something more like healthy respect.
For instance, I hope everyone here has a healthy respect for bears. Nothing a bear does is provoked by the desire to find a particular human and maul him to death. In fact, we don't really know why bears do the things they do. We rationalize bear behavior, and we try to predict bear behavior based on our own motivations, but we don't really know how bears think. God is so much bigger than a bear. When Paul tells us that God wants us to fear him, he is saying “Don't put God in a box, or think you can make God into a person that you can predict and manipulate.”
So, Paul is telling us some genuine good news- God is not something petty and prejudiced, and we don't have to be afraid because we cannot box God in, all we have to worry about is doing what is right- not following the rules, not doing what your mother taught you, but what is right.
How do we know what is right? Well, the many followers of God have fought many a war trying to tell people that they know what is right; but what is right is usually pretty obvious, and if it isn't -remember that the last shall and should be first. The poor family that cannot buy food. The widow who is homebound and has no company. The prisoner who is being incarcerated for any reason. The children who have no home to learn right in.
What is right is to reduce the everyday terror of the unknown in the world.
What is right is to reduce the pain in the world.
What is right is to share every good thing in the world, with everyone in the world.
Does that make Christians crazy communistic utopia driven hippies. Well of course it does.
Are we any good at it? No. The point is to do what is right. To do something. Do not worry if it is good or bad. Don't worry if it is correct. Don't worry what the neighbors will think. Do what is right, for the people who are being done wrong. And if you screw something up. If your consequences are not all they could be. Don't let the fear of that stop you from trying for the right thing.
Don't misunderstand me. The right thing is hard. Doing the right thing doesn't pay well, it doesn't come with a benefits package, and the hours are lousy. And the burnout is real. And the fear creeps into the exhaustion until we either start to triage this person as more deserving than that one, or we stop altogether, because we have only seen bad outcomes from all our effort.
So you may wonder why start? It doesn't sound like very good new at all. But Paul goes on. There is more good news to sustain us. That good news is the heart of Christianity. It is the thing that makes Christianity different from all other religions that follow the one God. It is the thing that makes Christianity worth telling all over the world.
Paul says, “He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Christianity says that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad. That is Jesus' job. But even more important, it is Jesus' job to forgive. We are celebrating the Resurrection today. We celebrate the truth that Jesus isn't dead, and he isn't where we left him. Theologically, this is the reason that we can do good things and be forgiven. The death and resurrection are the last sacrifice, the last time we have to feel guilty for having done something and not getting the outcome we wanted. The last time we have to lash out in hurt, the last time we have to burn a cow or grovel in fear of a God that we have created in our own minds.
This means that you are free. You can do what is right. You do not need to be afraid of any of these things. You do not even need to be afraid that your actions will produce bad consequences. You will be forgiven.
The question I leave with you is, what are you doing with this Good News. Are you merely benefiting from it in silence? Are you not doing what is right, because you fear the consequences of your actions? Are you out doing what is right , because you know that you are forgiven the mistakes and circumstances that arise from doing what is right? Because you know that you are not required to triage the deserving from the takers? Because you know that what happens to you, or to anyone, is not some natural or crazy-God given consequence of actions?
(point)Are you telling anyone that the reason you can feed the homeless is that you are not afraid that you might become homeless? Are you telling people that you are not concerned that you might be interfering with someone's natural consequences, someone's opportunity to learn from their mistakes? Are you telling people that you don't care what they think of you for spending time with people who are not from your own social class?
(calm)What you need to do is share this idea-this truth-that we should not box God into something that looks like us, that we should do what is right, that we don't have to decide who is good and who is bad, and that we are forgiven our mistakes. Who doesn't need to hear this? Who wouldn't benefit from it? Those women were wrong not to spread the Good News of Jesus Crucified and Christ Resurrected. Yes, they were wrong for good reasons. They were wrong for fear of personal failure. They were wrong for fear of humiliation and punishment by the law. They were wrong for fear of ridicule for experiencing something supernatural, something that answered why, not just who what or where. They were wrong because they, like us, did not want to face their own mortality, their own humanness. But they were wrong. Don't you be wrong, too.
Amen.
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