Mark 16:1-11Scared to Life

Preached Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014

Opening

Bruce Larson tells a story about a judge in Croatia who had an unfortunate accident. Hewas in the bathtub when he stood up to turn on a light - and zap! - he was electrocuted. His wife found him sprawled on the bathroom floor. He was pronounced dead, and aswas the custom there, they placed him in a room under a crypt in the town cemetery fortwenty-four hours before he was to be buried. In the middle of the night, the judge cameto, and realized where he was. He rushed over to alert the watchman, who promptly ranaway, terrified.

The watchman returned with a friend, and after checking him out, they released him. Hisfirst thought was to call his wife and reassure her, but he got no farther than, "Hello,darling, it's me..." when she screamed and fainted. Next he went to the houses of severalfriends, who were sure he was a ghost. In a last desperate measure, he called a friend in adistant city who had not heard of his death, and he interceded with the judge's family andfriends.

People coming back from the dead, is scary

Most Easter Sunday services are full of joy and celebration from beginning to end. Butour Easter scripture reading is about - fear.

Just a little more than a week before we encounter these three women in our scripturereading, they had watched Jesus enter Jerusalem in triumph. The day we celebrated lastSunday as Palm Sunday.

But then they watched as he was arrested...as Pilate brought him out to ask if heshould free Jesus or Barabbas, and the crowd cried for Barabbas

watched as he stumbled his way to Golgotha with the beam of the cross on hisback

watched as the soldiers spread-eagled him on the cross and drove iron nailsthrough his wrists and feet and then raised the cross up to silhouette the sky

watched as he hung there with the mocking sign over his head which read in thevernacular, “Head Jew”

watched as the religious leaders mocked him, saying, “Come on down from that

1

cross and then we’ll believe in you”

watched Jesus heave out his last breaths and die

watched as his limp body was taken down from the cross

watched as they laid him on a cold stone slab in the tomb

watched as the stone was rolled across the mouth of the tomb, the rays of the sunshut out and tomb was left dark and silent.

And now they head to the tomb.

And they go to the tomb with spices to anoint Jesus’ body - it was kind of agoodbye ceremony, maybe something like when we lay a rose on the casket at agraveside service. It’s not much, but it’s something they can do, something to saygoodbye to Jesus, forever.

They think, they’re going to a place of death. They think, they’re going to anointan already-decomposing body. They think, this is the last stop on the road fromhope to despair.

But then they see the empty tomb...meet the angel...incredible news...Jesus, stone-colddead, has risen from the dead! And the women - are are afraid.

and it’s not only Mark - Matthew and Luke says those who went to the tomb werealso afraid

this seems pretty odd, doesn’t it - and it tells us that these are authentic accounts -you wouldn’t make this up

What kind of fear is this?

Now, at first this might seem puzzling. What were they afraid of? What kind of fear wasthis?

There’s the fear that is mixed with delight, like when you begin the nearly-vertical plungeon a roller coaster’s first hill. But that’s not what the women felt.

There’s the fear - terror really - when your life is threatened.

Few years back I’m cruising down a four-lane road much like Lincoln Way East. The right hand lane is stopped and I’m cruising down the left-hand lane when

2

right in front of me, somebody zips out of a parking lot to make a left-hand turnand it was one of those moments when time slows to a crawl - I see stark terror inthe driver’s eyes, I stomp on the brakes, he floors it and manages to get out of thepath of my car before I slam right into the driver’s side door.

But that’s not the fear the women felt, either.

But then there’s the fear that hits when something completely unexpected andunbelievable happens - it feels like the whole world you knew has come apart. I thinkthat’s the kind of fear the women felt.

The woman saw that Jesus was stone cold dead. And they saw exactly where theyput his body. And if there’s one thing we know for sure about our world, is thatdead things stay dead.

Maybe you’ve heard about the stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining,depression, acceptance. The end of the process, is acceptance. That the personyou loved is dead and gone and is never, ever coming back. And that’s the bestwe can do. We feel outrage, pain, heart-wrenching sadness, but the best you cando, is finally to accept death.

But for the women at Jesus’ tomb -his body isn’t there. They move further into the tomband it’s not empty at all because there is what Mark describes as a young man in a whiterobe - a messenger from heaven - who has some news for them. Jesus isn’t there, he’srisen from the dead, and he wants to set an appointment with you, so head back up toGalilee - your home turf - and you’ll see him there.

If you were making up a story about resurrection, you’d have the women high-fiving eachother and this heavenly messenger and confidently strutting out of the tomb with thisgreat news that they triumphantly share with the world. Instead, they run away and hide.

Maybe we should be a little afraid, too.

Here’s the thing - if Easter - the news that there is a risen-from-the-dead Christ runningabout and he’s waiting to meet you - has never at least made you swallow hard and feelawe, wonder and maybe a little dread - you have to ask yourself if you really understandwhat Easter is all about.

Maybe we ought to be a little afraid, because Easter means that God is after us, andnothing we do will get rid of him. Nothing we do, will tame or domesticate him.

John Updike in his novel Roger’s Version has a scene with a cynical theologyprofessor - the kind of professor that was all over during the 1960's, when they

3

competed with one another to see how little they could believe - talking with ayoung student. And the student says to the professor,

“I know why you think the way you do. It’s because you are afraid. You do notwant God to break through. People in general don’t want that. They just want togrub along being human, and dirty, and sly, and amusing....and God to stay put inchurches if they need Him and ever decide to drop by, and maybe (for Him) topull them out in the end, down the tunnel of light they describe in near-deathexperiences...”1

A God safely up in heaven, whom we can call on when we feel like it, that we can handle. But a God who has come among us in Jesus Christ and then won’t go away even whenhe’s nailed to a cross and executed? Who rises from the dead and then comes after us,intent on being in the midst of our lives - and what’s more, who calls us to make him ourLord and make our life about following him, loving him, obeying him? Maybe we shouldbe a little afraid.

Because there’s a risen Christ on the loose. And he keeps turning up today.

Few years back I met a young man from Turkey named Sami who had converted fromIslam to Christianity, while he was still living in Turkey. That’s not an easy or safe thingto do. But Jesus, just kept showing up. Jesus wouldn’t leave him alone.

It started with his mother. She kept having dreams where Jesus would come toher and kind of sit down with her and talk with her about who he really was andhe’d answer her questions, kept coming back and asking her to trust him, to havefaith in him, to accept him as the Son of God and the way to salvation. So afterthis went on for a while, Jesus’ persistence kind of wore her down, and sheopened her heart to the Lord and was filled with his love and presence.

So Sami’s mother tells him about this and he is of course highly skeptical but hestarts searching for the truth and one day he’s sitting in his room kind of prayingand asking God to show him the truth - and Jesus shows up - he has a vision of therisen Christ right there in his room and all doubts are erased and Sami gives hislife to Christ, too.

Here’s the thing. The risen Jesus is in our world and he is after you and me. We mightthink we can leave here today and head home and pull the doors shut behind us and thatwill be the end of it, don’t have to hear any more about this Jesus stuff, but I’m tellingyou, he’s relentless.

Take a look at the cartoon in your bulletin:

4

I mean, if crucifying him didn’t get rid of him, what will? Do your worst, and he just keepscoming back.

Maybe today is the day you throw up your hands and say to Jesus, “Ok, I give up!” and give yourlife and heart and mind to him. Maybe today is the day you move from believing in a creatorGod who is safely far off up in heaven somewhere, to opening your life to his living presence inJesus Christ. Maybe today is the day you move from giving the Lord just a little teaspoonful ofyour life - you can have Sunday mornings, but the rest is all mine - to letting him be in charge ofthe whole deal.

And maybe today is the day, we get up and go meet him in Galilee.

Kind of strange, that the man in white tells the women that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. That’s a seventy-mile walk. What’s he doing up there? Why doesn’t he appear to them right inthe graveyard?

Because they have to follow the Lord back into the world, back into the mission field. Galileewas where their great adventure started - where Jesus taught the crowds, healed the blind andsick, faced down demons and hurled them back into Hell. Galilee, far more than Jerusalem, was

5

where Jews and Gentiles lived side-by-side. Galilee, was both the site of mission, and thelaunching point from where Jesus would send his disciples into the whole wide world.

I went to the Holy Land in 1997. Awesome trip. Learned a lot. One thing I learned is thatChristianity doesn’t do holy places very well. For instance, just about everybody who travels tothe Holy Land goes to the Garden Tomb. It is billed as Jesus’ actual tomb, though scholars willtell you nobody has a clue where his tomb really was. But when I went there, I thought that’s toobad because if you were going to pick a nice place for a memorial of Jesus’ tomb, the GardenTomb would be it - it’s beautiful and meditative and you can imagine it all happening right there. Here’s a picture:

But just as the women didn’t find the Lord in his actual tomb, you don’t find him by visiting andmeditating in the Garden Tomb either. You find him out there in the world. Giving faith,healing the sick, battling evil, and building his kingdom

Jesus came back to finish what he started.

If you go back to the beginning of Mark you find Jesus’ mission statement, his first sermon:“Repent and believe the good news, for the Kingdom of God is here.”

Maybe today the challenge for you is to move from a safe faith that’s about coming to church,praying when you need help and going to heaven when you did - to a faith full of the adventureof following Jesus into the world.

6

And that could be scary. But we make a big mistake if we think faith in Jesus is about personalcomfort. Don’t get me wrong - we do get comfort - but we get it in the midst of a life offollowing him into service and mission and adventure and sacrifice - and sometimes even dangerand hardship.

For instance:

In Sarajevo an order of Franciscan brothers has stayed behind to serve the poor and workfor peace even as most other Christians have fled.

In New Orleans, crews from Texas churches still spend weekends rebuilding housesdestroyed by Hurricane Katrina, long after government aid dried up.

In Newtown, Connecticuit, the site of the terrible school massacre last year, the WalnutHill Community Church has set up a reserve fund for future needs, such as providingcounseling for the surviving children. "We're not going anywhere," the pastor says, “Ourchurch is committed for the long haul."

And so is Jesus. The Lord came back to finish what he started. The women in our reading gotpast their fear - or we wouldn’t be here today. They got past their fear - and joined in what Jesusis doing in the world. What Jesus will finish, one day, when he returns. So - are you going to bepart of it, or stand idly by wasting your life trying to amuse yourself and piling up possessions? Are you going to be part of it, or keep making excuses?

Closing

I read a great story about a community-wide Easter pageant assigned various people in the townto play the different parts. The character of Jesus went to a most unlikely person - a big, burly,barroom brawler, an oilfield worker, the most unlikely person to be typecast as our Lord.

After several weeks of rehearsals, the day of the Easter Pageant finally arrived. When they cameto the part of the play where Jesus was being led away to be crucified, one little man, filling in asa part of the crowd, got caught up in the emotion of the drama. He joined in the shouts of"Crucify him! Crucify him!" as Jesus was led away toward Calvary.

Then, in the midst of shouting insults at the top of his lungs, he accidentally sprayed some spit inthe face of the character playing Jesus as the actor walked by carrying the cross on his back. Theoilfield worker stopped in his tracks, reached up and wiped his face dry. And then he looked atthe little man and said: “I'll be back to take care of you after the resurrection.”

Jesus came back after the resurrection. To shock us into life. To save and heal us. To lead usinto a life of adventure following him. Feel the fear - and follow the Lord. Amen.

7

1. Quoted in James A. Harnish, Journeys with the People of Genesis, p. 75. Nashville: UpperRoom Books, 1989.

Endnotes

8