Three men died and are at the pearly gates of heaven. St. Peter tells them that they can enter the gates if they can answer one simple question. St. Peter asks the first man, "What is Easter?" He replies, "Oh, that's easy! It's the holiday in November when everyone gets together, eats turkey, and are thankful..." St. Peter shakes his head, and proceeds to ask the second man the same question, "What is Easter?" The second one replies, "Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a nice tree, texchange presents, and celebrate the birth of Jesus." St. Peter looks at the second man, again shakes his head in disgust, and then peers over his glasses at the third man and asks, "What is Easter?" The third man smiles confidently and looks St. Peter in the eyes, "I know what Easter is. Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus was crucified on a cross and then buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large boulder." St. Peter smiles broadly with delight. Then the man continues, "Every year the boulder is moved aside so that Jesus can come out...and, if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter."
The account of Easter that we get in the gospel of Mark is rather brief. When we get to the end, we might think that someone is playing a trick, an April Fool’s joke on us, because we know there is supposed to be more, and we might even ask, “Hey what happened to the ending?” If you look in your Bibles, you will find two different endings after the passages we just heard, with a heading of either the shorter or longer ending. But our earliest and best manuscripts don’t actually have those endings. Instead they end with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear and not telling anyone. Those endings were added later because editors thought that there needed to be more, just as there is in the other gospels. I mean after all, the women did eventually tell someone, and we know that because we are sitting here this morning, and for the first time since 1956 celebrating Easter on April Fool’s Day.
But, Mark is intentionally brief in his resurrection story, just as he is in the rest of his gospel. Just as a comparison, Mark’s Easter story is only 8 verses long, compared to Matthews 22 verses and Luke’s 53 verses and 56 verses in John. But, just like the best jokes, length doesn’t necessarily make it better. Did you hear that the world’s tongue-twister champion was arrested? I heard that the judge is going to give him a really tough sentence. (You should laugh now, because they’re not going to get any better.) Mark can tell us everything we need to know in just his short account, and it starts with when it takes place. Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus going down to the water to be baptized, an important idea we’ll return to in a minute, but as he comes out of the water, the heavens are parted, and the spirit comes down upon the water, which is set up to remind us of the creation story, and so Jesus represents a new beginning for the world. And that is confirmed for us here in Mark’s telling as the women go to the tomb very early on the first day of the week, and to make sure we’re paying attention, Mark adds after the sun was up. What is the first thing that God does in the first creation? God calls forth light, the beginning of the day. And so, we are to see the story of Easter as the culmination of the beginning of a new creation, a new world, a new beginning, after all new jokes are usually better than old jokes, and this is the greatest joke that God ever told the world.
Because the religious leaders and political authorities thought that by having Jesus killed that they would solve their problems, after all it worked for everyone else. Everyone else they had killed had not been a problem for them afterward, and even if they thought they might make a martyr out of him, most movements led by charismatic leaders die off after the leader has gone, especially when the authorities let it be known that continuing the movement is likely to get you killed as well, which is one of the things that crucifixion did was to serve as a warning to others that this can and will happen to you as well if you challenge the roman authorities. They believed that they were actually the ones in control, but it turns out they were wrong. God was in control. Paul declares in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 cor 1:18, 25) That seems appropriate enough for today. The powers of the world thought that violence and power were signs of strength, and that giving yourself over in sacrifice, and not even fighting back, was a sign of weakness, not much has changed has it. But God says that might be the way you want it to work in your kingdoms, but it’s not the way it works in my kingdom. You think you can overcome me by killing Jesus, I will overpower you by bringing him back to life. Strength out of weakness. Surprise!
But it wasn’t just a surprise to the leaders. Although the Bible does not say what Jesus did for the three days between his death on the cross and the resurrection, the tradition of the church holds, as is most often seen in the oldest creedal statements, that Jesus descended either into hell or into the dead and he spends the three days there. Which means that either death, or more commonly Satan, thought that they had won. They had beat God. And not only had they beat God, but they now had possession of God’s son, and yet it turns out they didn’t. And so, the church has said that the greatest joke God ever played was to trick Satan and death into thinking that they had won, when in fact God had won. That because of Jesus, God was able to overcome our slavery to sin and death, that we were set freed from the powers and principalities of the world, because God would win. That even when others thought they had claimed victory, that they had beaten God, that in fact they were wrong. That God’s foolishness of using the cross and the resurrection overcome those who thought they could and would win.
One day, Satan challenged Jesus to a duel, and he said that he was better on a computer than Jesus was. and so, Jesus took him up on it, but Satan said they were going to use windows, just to confirm that we all know that Microsoft is evil. And so, they both sat down at the computer, and the created spreadsheets and did graphic design, they did internet research and genealogy reports, they sent out emails without forgetting to attach the attachments, but ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off. When the electricity finally flickered back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!" Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files, and do you know why? Because Jesus saves.
And so, we can see the joke God played on those who thought they were in power, but what does that mean for us? Well, I’m glad you asked, because that brings us back to the women going to the tomb that day. It’s clear that they didn’t go to the tomb that morning expecting not to find Jesus there, because they brought spices with them in order to anoint the body. That means that they didn’t believe when Jesus told them that he would be raised from the dead on the third day. They came that morning expecting to find death, but instead found life. But that starts with them wondering who is going to roll away the stone, so they can enter into the tomb. But when they look up, they find the stone has already been rolled away. Now in Matthew, he gives an explanation for who moved the stone, but Mark leaves it unexplained, presumably meaning that it is God has moved this barrier for them.
And I think it should leave us considering the obstacles we might have in our lives, those things that is seems are impossible to move and will keep us from getting where we need to go. What are we doing about them? And, more importantly, are we asking for help from God? Are we expecting a miracle? Are we putting ourselves in the way of even getting a miracle? I got an Easter card this week from a former member of the congregation who has moved away, but she was involved in a terrible car accident while she was here and had lost the use of one of her arms. She told me that she believes the prayers we offered over that arm made the difference in her being able to have full use of it today. It didn’t happen immediately, but through persistence and the belief that God would remove this stone in her life, it happened. But for that to happen, she had to put aside her own desires and issues to be able to turn it over to God, which is what the women at the tomb also have to discover.
We believe that in baptism we die to our old selves and are reborn as new creations. That is, we have to enter the tomb in order to find life with God. In ancient churches, the baptismal fonts would often use the shape of a cross or even a sarcophagus in order to represent this reality. Now baptismal fonts are often 8 sided, representing the 8th day, or the first day of the week, representing God’s new creation. And so, the women enter into the tomb, and are told that although they are looking for Jesus, they are looking for someone who is dead, he is not there for he has been raised, and so they exit the tomb and are themselves raised into new life, a new creation, a new reality, that God has overcome. Notice that in Mark’s account they never encounter the risen Jesus, all they have is the testimony of the young man in the tomb about what has happened, and they are given a choice, what are they going to do? That same question is left to us, because I think the power of Mark’s ending is that we have not physically encountered the risen Christ, all we have is the testimony of others that the tomb was empty, and so what are we going to do? Are we going to believe in the resurrection? Are we going to believe that such a thing is so impossible that we are not even going to begin to laugh at that joke. And then are we going to go and tell others, or are we going to run away in fear as the women did? But, our hope is not found in our ability to complete the story, our hope is found in God and the work that God is doing and the work that God calls us to do. That means that we are called to be co-creators with God. That our laughter is God’s laughter and God’s laughter is our laughter as we celebrate the greatest joke God ever told.
And yet it’s deeper than that. It’s been said that comedians don’t say funny things, they say things funny. It’s the unexpectedness of the joke that makes the punchline work, and the resurrection is certainly a great punchline because it was what no one expected, unless they had been paying attention, and it brought not only the world joy, but it brought God joy because God’s foolishness is greater than human wisdom. The 13th century Christian theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart said that “The father laughs at the son and the son laughs at the father, and the laughter brings forth pleasure, and pleasure brings forth joy,” and he described that joy to be like a horse kicking up its heels in the air, “and the joy brings forth love.” Joy brings forth love, and of course joy also brings forth laughter. Voltaire once said that the problem with the church was that God was a comedian who was playing to an audience who was afraid to laugh. But the angel says to the women at the tomb, the angel says to us, “Do not be alarmed” do not be afraid. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is not here; he has been raised.” So, let us celebrate this day, and every day, let us laugh in joy because God has pulled the greatest prank ever and the tomb is empty, God has won, for nothing is impossible with God. So, let us go forth to laugh and proclaim the good news that Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment