Easter Sunday April 16, 2006
Sermon: “The Easter People”
Scripture: Mark 16: 1-8
Reverend Larry Gerber
WE are the Easter People!! We have witnessed the resurrection of our Lord!! Hallelujia!! We have arrived!!But, how do we help people out of their tombs? The resurrection calls us forth to roll away the stones that crush people''s lives. In a world filled with rolling stones, there is a desperate need for stone rollers.
Howard Thurman served as Dean of the Chapel at Boston University until his retirement. In one of his books, he tells of a crisis that took place in his young daughter's life.
Everybody in the family had made their summer plans. But just before Thurman and his wife were ready to leave for speaking engagements, they received word that a companion who lived with their aged grandmother in another town had died. Someone would have to go and be with grandmother during the summer.
The family met and talked it over. Thurman's commitments could not be postponed. It was decided the daughters would take their turns and care for the grandmother until the parents returned from their conferences.
When this decision was reached, the youngest daughter rushed from the table and ran up the stairs, weeping. The door slammed. Thurman followed her up the stairs, knocked at the door and found her stretched across the bed, weeping. He spoke these words to her:
I didn't come up here to urge you to stop crying. I came to explain to you why I think you are crying. I don't think you're crying because you don't want to go away for the rest of the summer and miss the fun with your friends. You're crying because for the first time in your life the family is asking you to carry your end of the stick as a family member. Something inside you knows that when you get on the train tomorrow, one part of your life will be behind you forever. You'll never again be quite as carefree and unaccountable as you were before. (Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 54-55)
We all want to remain children. We all yearn for those days when we were free from responsibility.
Perhaps that is why we don't like the ending of Mark's gospel very much. Unlike Luke and Matthew and John, who pad the new responsibilities of the disciples with comforting stories of the resurrected Jesus' appearance in their midst, Mark's ending starkly reminds us that while Jesus is risen, things are different now. Jesus did not sit in the garden to tell the two Mary’s to stop crying. He sat there to tell them that he understood why they were crying. They, the grave robbers, or somebody, had taken their Jesus away. They were not prepared for the resurrection, they were prepared to anoint his body for final burial. The two women at the tomb, who until now have been a model of obedience as stalwart by-standers, are suddenly called to take definitive action and to spread the Good News. Fearful of the angel, the message and the responsibility, these women fail. They run away silent and shaken.When I was 6 years old, and my brother was 12, there was a day in October that we were harvesting potatoes along with our father. Our mother approached us, as she drove the car across the hay field leading to the potato patch. It was not like her to drive the car across the field. She stopped, got out and embraced my father, which seemed for a very long time. My brother overheard the conversation: my fathers mother had died. He began to cry uncontrollably. I tried to console him. I knew that Grandma had been sick and that death was coming. I knew, at 6 years of age, that it was ok. She would be in a better place. I did not cry. I was ok with her death. My brother, on the other hand, was just enough older that he was missing her already and her death was not ok. He asked me: “Aren’t you going to cry?” I said that I did not feel like crying. He told me that I had to cry, and threw a potato at me. It hit me right on the forehead. It hurt, and I replied, “I am crying now”.My brother did not try to stop me from crying. He just wanted me to cry for the right reason. He put his arms around me and said that he was sorry that he hit me in the head with the potato, that I should cry because my grandmother had died. I shold be sad. I understood, and we cried together in the middle of that potato patch, while Mom and Dad cried together at the other end. Then the four of us stood in the potato patch and cried together in silence.
The two Mary’s were sad and they cried. They were scared, and they were angry. They had a job to do. Why would some want to steal a dead body. They were not yet the Easter people.They did not undertstand that the risen Jesus has given his disciples an order: Meet me in Galilee. There was the site of Jesus' greatest teaching, preaching and healing, the place where the disciples were called together originally. It was the heart of his mission activity -- Galilee. And it is all to continue in Galilee -- if the disciples will only free themselves from their own fears and come out and meet the risen Christ.
Mark describes the faithful Mary Magdelene; Mary, the mother of James; and Salome as worrying about how they will get into Jesus' tomb once they reach it. What a typical church inversion -- worrying about how to get into a tomb -- a safe, dark, sealed- away catacomb -- rather then worrying about how to get out of such a lifeless, tombish existence. Mark's gospel demonstrates how foolish and foundless the women's concerns were -- it is God the Father who raises Jesus from the dead, who rolls away the tombstone.
Resurrecting Jesus is not our job. But meeting him is. The stone that had rolled away so easily to free Jesus seems to crash shut again on the women's courage and commitment, trapping them in a tombstone frame of mind.
How do we, the community of Christ, the church of the risen Lord, get all those like the two Marys and Salome, like the disciples huddling in some hidden room in Jerusalem, like Peter -- probably wedged under some rock of his own -- out of the tomb? How do we roll away their stones?
The angel-messenger inside Jesus' empty tomb tells us how. By boldly stepping out into the world and taking up the earthly ministry of Jesus where he left it. By offering the risen and regnant Lord to every "Galilee" there is in the world. By becoming a stone-roller!
Galilee doesn't mean some special, sanctified space in some holy land somewhere. Jesus' work and mission were in his own backyard, among his own people, amidst the common, everyday encounters of life. When we enter our own Galilee with the intent of witnessing to the resurrection of Christ -- indeed, expecting to meet Christ there at any moment, then we are stone-rollers.
A stone-roller has to have some backbone, some muscle, some strength and endurance. To be a stone-roller is to dare and confront what may appear to be an immovable force. At the age of 6 I was a stone roller. I did not cry at my Grandmothers funeral. My older siblings did. My father did. My mother did. Why didn’t I? Was I too young to understand, or was I comfortable with the words of the preacher that day: “O Death where is thy sting? It is swallowed up in victory.” Grandma had been sick, now she was victorious…. I still miss my Grandma, and so many others, family and friends over the years. Yet, my faith says that we must be stone rollers, not rolling stones. It is ok to weep, but then we must pick our selves up, and become stone rollers. Mary and the others missed the boat initially. They were not ready for the risen savior.One of the biggest problems the church faces today is that we have too many "rolling stones" and too few "stone-rollers."
Rolling stones go where they are tumbled without resistance. They "take what comes" not so much with stalwart resignation as with sighs of relief. To be a rolling stone means that you don't have to take responsibility for what is happening around you or for what is happening to you. Don't we Christians have "guts that sink or hackles that rise" anymore (Robert Hughes' phrase)?
Is your neighborhood becoming more dangerous, with acts of violence and hatred gnawing away at its borders? A rolling stone simply shrugs and moves on -- further into the suburbs, farther away to a small town, or higher up the hill. A stone-roller doesn't get pushed away so easily. A stone-roller witnesses to Christ's resurrection, to Christ's continuing presence in that neighborhood, if we will just meet him there.
Mark's resurrection story grates on our sensibilities because it offers a challenge, along with the Good News, to all those who hear. The silence of the fearful screams: Who will be a stone- roller? Jesus was not resurrected so that he could hold his disciple's hands. He has brought eternal life so that we need not fear and can boldly forge forward. Are we ready to take responsibility for continuing Christ's ministry by meeting him in Galilee? He is already there waiting for us to arrive. CHRIST IS RISEN!! Hallelujia!! He lives!! Christ Jesus lives today! He lives within our heart
Let us pray…….