A Sermon Delivered by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
April 12, 2009
(Easter Sunday)

Text: Mark 16:1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Sa-lome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was cruci-fied. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 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. —Mark 16:1-8, NRSV

Barrett was a young, newly-ordained Pastor, and he preached his first sermon not only before his new congregation, but also in front of his mother-in-law, Mary. Now Barrett’s family will tell you that Mary was a woman of “few words,” as we sometimes say. Just this morning at breakfast I noticed the title of an article in the current edition of Reader’s Digest magazine: “Thirteen Things Your Mother-in-Law Won ‘t Tell You.” That wasn’t Mary. Rather blunt, she could be.

So, after the sermon was over, during Sunday dinner, Barrett asked his mother-in-law what she thought of the sermon. And Mary replied, “Well, I thought you had a good sermon. In fact, I thought you had a number of good sermons. In fact, I thought that you missed about three good stopping places in your sermon.”

One of the toughest challenges for a preacher is how to end a sermon. It is also something of a challenge to muster the guts to stand up here and begin a sermon. And that has been espe-cially so this year for me, as I have wanted to speak a word of affirmation and hope in the midst of the fears and doubts many of us have because of the global financial crisis. Indeed, citing a recent Sojourners magazine article, our NJ Area Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar noted in his Easter Message that, “An estimated two out of every three families have been noticeably affected by the financial setbacks in the United States, and nearly one out of every four individuals sur-veyed say they have been impacted in a ‘major way’ according to a report from the Barna group…”

In the midst of this atmosphere, we have gathered together on a beautiful (if cool) Spring day to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection. We have heard about those ancient sisters of ours who went to the tomb to perform their burial rituals for Jesus, their beloved teacher and friend, won-dering who would roll away the stone for them. And just like those followers of Christ on the first Easter morning, we may be wondering who will remove the weight of the stones of our fi-nancial crises. The weight and the stress may indeed make it difficult to proclaim let alone to hear the message that we are an Easter people, and we are assured that God will remove the stones that entomb our fears and block our walk in faith!

In our Lenten Study of John Wesley’s “Three Simple Rules,” we heard another United Methodist Bishop, Reuben Job, declare that being embraced by the grace and the love of God offers to us the assurance that all will be well, even when we have no idea how that will happen. Those are words upon which I have reflected often with gratitude, over the part few weeks…an assurance that all will be well, even when I have no idea how that will happen.

If it is difficult to know how to begin a sermon, it may be even harder to know when to end a sermon. Like our young friend Barrett, I have occasionally preached several pretty good sermons in one Sunday morning service, and missed two or three opportunities to simply stop. Any preacher, approaching the conclusion of a sermon, has a desire to tie things together, to sum things up, to put a bow around it and present a nice package to the congregation. The trouble is, so many stories in the Bible are open-ended. The Parable of the Prodigal Son, for instance, does not end by saying, “And they lived happily ever after.” We don’t know what happened to the man left for dead by the side of the Jericho Road after the Good Samaritan reached out and helped him so valiantly. Life itself doesn’t have that many satisfactory completions or final end-ings.

But this Sunday—Easter Sunday—ought to be the happiest of happy endings. Jesus, who has suffered such rejection throughout his ministry—all culminating in a cataclysm of horrible bloodshed and destruction at his crucifixion—this Jesus has been resurrected from the dead. Je-sus has triumphed over death and the grave. He has been vindicated. The doubters and the critics have been addressed and silenced. What a wonderful time now to say, “The End.” Let’s all stand and sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” hear the Benediction, and listen to the choir sing a resounding “Twelve fold Amen,” and claim the Resurrection victory. “The End!”

However…we come to the Easter story in the Gospel of Mark and we discover a notori-ous non-ending, in which Mark never actually reports that the disciples saw the Risen Christ. You heard it read this morning: An angel at the tomb tells the three women who have come to anoint Jesus’ body that Jesus will meet the disciples back in Galilee. He tells them to tell every-one about the Risen Christ. But then Mark says they didn’t tell anybody! Why? Because “they were afraid.”

So did Mark really intend that his book end with verse 8, or did he write some additional material that somehow got separated from his original manuscript? Nobody knows for sure, al-though the consensus among Bible scholars today is that verse 8 was the original ending of Mark’s Gospel. The two extended endings that you may have seen there (after verse were added by others—the so-called “shorter ending” added sometime after the third century and the “longer ending” sometime in the late second or early third century.

And when you look at verse 8, you can understand why later scribes or editors felt com-pelled to add those longer endings. Verse 8 reads: “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.”

What kind of closure is that? If you were going to write a biography of Jesus that went all the way up through the resurrection:

• Would you end your book with a sentence saying that some of his followers—three women specifically—were afraid?
• Would you point out that despite being told by no less than an angel that Jesus had risen from the dead and that they should pass this news to the disciples (Mark 16:7), the women were so terrified that they said nothing to anyone?
• Wouldn’t you conclude this story on a more upbeat note, even a triumphant one, because to stop at verse 8 seems as though one is leaving out the rest of the story; the resurrection was a marvelous triumph over death.

We know, of course, from the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John that there was more to the story, that the women got past their fear and did tell the disciples the news. And we know that many of Jesus’ followers—including at least one of these women in Mark’s Gospel—actually saw the resurrected Jesus in the days that followed.

But if Mark deliberately intended verse 8 to be his conclusion, it tells us (at least) two things.

The first is that it takes a considerable adjustment in one’s thinking to accept the concept of someone who was dead coming alive again. Indeed, very few people expect the dead to be up walking around, and fear would not be an unreasonable reaction.

A retiring minister, in his farewell remarks to his church, said, “The first person saved under my preaching has backslidden. The first persons married under my ministry have divorced. But the first person I buried has stayed there.”

Yeah, but suppose he hadn’t. Would that minister have been calm standing there being witty? It honestly takes some time to deal with resurrection. It requires a considerable reframing of our understanding of reality to come to terms with that possibility, and it’s quite understand-able that one might keep such information to oneself simply to avoid being thought of as loony.

The other (and probably more important) thing that Mark’s original, terse ending tells us is that the pen is in our hands. Easter gives us all a chance to start writing. Mark’s abrupt and ragged ending leaves it to us to decide how the story will come out.

David H. C. Read once preached a sermon entitled, “Unfinished Easter,” suggesting that the end of the Easter story is written in our lives.

The pen is in our hands, dear sisters and brothers in Christ. We could begin our part of the story with, “Come into my life, Jesus. Live not only out there, but also in here.” And that will surely sound the note of joy upon which the rest of our never-ending Easter story will be built.

PRAYER

Alleluia! Lord Jesus, on this day you demonstrated that the powers of sin and death—powers that have us in their grip—are no match for you. You entered the domain of death and defeated death. You took on the sins of the whole world and triumphed mightily.
We not only praise your name for your victory, but we are also bold to ask for a place within your triumphant reign. Teach us, in each day of our lives, to live in the light of your resur-rection, to follow you into the realm of life and light, of forgiveness and peace. Amen.