Mark 16:1-8
Believing without
Seeing.CV
4/21/19
Imagine a family
of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano-world came the music
of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought
that there was Someone who made the music - though invisible to them - above,
yet close to them. They loved to think
of the Great Player whom they could not see.
Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned
very thoughtful. He had found out how
the music was made. Wires were the
secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and
vibrated. They must revise all their old
beliefs; none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen
Player. Later, another explorer carried
the explanation further. Hammers were
now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it
all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical
world. The Unseen Player came to be
thought of as a myth...But the pianist continued to play.
-----------------------
In many ways the
questions that arise for us in light of the announcement that Jesus is
risen might be the same. What an amazing story! It was an incredible experience to hear
that Jesus is risen. And yet, this story in Mark only leaves us
with the concrete observation that the tomb was empty and that a man wearing
white said that Jesus was risen. The gospel of Mark, especially, leaves us
with questions and wonder. Mark’s gospel
originally ended with the passage that we just read. In most of our Bibles we will find an
additional passage that was added to Mark’s gospel about 200 years later (and
in your Bible you will find that it will confirm this to be a later addition)
because Mark’s original gospel with this ending in which Jesus does not appear
for the reader left too many questions, left too much unsatisfied and
unanswered for the readers. Our church
forefathers were uncomfortable with only the evidence of an empty tomb and the
words of a man in white. So, they added
additional stories to the gospel of Mark.
But if we go back to the original Mark, we are only told that Jesus was
risen just as the women in Mark were told.
We read that he had gone on ahead, that the women would see Jesus. But we don’t find an actual story in Mark in
which we see Jesus, hear Jesus, or see how he is upon his return. Mark was the first gospel written. So, if we put aside what we have heard from
the other gospels and just look at this gospel and this story as the ending to
the gospel, we are left with many questions.
And we are possibly left with many doubts. Who was this man in white? What gives him the authority to say that
Jesus was risen? What does it mean that
Jesus was risen? Is that simply a way of
saying his body was stolen from the tomb but the man caught there didn’t want
to get into trouble for stealing it? Would
the women be accused of taking the body and what would happen to them? And then, what if it really was true that he
was resurrected? What would that look
like? How would he come again? How would he be when he is met again? Would he be angry that they allowed the
crucifixion to happen? Would he be
gentle and loving? Would he charge his
disciples to go and do as he had done in his life and in his death? Or would he simply comfort them with the
promise of life after death and a God who overcomes every evil, even death
itself? In this his return, would he in
fact be the military messiah that the Jews expected, turning over the
oppressive Roman rule and freeing the people in his immortal and therefore
undefeatable state? Or would he continue
to be the Jesus of the gospel, one who ruled by love and truth instead? The gospel of Mark doesn’t answer these
questions for us. And because of this it
is my favorite gospel, and this is my favorite Easter story.
It is my favorite
Easter story because the women and the disciples in the gospel of Mark were
brought to the same place that we are brought every Easter. We, too, do not meet Jesus in the flesh and
blood this Easter. We are told by these
stories, just as the women in Mark are told by the man in the white robe that
Jesus is risen. We believe it because
for us the Bible carries the same authority and promise that this man in the
white robe carried for the women in Mark.
But we cannot prove it and we do not know what that will mean for us
this time, this year. How can we stand
by our belief? How can we live if all
that we do and are is based on a belief that has no concrete evidence? What does this resurrection and our faith in
it mean for our lives?
For the women in
Mark, the news that their beloved Jesus has not died for eternity but instead was
risen, alive, walked among them and would meet them, TERRIFIED them and we read that they fled from the tomb and said nothing
to anyone. I imagine that this is pretty
realistic. If you were told that someone
you deeply loved, trusted, worshiped even, who had been brutally murdered was
alive and walking around, how would you feel about it? Would images of “return of the ghouls” and of
revenge scenes from murdered corpses echo in your mind? Knowing who Jesus was, that he was about love
and about God, I might instead find myself recounting everything I ever did and
fearing that in a time as miraculous as this, I would be called to account for
my choices. Were they good? Were they good enough? And as a follower of Jesus, knowing who he
was and what he did, to learn that he really was the messiah, the risen one,
what does that mean for our future lives?
Honestly, it is a scary thought.
For if Jesus is truly risen, we will have to live our lives differently,
just like he said we would. We will have
to be serious in taking care of each other and our world. We will have to learn to really love our
neighbors, and even those we hate or fear, as ourselves. We will have to live as a people that have
been given a new chance at life, and who are called in all we do to care for
others as God’s children.
Is it terrifying
to hear that Jesus is risen? Maybe. But it is also amazing, awesome and
glorious. That is what our faith does
for us. It enters us into a realm of
feelings, both terrible and wonderful that propel us forward into life. As Frederick Buechner says, “Faith is better
understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than
once-and-for-all. Faith is not being
sure where you’re going but going anyway.
A journey without maps. ...
“ I have faith
that my friend is my friend. It is
possible that all his motives are ulterior.
It is possible that what he is secretly drawn to is not me but my wife
or my money. But there’s something about
the way I feel when he’s around, about the way he looks me in the eye, about
the way we can talk to each other without pretense and be silent together
without embarrassment, that makes me willing to put my life in his hands as I
do each time I call him friend.
“I can’t prove the
friendship of my friend. When I
experience it, I don’t need to prove it. When I don’t experience it, no proof
will do. If I tried to put his
friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I
was testing. So it is with the Godness
of God....” ----
Just like the
women in today’s story, we have not yet seen the risen Christ, but we believe
he is risen. We believe death has been
overcome. We believe in resurrection. So how do we enter this faithful future, a
future that has a risen Jesus in it, without knowing exactly what it will look
like? We have the whole gospel to tell
us - Jesus is about love and our call from him is to love the least of these
God’s children, God’s people, God’s creation.
It rests on our faith from that point on. We have faith that living in the resurrection
means we are called to give out of compassion fully, and trust that God will
bring new and glorious life out of our gifts of compassion. Once it is out of our hands, we are no longer
in charge of it. But we have faith that
God brings life out of death and resurrection out of endings. We have faith that Jesus walks among the
rejected and outcast. We believe Jesus is present in those we would reject and
exclude and condemn: the least of these. We have faith that God’s coming will catch us
by surprise and be glorious and wonderful.
And in the end, we have faith that we too will find the Christ walking
on ahead of us, waiting to meet us. We
walk by faith, we walk as a people about to meet and see the risen Christ. For while sometimes it can be hard to believe
without seeing, the most important things in life must be believed in order to
be seen.
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