Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, April 12, 2009

Mark 16:1-8
The Resurrection of Jesus

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome 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 crucified. 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.

Last Wednesday morning as I drove along the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and Winona, I was blessed with a magnificent sunrise, a misty fog over Lake Pepin, that spot where the bluffs descend to the river, which at that point is about a mile wide. I left early enough to take a short detour in the small village of Frontenac to visit the grave of my mother, who passed away in 2005. It was my first time back to her grave. What struck me as I stood in the cool morning air, was how even here in this mostly forgotten, out of the way cemetery, life and death were living side by side. Next to the golf ball one of my siblings left on her tombstone, were the beginning shoots of a medley of colorful tulips. Her grave was not unique. Emerging spring life, emerging spring sounds and smells, a gentle greening of nature was transpiring even as the remains of the dead rested underground, dust returning to dust.

Throughout the season of Lent we looked at a number of paradoxes in our life and faith. We had an amazing devotional, which if you have not seen, you can see online at orucc.org. All through the season leading up to this week, I have been struck by the overriding and overarching paradox of them all – that we are constantly in the grip, and blessing, of both death and life.

This paradox begins even in our lectionary Easter text this morning. An ending is not an end. A dead man rises to life, and the gospel ends in the middle of a sentence. In Greek the end of our passage from Mark reads, “The women went out from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, they were afraid for…” It ends with a preposition. The most important story of the Christian faith just stops and the end just hangs out there. And we are left waiting, unresolved. The English translation solves that problem by moving the preposition: ” they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” As commentator said, that solves the problem with the sentence, but not with the Gospel.

We could speculate at great length what caused them to be afraid. We can imagine they had good reason to be afraid and confused. Wouldn’t we all be if the body of a loved one had disappeared? Particularly a tortured and falsely accused loved one? Wouldn’t we be looking over our shoulder wondering if someone lay in waiting? Wouldn’t we wonder if some conspiracy were afoot, God only knows it had been happening all week?

While their fear is understandable, the remarkable thing about this story is that as the earliest account in the gospels of the central story of the Christian faith, Mark’s version of Easter concludes unclear and uncertain. The eventual recognition, acceptance and celebration of Jesus’ resurrection by those same women and others doesn’t take away the central reality that at the core of the story of life, at the core of the story of our lives, is a story of death and fear.

*(Todd Weir – pastor and transitional housing advocate in Poughkeepsie, NY). “Jesus himself, in teachings before his own death in John’s gospel, talks of death as if it were a necessary loss. He turns to images of nature where death and life are always cycling back and forth. He tells us that the seed dies in the ground and comes up again with new life, giving a great abundance back to the earth.”  Speaking of the autumn cycle, songwriter Carrie Newcomer sings, Leaves don’t drop they just let go, and make a place for seeds to grow. Every season brings a change, a seed is what a tree contains, to die and live is life’s refrain.

Death and life are life’s refrain. In fact, we are all dying all the time. We all lose about 100,000 cells per second. Fortunately, just a many cells are being reproduced in a healthy body. Some scientists say that we are regenerated every seven years. In fact, cells that don’t die off in the normal cycle are a real problem.

Systems thinking would remind us that what is true in nature and our bodies is also true in our spiritual and emotional life.

Our failure to let go and let some things die is a primary spiritual disease, for new life cannot come without some death.
• The failure to forgive leads to death of relationship while anger and bitterness ravage the spirit like a cancer.
• Holding on to regrets strangles hope before it can lift us to new life.
• Forgiveness and letting go of control are spiritual exercises in the art of dying so that new life may abound.
Is it possible that the power of this meta story is how deeply it resonates with the more particular stories of our lives? Is it possible that the discipline of faith is not the challenge that we “believe in resurrection”, but that we acknowledge and embrace the reality of death and resurrection in our own lives and our own world?

Some of us hear the Easter texts each year and find great hope and comfort. Some of us hear them and think, “wow, this is just strange and unbelievable.” Can we see in this story an invitation to move beyond the analytical questions in order embrace the mystery the story highlights about the very life we are living?
One of the gifts of being a pastor is journeying with families as they embrace the sacred act of dying of a loved one. I say sacred not to sugarcoat the realities, but to acknowledge that in almost all cases, the actual dying has a sacred, life giving quality to it. Sometimes it is literal, as old and dying grandparents hold on in order to live long enough to see a grandchild get married or great grandchild be born. They know, often in unarticulated ways, that their dying is not in vain, because from the same family a new life, a new generation, a new embodiment of the family name and spirit is being born. Other times this connection is more emotional and spiritual, as family members gain new insight, new courage, new hope as they retell the stories of strength and courage in their loved one’s life. Emotional and spiritual strength is shared; life and death abide in a strange and wonderful paradox.

In most families, there eventually comes the recognition that unless we, the “living”, go on LIVING, we do a disservice to our deceased loved one. There is no set timetable and all of us grieve in different ways. But I imagine it was this type of experience that prompted poet Dawna Markova to write

I will not live an unlived life
I will not live in fear of falling
or of catching fire…
I choose to inhabit my days
to allow my living to open me…
to live so that that which comes to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which comes to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.

In many traditions, especially the “low church” congregational traditions some of us come from, much was made of Palm Sunday and Easter, but little attention was given to desertion, abandonment, death, pain.

Still, we often neglect the potent and powerful union of life and death. In our death avoiding culture, it is easy to succumb to the thought that life should be rosy, pain free, and always upbeat. Not only is this not a true reflection of our lives, it is unhealthy and shortsighted.

Like many of you, I have a mentor in this regard. Almost two years ago, my brother in law’s family suffered a deep tragedy, almost unthinkable. One of his children, a teenage son, murdered another child of his, a teenage daughter. Viewing this brother in law and the children’s mother as they watched, and listened, to the coffin which held their daughter be lowered in the ground was, without doubt, one of the most painful sights of my life. I cannot know the pain they felt, even if I witnessed that burial.

The paradoxes of this story abound. One child died, but for all intents and purposes, two lives were lost. The dead child lives on in memory and story, the living child has been mostly erased from the memory of many. A child, who was adopted in order that he might have life, will now sit in prison for 45 years. A young girl, who with two other sisters, opened her home to welcome the stranger, had her life snuffed out just as she was emerging as a young adult.

These paradoxes are painful and confusing, even if they remain very real for her family. They will probably always remain very real.

But in the ensuing months and now almost two years, long after the story has disappeared from newspapers, long after many friends have moved on and some forgotten this beautiful young girl or this troubled young boy, my brother in law has lived boldly and courageously in the middle of this un-believable paradox between life and death.

As he grieves, remembers, celebrates and honors his daughter’s life, her friends, and her memory; he also continues to communicate with, love and support the very son who took that life as he sits in prison. Angry and sad that he will never see this daughter graduate, get married, have children or make a life – he nonetheless stays in contact the child who will never walk free, who will not be able to choose some of those very milestones in life. His emotions include forgiveness, anger, confusion, sadness, gratitude, hope, and despair – but through it all he seems willing to embrace life not as he hoped it would be, but as it is.

I don’t lift up this brother in a law to suggest some magical process of moving through grief, pain or despair. I lift him up because in the midst of those emotions, he decided to not let the death of his daughter snuff out his own life. He has embraced that she continues to live on in so many ways – in the pictures and stories of her friends, in the tattoo on his wrist, and even in the hopes and dreams that her friends, cousins, and sisters share for their own emerging, young adult lives. He embraces other young people with a passion that knows the preciousness of their achievements. The death of his daughter and all the accompanying dreams lives alongside in paradox with the emerging life that emerges in spirt of that death. The tragedy of his son and the ensuing incarceration share heart space with hope that lives in spite of the son’s wrongdoing.

This mentor of mine embodies Easter because he is willing to hold in creative and powerful tension the truth that both death and life abound in our midst. His Easter is not without the death of Good Friday, but nor is abandonment, despair and confusion of Friday the end of the story.

Many Easter sermons focus on the uniqueness of Jesus’ resurrection. There is a sermon there. But, today I think the sermon is that what we see and experience in Mark’s gospel story is our lives. What we see is not so much unique as it is a powerful, sacred description of the world all around us – the deaths, and risings within us, among us, and around us in others and in nature.

I hope and pray this Easter is we all connect this grand, amazing, and ancient story of our faith to the very life we are living. I hope that in all our large and small deaths, we see the accompanying promise of God for new life and hope. I hope we see in the experiences of our loved ones, of the natural world around us, in the rising and falling and rising again of our own dreams – the very pathway that leads to Spirit filled life. I hope and pray for the erasing of any illusion that we have one without the other; and the embracing of the paradox that defines our faith – past and present – and our future hope.

Many of you have heard me joke that when we lived in California, Easter came in the middle or even at the end of springtime. As such, we came to see Easter it as an affirmation of a resurrection that was already happening in the world around us. It was more that the promise of hope that we hang onto here in this sanctuary – with flowers that are much further along in their blooming than anything in our yards.

Maybe this year, more than ever, Easter can be for us an affirmation of the resurrection of God that has been working in our lives. May we have eyes, ears, and hearts to receive this paradoxical blessing upon which we stand.  Amen