St. Stephen’s, Coconut Grove • The Rev’d. Willie Allen-Faiella

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!)

St. Mark’s story of Jesus’ resurrection is the most challenging of all 4 Gospels. The
version we just heard was not the way Mark actually ended his Gospel. The ending
we just heard -- “And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those
around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west,
the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation” -- that ending was added
years later, probably by folks who, like us perhaps, crave answers and a neat and tidy
ending. Mark’s original version of the women coming to Jesus’ tomb and finding it
empty actually ends with this: “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.”
With an unsettling ending like that it’s easy to see why someone would want to come up
with a “happily ever after” version and add it later.

“And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid...” Clearly someone said
something to someone at some point because the followers of Jesus who just three
days before had denied him, abandoned him, and fled -- those same people went on
to become spiritual giants spreading the Good News far and wide. Peter in fact went
on to become the rock upon which the church was founded. So we don’t need to worry
that the women did eventually say something. Instead, stay with me in the moment of
the way St. Mark actually ends the story -- “they said nothing to anyone, for they were
afraid...”

Two days ago in his Good Friday meditation, Father Stowe asked us to contemplate
the cross with him. The cross, he said is “the space of emptiness between where
we know God and where we can’t.” The women walk into the tomb early that Sunday
morning expecting to find the dead body of their beloved friend and teacher and instead
walk into the very space of emptiness between where they knew God and where they
couldn’t. Instead of a corpse they find a young man in white telling them “Do not be
alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised;
he is not here.” And their world is turned upside down.

Shock, denial, confusion, amazement, terror. Sounds about right, doesn’t it? In the
moment when our world gets turned upside down those are most certainly the emotions
we feel. In the moment it is impossible to see beyond, to see and know that God is at
work mightily, doing a new thing, pulling new beginnings out of dead endings. When
our world is turned upside down we find ourselves suddenly in that space of emptiness
between where we know God and where we can’t. Unable to see in that moment that
new life has already begun, transformation is underway, and our hope has not been in
vain.

How often, when our world is being turned upside down, do we not know in the
moment that God is still with us, pulling new beginnings out of old endings? How often
is it only with hindsight that we recognize, “yes, God was there with me all along?” How
often when we don’t get the outcome we expect do we fall into that place of confusion
and questioning? And then later, looking backwards realize that God worked through
the outcome transforming it into something even more amazing than we could have
imagined?

In the moment, the faithful women who came to Jesus’ tomb to properly anoint his
body for burial, in the moment they could not have known that God had already done
a greater thing than they could have asked or imagined. They couldn’t grasp the true
meaning of the young man’s words “He has been raised; he is not here.” But the young
man also told them something else, something that once their fear and panic subsided
we can only assume they did. The young man in white told them to go to Galilee; that is
where they would find Jesus.

Galilee their home country. Go back home. Go back to where your every day lives
are and there you will encounter him. He is not off on some remote mountain top, he is
in the place where you live your lives. He is within the community of your friends. Go
there and find him.

You see, the good news of St. Mark’s ending, abrupt and disturbing as it is is just
the beginning of the Good News. The Good News has not ended. The good news
that Jesus Christ is risen today has an unwritten ending because it continues from that
empty tomb down through the centuries right up to us gathered here this morning. The
good news that Jesus Christ is risen gives our lives meaning and purpose and hope.
The good news that Jesus Christ is risen means that all our dead ends are the first step
of a new beginning, or as Father Tobin says “every setback is a set up for a comeback”.
And where do we encounter the Risen Christ? In the woof and warp of our daily
lives -- for he too walked the walk we do, he knows what it is to laugh to cry, he knows
what it is to feel abandoned, he knows what it is to face death full on. And he knows
what it is to come through the valley of the shadow of death, victorious on the other
side. Walking with us and promising us that resurrected life is ours as well.
Where do we also encounter the Risen Christ? In the company of our fellow
sojourners in life’s journey, gathered together as we are today to hear the story of hope,
to receive at this communion rail once again his living presence in the bread and the
wine. For wherever two or three are gathered in his name he is in the midst of us.
He is not buried in a cold, dark tomb. He is risen. And because of that our lives
have meaning and purpose and hope. And because of that our deaths, like his, will not
be the final word.

Alleluia! AMEN.