Easter comes with a calling - Easter Day

Mark 16: 1-8

“Behind the monastery, down by the road,
There is a cemetery of worn out things,
There lie smashed china, rusty metal,
Cracked pipes and rusty bits of wire,
Empty cigarette packets, sawdust,
Corrugated iron, old plastics, tyres beyond repair:
All waiting for the Resurrection like ourselves.”

Those words by Ernesto Cardenal Martinez the Nicaraguan poet/priest who served in the Sandinista government of the 1980s, witness powerfully to the power of resurrection to change lives. For Resurrection is not just an event of two millenia ago but it is a reality that contains the power to bring hope to smashed up lives in the here and now. It is the message of Christ in his risen power, reaching out with an unending passion that however marred the Divine image might be in peoples’ lives, they might once more be enabled to shine with the image of his likeness.

Certainly, the women who came to the tomb, knew what it was to have smashed up lives. They had loved Jesus. They had placed great hopes in him. But now it was all gone! Destroyed! For they had witnessed his violent, humiliating death. Their hopes and dreams lay ruined in the ignominious death of Jesus. And all that was left to them was a dream that they might pay a final debt of honour. After all his burial had been rushed and so the women took upon themselves to undertake the gruesome task of anointing a body that had been dead for some 36 hours, a risky enough undertaking given that the authorities would hardly feel kindly to those who chose to demonstrate solidarity with such a dissident.

But even that awful task seemed to be beyond them. The tomb was closed. It was too late. Bursting into closed tombs was and is the stuff of ghouls. And more than that, how could they physically achieve their ill thought through objective? Here is a picture of tragedy and impotence. What more is there to do but to despair and to weep?

And yet, the story does not end on this despondent note. For Mark goes on to tell us that suddenly the sealing of the tomb becomes reversed. Through Divine action, the women find that they are granted access to the tomb. Reality has been completely transformed. And as the women enter, they find that the purpose for which they have come is now unnecessary. For inside the tomb, they meet a young man who has for them a message that reverberates down through the years;

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”

And in those words, we grasp the essential truth about Jesus. He is not just another of the ten a penny jumped up characters with Messianic claims who can be silenced by the power of the state. On the contrary, he is the one that they cannot silence. For whips and crosses cannot silence him. For this is the Godman, the one who God favours, the one who will go on troubling the centres of power for generation after generation. Oh I know that within three centuries a bloodstained Emperor of Rome will co opt Jesus. At times, it will seem as if the men of power and violence have subverted his message with their perverted doctrines of domination. BUT, time and again when it seems that the authentic Jesus has been silenced, he will break out again and again with a liberating power.

But by now, you must be noticing that Mark’s Gospel is unique. Given that the verses after verse 8 are later add ons, Mark is unique in that we do not here from the risen Christ. Instead, the women are given a message, a message to tell the disciples to get themselves to Galilee where they will see Jesus. This is no calling to a place of ecstasy. It is not a calling to a great place of worship or even a mountain top. It is a calling to go back to the place where they first began to Jesus so that they might once more begin the path of discipleship. For this is not to be a story with an ending but a story that will go on. For Resurrection is not something to wallow in but instead it is a serious calling to continue the path of discipleship from our respective Galilees. Note, that for Mark, the story does not end with triumphal but with the news that Christ being alive and accessible, means that we are called to get on with the unromantic reality of being his followers, living out the path of discipleship.

And it is in the living out of discipleship by the people of God that the story continues. Oscar Romero, the great Archbishop of San Salvador, heroically fought for justice for the impoverished poor of his country in the face of the Government’s death squads which were tolerated by the USA. His martyrdom became inevitable. Just days before he was gunned down whilst celebrating the Mass, he told a journalist;

“You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me,
that I forgive and bless those who do it.
Hopefully, they will realise that they are wasting their time.
A bishop will die, but the church of God
which is the people, will never perish.”

Back to Mark’s Gospel. Not surprisingly, the women fled the tomb with terror. They had encountered a new reality and needed time to adjust to that which they had witnessed. After all, we all struggle when taken beyond the parameters of life with which we are familiar. Did they tell the disciples? The short ending, the other Gospels and the subsequent activities of the community of faith, all suggest that they did.

But today, what matters most is our response. Christ’s call to follow him in proclaiming a message of peace and reconciliation are still highly important especially in our world in which too often we effectively become that to which we say we are opposed to. Christ’s call to affirm the value and dignity of each human life are so important in a world of gross inequalities, in which we tolerate torture and prejudice against people simply for being other than us. Today, we need to live out the message of radical inclusion and grace which values us beyond our deserts. It is an ongoing story but a story in which the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, goes on through those who live out the Easter faith by following the path of discipleship, our Galilees.

So, Easter bids us to embrace Resurrection that the story may go on, the story which is “The Gospel According to You and You and You!


This sermon is to be preached at a Circuit Service on Easter Day April 8th 2007 at Torrington Methodist Church