Mark 16: 1-8
I've wasted a lot of Easter sermons over the years trying to prove Easter, as in trying to prove in 1,600 words or less the factual veracity of the Resurrection. The fact of matter is that I don’t need to prove the Resurrection to you because you already believe in the Resurrection, and not believe as in wishful thinking that a fairy tale could come true but something much more experience based, as in you already know that the Resurrection is true because you know that life out of death happens all the time.
How many of you have been following the stories about the survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing? Stories of a young woman who lost a leg and is dancing again. Stories of a little girl who lost a brother, a leg and a year of school and is now back at school with a prosthesis and a smile on her face. Stories of a man who lost both legs and has since married and is expecting a child with his wife. Stories of people falling in love with the first responders who carried them to ambulances and medical personnel who cared for them in rehab.
And that’s just one story. What about all the people who have come back from the death of alcohol, tobacco or drug addiction? Or from the death of abandonment, betrayal, abuse, the death of a loved one, divorce, genocide, war, ethnic cleansing? Or risen from the death of poverty, ignorance and deprivation to lead nations, discover scientific marvels, write exquisite poetry, sing with tongues of angels, hit the fastball like no before or since, or just be good neighbors, friends, citizens when all the cards stacked up to not even that?
I can't imagine how futile life would be if death really were the end, if no one ever came back from tragedy, hardship, injury, or whatever tomb life can try to stuff you into. We hear these stories and rejoice because they give us hope and courage that, when our time comes, we too will rise again. I cannot honestly imagine facing real life, the down and dirty of life and not just the sunshiny days, without the resurrection.
the genius of Mark's telling of the Easter story is that it helps us the ways we live life without the resurrection and challenges us not to run away from the Resurrection as fast as we can, just like Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary. Life without the resurrection is post mortem living, mourning the death of God, wondering who is going to roll the stone away from the tomb.
what is post mortem living? All of us have suffered deaths of one kind or another in life. All of us live post disappointment – jobs that didn’t work out or you were fired from, career paths that didn’t bear fruit, relationships that dried up and blew away, we thought we had an appointment with life and it got cancelled or we missed it. Some of us live post warm and fuzzy love, isolated from family and friends, without the embrace of a loving community. Some of us live post youthful vitality as our bodies and minds do different things now. Some us live post awareness of life grinding us down one day at a time. The years pass by unnoticed until there comes a time when we realize the passing and feel the cumulative effect of days slipping through our fingers. Post the future being better than the past.
Most of us try to cope with this post mortem living by figuratively trying to anoint these deaths with perfume just like the Mary’s and Salome. They were going to anoint Jesus so he didn’t smell and we do the same with those places in our lives so that we can avoid noticing them so that they won’t bother us. Perfumed or not, these deaths don’t go away and their smell follow us, even defines us. That’s post mortem living. Walking around with death and trying not to be bothered by it, even when it's calling the shots.
Then there’s the mourning God. Mourning can be intense as I’m sure it is right now for the families and friends of the students lost in the Korean ferry disaster, or it can be a dull ache which we almost forget sometimes, but which still has the power to well up and swamp us, like the anniversary of President Kennedy’s death did for the people who remember exactly where they were when they heard the news on November 22, 1963. Having been disappointed by life yet still fully aware of God’s promises and intention not only for all of creation but for each of us individually, so much life and love, we mourn God’s death, the fact that things don’t seem to have turned out right. Wars overseas, turn the channel. The earth laid waste, try not to look or rationalize it as progress. Children dying of hunger, so sad. Neo-Nazis shooting up Jewish community centers and nursing homes, why didn’t the FBI catch him? If we let it, life can turn us into full-time intense mourners because God just seems so dead and buried. When we mourn, we keep our heads down and try not to feel, hope for the best while expecting the least.
And finally, wondering who is going to roll the stone away from the tomb. From day to day, most us forget about the Resurrection and it's power and possibility in our lives, all the evidence of the Resurrection in so many other lives notwithstanding, that life can feel as if an enormous stone is in the entrance of a tomb and we are the ones stuck inside. Intellectually and emotionally we close ourselves off from this power and possibility, gripped by real fear and terror at the prospect of the Resurrection happening to us because we have no idea what will happen next, while we do know what perfume anointing, mourning God, and tolerating death in guise of pretending it's not there feels like. Running away is not the answer. Suffering and death come to each of us and all of us as a fact of life. It's what we do when it comes that makes all the difference. As Resurrection people, we walk into death when it comes our way, even embrace it if it is killing us or others as a pathway of transformation into new life. There can be no Easter without Good Friday, no Resurrection without Crucifixion. You can’t have new life without letting go of the old life. And we don't have to do anything, because God has already done it and keeps on doing it. All those people I mentioned earlier, who knows if they are Christian but they are living the resurrection. And us? Because Jesus got up, we get up. Because Jesus got up, we dare to get up.
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