The Rest of the Story

The Rest of the Story

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Welcome to the Easter Sunday news round up. Breaking News! This just in from an excavated home just outside Jerusalem. A manuscript believed to be from the 1st century says the crucifixion was a hoax, and - get this - no such person as Jesus had ever existed. It was all an elaborate plot of a group of rebels attempting to cause a crisis at the Passover Festival as their opening move to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem! The man playing the part of one Jesus of Nazareth was hidden while his twin brother James the Lesser volunteered to be crucified so the man playing part of Jesus could return to his alleged followers, members of the rebellion, on several occasions, thus perpetuating the idea that he was the Son of God! Further, if you believe any of this I have several bridges leading out of Manhattan up for sale. April Fool!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

What we do find in Mark 16:1-8 is just as intriguing! Like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome who go back to the tomb, we come back here every year, year after year after year, expecting to find something, expecting to learn something, expecting to see someone. That someone is Jesus. Instead we find a young man, perhaps the one who fled the scene in the garden naked, now in a white robe saying, “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. He has risen, he is not here ... but go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.”

Do not be amazed?!? This is just not how it works. The women have every expectation that just like the night before there was a big stone in front of the cave-like tomb. And Jesus’ tortured and dead body should be inside. On the way there they wonder just how they will get the stone moved out of the way so as to pay their respects and perform all the traditional rituals that Joseph of Arimathea did not perform: the bathing and anointing of the body. Yet, the stone is already rolled back. The tomb is empty, except for this strange young man in white looking as if he just stepped of the set of Saturday Night Fever! He says the tomb is empty, but it isn’t. There he is. And who is he anyway? More importantly, says Dr. John Chryssavgis, Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, "The tomb of Christ was not empty. It was open!  It remains for us an open invitation."

Let’s face it, in this world we like it when things are predictable. Dead is dead. Stones are heavy. Strange young men in white do not just appear in places where you expect to see a dead body wrapped in a linen cloth. No wonder we are told the women are frightened. If something as certain and inevitable as death is no longer predictable, then the world has changed dramatically. Pardon us while in fact we are amazed!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

A character called The Misfit in Flannery O’Conner’s short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, puts it this way: “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and He shouldn’t have done it. He has thrown everything off balance.” We like balance. We crave predictability. We desire order. A good man like Jesus is suddenly hard to find! The last time there was such an other-worldly experience like this was on top of the mountain, Peter, James and John were there. Three men. They saw Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah! They heard a voice from the cloud declare, “This is my Son. Listen to him! They had listened but could not comprehend that he would be rejected, tortured, crucified by Rome, and three days later rise from the dead. Since Friday they are nowhere to be seen. Instead there are three women are told that Jesus, their Jesus, is on the loose! He is not present as a lifeless corpse. He is not a dim memory in the past. He is a living presence! The young man says he goes ahead of us, into the future to meet us there and claim us as his own, not on our terms but on his! And he wants to see the unfaithful disciples – the ones who disappeared at the end. He especially wants to see Peter who had denied even knowing him three times. Proving once again, our God is a God of forgiveness and second chances!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

These three women are given a task: to go back to the others and tell them The News: He is Risen and will meet them in Galilee! A simple task. An important task. There is just one problem. According to Mark they are afraid to do so. Terror and amazement had seized them. They flee the scene and tell no one for they are afraid. Here endeth the reading. This is a problem. Open a Bible and you will see that long after Mark ends the story right there, others have tried to fill in a more satisfactory ending with Jesus appearing here and there, and people handling snakes and all. But Mark wants us to stop right here. We are left to ponder this strange ending. Stranger even than an open tomb with no one in there but the Man in White. If the women don’t tell anyone, who is going to tell the disciples and Peter to go back to the beginning of the story, back to Galilee, back to his baptism by John and the voice that proclaims, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” If the men have abandoned him, and the women are afraid to tell the story, who is going to spread the Good News, He is Risen and going before us to greet us and lead us on?

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Many find this ending to Mark’s story problematic. Even disturbing, if not simply perplexing Yet, here is where Mark gets it just right. There is one group remaining to tell the story, to announce the news, to return to Galilee and to walk in the way of Jesus. There is one group of people left to carry the Word into the world, bring Jesus into the context of everyday living and take up the path of discipleship: that would be all those who hear this story! That would be us! We are the rest of the story! "The tomb of Christ was not empty. It was open!  It remains for us an open invitation."

The invitation of the open tomb is for us and anyone and everyone who dares to look into the tomb to see Jesus. Anyone who is ready to step out of our own tombs of our own making, return to where it all begins, and follow him. Those who do are his Beloved Disciples. He is well pleased with us!  Know this, my sisters and brothers, the world needs you, the church needs you, Jesus needs you. God needs you! They need your light and your love. There is something beautiful only you can do to bear much fruit with your light and your love for the life of the whole world. Jesus is on the loose. He is alive in you. Go forward to Him and go forward with Him. He goes before to greet us, to claim us, and to thank us for all that we do in His name. For we are the rest of the story!

Alleuia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleuia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleuia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

And so are we! And so are we!