April 7, 2012 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK
Genesis (2) Exodus, Isaiah, Psalm 118 + Romans 6: 3-11 + Mark 16: 1-7
Every three years we pick up the Gospel of Mark during the Easter’s Vigil. In the morning it will be Luke. I always like the Easter text from Mark because it doesn’t tell us much. I think that’s better, because it leaves us wondering. It leaves us open, and a little more free to image what’s next. Luke has Jesus all over the place that day. He’s at Emmaus, then drops in to the upper room, then he leads them out near Bethany and Asceneds: all in one day! John tells us that on that morning, Mary Magdalene, weeping beside the tomb, meets the gardner, or at first she thinks it is the gardner, then later in the day Jesus shows up in a locked room, and the Thomas story begins. Later there is an incident at the sea, and finally Peter has a remarkable moment with the Christ he had denied three times. Matthew doesn’t have as much to say about the details of the resurrection as he does about the consequences of it in terms of disciples being commissioned and addressing the false rumors that the body of Jesus had been stolen.
The first version of Mark’s gospel, the earliest was a problem for some early believers becasue it stopped with what we just heard. So over time, there were at least three well-known conclusions added to Mark’s text, and one of them is still included in our Bibles, but always with footnotes alerting us that those last verses were not Mark’s. In Mark’s original plan, Jesus is just gone. He is out there somewhere. Mark tells nothing of an Ascension, and he never says how Jesus appears to those who believe in him. He just leaves it wide open, and I think that is an invitation to a wonderful adventure.
When you live with and believe with Mark’s Gospel, you are not going to get all side-tracked and distraced wondering what the Risen Christ looked like or sounded like. You don’t get all curious about how he walked through locked doors yet still consumed food. You don’t sit and wonder why Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him as she sat weeping by the tomb, and what Thomas actually did after being invited to probe the wounds. All of that is of no consquence or interest when you start with Mark’s Gospel.
Moving into the spirit of Mark’s resurrection, we are left to wonder, just when and just how we are going to meet the risen Lord. One thing becomes remarkably clear by the time all four Gospels get put together: Jesus comes to everyone who has been his disciples. And when he does, they get a job, a commission, a vocation: call it what you will, but everyone who meets this risen Lord is assigned a task. If you look through Matthew, Luke, and John, you begin to see it. They are sent to Baptize, to Teach, to Forgive, to carry the news, to feed the sheep of the Shepherd, to break bread in his memory, to receive the Holy Spirit, and to love oneanother.
Tonight sitting by the glow of Christ, Light of the World, Christ risen in glory, we must catch some of the spirit of Mark’s wonderful adventure and be open to what is next to come. For you who are about to descend into the grave, the tomb, of a font, something new is in store. You can’t know and I can’t imagine right now what it is; but God has something for you or you would not have found your way into this church. This night is a beginning. It is not the end of your initiation. For you who will be anointed with Chrism by the power of the Holy Spirit, something is going to happen with and through you. You not only will meet the risen Lord, there is every reason to believe that you will reveal that risen Lord to someone else.
You cannot, you may not, be a disciple of Jesus Christ without taking up a share in his mission. You sit now in the assembly of God’s people, a people who have their own stories of what God can do and has done. Around you are people whose lives have been broken by failure, sin, and sadness. But they are here having crawled out of tombs of lonleliness and disappointment, having found forgiveness and hope in the Gospel we share and the sacraments we celebrate. It’s an imperfect church of imperfect people, and it is right where you belong. By your gifts, your faith, and with your vision, we shall all move closer to that perfection found in the Risen Christ.
“This is the day the Lord has made!” is the cry of this church today for everyone across the face of the earth. Realize that these ancient rites are happening in every land, among every people on the face of this earth tonight, becasue something has happened on this earth, and something more is yet to come. What we know is that there was and there still is an empty tomb. Because of what happened in Jerusalem, every tomb is now empty: empty of death. That is what they could not find in that tomb. It was not just the body of Jesus of Nazareth missing. There was no death. What was not in that tomb was death itself. This is the news we share by proclaiming the Risen Christ. This is the hope we proclaim to you. Death is gone, vanished, conquered, finished. This is the meaning of an empty tomb. My prayer for you is that this discovery will not leave you paralyzed by fear, but on fire with the joy and hope, the peace and the courage to live in the constant expectation that you will see the risen Christ, and he will come to you.