10:30 am, Resurrection Sunday, March 31, 2024 ~ FBCA

(Isaiah 25:6-9; Mark 16:1-8)

Ah, it is Easter Sunday. Early in spring this year; so, few flowers are blooming. No bees buzzing yet. ‘You know why bees buzz? You’d buzz too if someone stole your honey and nectar! And the bees went on strike, eh? You know what their demands are? They want shorter flowers and more honey.’

I regularly quote Rev. Dr. John Bartol, my Minister Emeritus back in Windsor Church. These are his jokes; he had one for every occasion. He’d say, ‘All the good men are dying off; and I don’t feel so well myself.’ And, ‘There’s people dying that never died before!’

Dealing with death and everything deadly is part of this life. It is essential to the human experience. Byron read what was spoken thousands of years ago, in the time of one of the Isaiahs. God will swallow up death forever …will wipe away the tears from all faces. This great hope gets repeated, from time to time, through the centuries of the Bible. We understand today’s story of Jesus to be at the heart of this, the pinnacle. It is like a victory; death is conquered.

In this ‘Mark year’ we read the resurrection story from Mark chapter sixteen. This earliest of the four Gospels is brief, and the ending of the book is even uncertain, with a couple options after the finale we read today, with Mary, Mary and Salome fleeing and not saying anything to anyone at first, in shock and fear.

The book of Mark does not tell the story of Mary Magdalene meeting Christ in that garden where the tomb was, nor of the disciples who walked to the town of Emmaus that night and recognized Jesus once they stopped to eat, of Christ appearing to the disciples suddenly in a room with locked doors, of Thomas wanting to touch the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands a week later, of the Master meeting them all and giving them their ‘great commission.’

Not to mention the actual resurrection moment. No one sees it or reports him stepping out of the tomb, in the book of Mark.

But wait… search through the end of Matthew, and Luke, and John, and we will be reminded that no one tells the scene of Jesus coming out of the tomb. None of them describe it.

Scholar, Dom Crossan, calls this the great omission. We have the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. His baptism is described in more than one place. His transfiguration into a shining, glowing being is in print. But not the actual moment of Jesus’ resurrection.

Did the soldiers, guarding His tomb, see anything? We are not told. Mark makes no mention of them anyway. Just the angelic man who speaks to the women, after the resident corpse is already gone, and alive.

None of us got to see that moment either, of course. So we are all in the same boat with those first disciples, men and women. We have only our experience of meeting Christ alive, after, to prove to our hearts and souls that we ‘serve a living Saviour, He’s in the world today.’

I put the image of a Christian icon on the front of today’s bulletin. It is, I think, a fairly modern one, from the Eastern Church. I have been interested in how believers have made pictures of the resurrection for 2000 years, with no Bible description. We have one stained glass window here of Jesus’ resurrection. Do you know it? Back there, above the entry doors. What does it show? An open tomb with a winged angel, with halo, sitting on the edge. Easter lilies bloom nearby, while three empty crosses can be seen in the distance.

This is typical of resurrection pictures in the Western Church: the Roman Catholics and Protestants. Jesus is often seen rising up above the tomb entrance, or sometimes just stepping out of it.

In the Eastern tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, different images arose. Like the one I put on the bulletin. More than one dead person comes out of the earth in these resurrection scenes. See who they are? See who Jesus is grabbing by the wrist and pulling up from the grave? Adam and Eve.

Of course, this is not meant to be a picture of what literally happened that early morning. It is art, is it a spiritual picture, it is a metaphor; it is about meaning, not history. Jesus comes to life, and brings all of humanity with him. Eve and Adam represent all humanity in Genesis, and in the New Testament, and they do again in the artwork of the Eastern Church. So, to rework a Baptist Easter hymn, ‘Up from the grave we arose!’

All our spiritual stories, here, are for the sake of our real lives. All our songs, all our artwork, is not escapism, but realism. All this Christianity stuff is not just comforting thoughts, or true facts. It is about our lives. Our lives get to be resurrected, even here and now, before our physical death.

I had us start this service reciting a bit from the letter we call Colossians. I got you to say ‘Hallelujah’ after I read:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (3:1)

If you have been raised with Christ!? Yes, you and me.

Sometimes, it is at our worst moments that we need a new lease on life. Then, we can receive the resurrection. Jesus takes us by the wrist, and brings us up.

It was years ago that a friend and mentor of mine was interviewed on the radio. One story he told was of a very tragic time, thirty years before. It was supposed to be so happy. He was to be married. And, move to a new province for a new job. Preparations for the wedding were all set. The new job was lined up. Then, his fiance was killed in a car accident. The happy plans for their life were destroyed in an instant.

Many of you know this story - better than I - because this was Roger, your Minister of CE, and Lianne.

Why did Roger tell this in a radio interview? Because the point of his personal story was resurrection. Roger spoke of his friends who rallied around him during the tragedy. A few of you were surely among those dear friends. Rog talked of how he was taken on road trips and kept busy that summer, by those who loved him and mourned with him. He said this was resurrection. The grace of being able to live after life seemed destroyed.

That was 1975. Now, fifty years later, Roger is also dead. And that beautiful mystery of resurrection speaks in a different way.

Likey, many of you can tell your own stories of resurrection. And, you have your own personal hopes about the life-after-death part of what Jesus brings us. It is all gift. All grace. All awesome and beautiful. It is all an answer to death and pain: going through it, we are raised with Jesus. As the Saviour sings in the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘To conquer death you only have to die, you only have to die.’

To paraphrase Dr. Bartol: All us good folks are dying, but we don’t feel unwell in Christ! And: there are people being resurrected who never lived before!

Alleluia! Praise Christ!