I know, I know, I mean “Lent hasn’t even started,“ Pastor Brook, “and you’re already thinking about Easter? !?
Well, believe it or not but I’m pretty much always thinking about Easter. I mean, as Christians shouldn’t we all be? After all, we are “Easter People!” As one Jewish Rabbi once put it to a Christian clergy friend: “I don’t know what you‘re whining about! For crying out loud you have Easter! Jesus being raised from the dead? Who can top that?! I’d love to have Easter!”
Well I love Easter and one of the aspects of Easter that I love is the fact that each of our gospels tells the story of Jesus’ resurrection differently! John gives us Jesus disguised as the gardener coming to comforting Mary, weeping in the garden. Luke gives us a Jesus who walks beside us on the walk to Emmaus. Matthew comes at us with a violent earthquake that rolls the tombstone away!
But I think if I had a favorite Easter story it would have to be Mark’s ending to his gospel! Mark ends his gospel with an “unfinished” symphony. He leaves us with an empty tomb and two women unable to move or speak, frozen for fear.
Here’s how Kat Bair, a youth pastor at the 1st UMC church in Fort Worth puts it in a devotional:
”And why wouldn’t they be afraid? Think of all they had lost: they had given up everything to follow a teacher who they were devoted to. One of their own had betrayed him and they had watched him be arrested and tortured and executed, powerless to stop it. They have to go one, so they go to the tomb, doing the banal work that goes along with death.
Then all of a sudden they are confronted with this news and they are afraid. Maybe they afraid of the angel, or of a Zombie Jesus. Or Maybe they are afraid of getting their hopes up, afraid of having their hearts broken all over again, afraid of believing something so wonderful.
Are we brave enough to believe something so wonderful?
I talked to the teenagers about how cynicism is easy, not believing is easy, rolling your eyes is easy, but believing, having hope against hope, now that’s brave.”
Mark, the original writer anyway, wanted to leave us hanging. He wanted to leave us at Mark 16:8: “The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.”
Why? Who would end the story here? Like an unfinished symphony? With the resurrection story ending in fear…a story yet to be told?
A master storyteller, that’s who! Mark leaves it unfinished, because he wants each of us to finish it. Because the Easter story isn’t a story of the past and it’s not something that is finished…it’s a story that we Are called to finish! Each of us has an Easter story that is unfolding right this minute…if we’re brave enough to overcome our Good Friday fears and doubts. If we’re brave enough to doubt our rolling eyes and adolescent cynicism and dare to do the more difficult thing…believe! If we have the guts to hope against hope…and believe again…to believe in Jesus a second time!
You know the old saying: “Fool me once, shame on You. Fool me twice, shame on me!” Well, Easter only happens if we dare to be the fool a second time!
And so that’s my Lenten/Easter challenge for you…can you dare to believe in Jesus a second time? A third time!? And more?
Your pastor, a fool for the risen Christ time and time again, Brook
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