Vigil sermon: Will we follow Jesus?

Robert Berra

Sermon

The Easter Vigil, 2015

Mark 16:1-8

On this night of holding vigil—and now of celebration and joy—in which we greet Easter and the news of the resurrected Jesus Christ, our gospel reading gives us this final sentence:  “ [The women] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Mark Chapter 16 Verse 8.  What a strange place to end a reading from the Gospel on Easter.

But this brings up an interesting thing about the Gospel of Mark.  While Mark in our Bibles goes on to Chapter 16 verse 20, which rather hurriedly mentions a number of resurrection appearances,  in most modern translations of the Bible you will see a footnote that reads “Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8.”  The remaining 12 verses came later in the tradition, probably added sometime in the second century.  In fact, in the manuscript tradition of the Gospel of Mark there are no fewer than four possible endings to Mark’s gospel.  And the earliest commentators on the Gospel note in cases where there is something after verse 8, the additions are not present in the best manuscripts they have on hand.  In other words, Mark 16:9-20 were added to the gospel later on, and Mark may have intentionally ended his Gospel with the amazed and terrified women fleeing the tomb, not delivering the message to Peter and the disciples to follow the resurrected Jesus on to Galilee.  The earliest copies of Mark point to this moment of amazement, terror, and silence as the end of the gospel account.

It might be odd to think of a book that calls itself an account of Good News of Jesus Christ ending in a cliffhanger; but personally, I love it.  With Mark ending his Gospel at verse 8, we do not get a clean, rounded off, happy ending to the Jesus story.  We instead get terror and confusion.  That is in keeping with the rest of the story Mark tells, in which the people around Jesus just don’t get what he is up to.   Jesus orders folks to be silent about his identity as the messiah, which they do not do, and misunderstand the nature of Christ’s work. The disciples didn’t listen when Jesus told them the way he treads must lead to the cross.  Those same disciples abandon Jesus at his arrest.  Peter does not just abandon Jesus, but denies him thrice.  The women go to the tomb expecting to find Jesus’s body, meaning that no one has remembered what Jesus said when he prophesied his resurrection and return to Galilee.[1]  For Mark, the story of the disciples is one of little faith.  Why would Mark do this?

What Mark leaves us with, we who read this story so many years later, is a challenge.

As Mark has it, the angelic visitor who meets the women tells them: “you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here…go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

Mark’s challenge to us is this:  Will we heed the angel’s words?  Will we follow Jesus to Galilee?

We have seen the stone rolled away, and the empty place he was laid.  Will we follow Jesus where he has led, even through death and the tomb?

We know that the cross was not the final word, and God’s love triumphed over death by resurrecting Jesus.  Will we follow Jesus, with the promise that we will find our life in losing it?[2]

We heard from the angel that even Peter and the disciples—deserters and deniers—are invited to rejoin Jesus.  Will we follow Jesus, trusting in his gracious ongoing invitation even when we find our faith wanting and lapsed?

Will we follow Jesus, who tells us that the greatest task we set ourselves to is to love God with all that we are, and love our neighbors as ourselves?[3]

Will we follow Jesus, and being witnesses proclaim in word and deed the good news of the Kingdom of God?[4]

You see, the first verse of Mark’s Gospel sets out what it is.  Mark says it is ‘the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.’  And Mark makes clear by his ending that, actually, our story is its continuation.  Our answer to his challenge to believe and follow Christ is part of the ongoing story of Christ’s work in the world.  The gospel is not something we can put down, like a finished book.  We are always writing the next chapter and answering the challenge of discipleship.[5]

We continue this story tonight, and we begin new chapters of God’s good news as we welcome these two children by baptism into the household of God.   Let us renew our vows to follow Jesus, and make our vows to help these little ones do the same.

Amen.

---

[1] Mark 14:27-28.

[2] Mark 8:35.

[3] Mark 12:29-31.

[4] Mark 13:10.

[5] I owe much of this language to Tim Geddert, "Beginning Again (Mark 16:1-8)." (Direction: Biblical Scholarship 33, no. 2, 150-57. Accessed April 4, 2015. http://www.directionjournal.org/33/2/beginning-again-mark-16-1-8.html).

Jesus Came to Thomas Anyway...

Sermon Easter 2 Year B
Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

I have been sitting with this story of “Doubting Thomas” all week.  It has been rather uncomfortable.  I’ve been a bit haunted by the phrase "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

I’ve always heard this phrase as a condemnation.  Perhaps someone has told you that the story of “doubting Thomas” is a warning against losing your faith.  Perhaps you have heard this passage used as a bludgeon; that if you have doubts and questions, then Jesus revokes his blessing, and you are no longer welcome or worthy to stand among those who believe.

But there is something not quite right about that interpretation.

It led me to this question:

Why does Jesus not simply tell the disciples to let Thomas know that he is risen—and if Thomas does not believe, well, tough for him?

Put another way:

If Jesus said that a blessing is on those who have not seen and yet believe, why does Jesus even bother to come and give Thomas what Thomas asked for— a physical experience of the resurrection?

Another question comes up for me, and this brings up a matter for the community:

If belief is so important, why do the disciples keep Thomas around—the disbeliever that he is—sheltering him for a week before Jesus shows up again?

These questions gives me pause, and it forces me to pay more attention to what Jesus is doing before I try to figure out what he is saying.  And as I look at Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances in this Gospel, it becomes clearer that Jesus so desires to reconstitute the community he formed that he is willing to go to great lengths to do it, and entertain his own disciples’ disbelief and questions.  By Jesus’ own radical love for his disciples in the midst of their own disbelief, Jesus shows us how we are to experience our community life.

To look at the story again, we opened the reading with the disciples hiding behind a locked door.  Mary Magdalene had seen Jesus and told the disciples.  John and Peter ran to the tomb.  John believed, but we don’t know if Peter or any of the disciples did.  In the other Gospels they do not.  So, we have disciples, who are NOT out preaching the resurrection, but are hiding and are not sure what has happened to the body of Jesus. While Thomas sometimes gets a bad reputation, none of the disciples look too good here.

Jesus comes to them in the room, and the disciples knew him from two things:  his word of peace and his wounds.  They celebrate.  Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit, a sign of his power residing within them.  They are now a people sent, just as God sent Jesus into the world.

Later, Thomas comes in.  They tell him what happened.  He does not believe them.  He, being a realist, wants proof.  Even then, in times some would consider less enlightened, the dead do not rise.  The word of the disciples is not good enough.

Now here is something interesting.

Thomas, in his disbelief, spends an entire week with the rest of the disciples. 

They having received the Holy Spirit, share in Jesus’ mission and life.

They do not make Thomas leave.

They do not berate Thomas.

They stay in relationship to Thomas.

Thomas also stays with them.

Then a week later, Jesus, who could have written Thomas off in his unbelief, returns.

And it is in this personal return of Jesus to Thomas that we see the point of the encounter.  We start of see the nature of God in Jesus, who is the expression of God’s love in the flesh.  A love that continues and is not simply bound to how much love the disciples can return to God.  This is the love of a God who desires and yearns to be in relationship; and in relationship, to open the eyes of the disciples to the way the world should be.  This is why the disciples, after having received the Holy Spirit, do not turn Thomas out of the community.

Last Sunday Father Nicholas mentioned that the resurrection is less understood as something to be reasoned through and argued for.  It is something to be experienced.  Even the disciples had to see the resurrection and touch the formerly broken body of Jesus before they could believe it. 

Now we come to that pesky statement about seeing and believing.  Blessed may be the one who believes yet has not seen, but Jesus shows a grace by the personal encounter that demonstrates that he will go to great lengths to make himself—and God—known to all.  The disciples belonged with God before their belief was a matter settled.  Thomas belonged with Jesus before his belief was settled.  So too, we are not left condemned.  In our weakness and uncertainty, doubt and questions, God’s grace reaches even further to meet us.

God calls us into this experience of walking through life in the light of a radical love.  We are not simply called into a philosophical school (though we have this) of propositions to be defended, but into a relationship with God and the world, which is to be characterized by an indiscriminate loving regard-- for God, neighbor, and stranger. 

Now, after Christ’s ascension, we are still offered the experience of God who abides in us.  From the spark of the divine image of God we all share, we encounter God in all who we meet.  As a community of resurrection, we remember that Jesus bore witness to life after terrible woundings and death, showing the disciples his own pierced hands, feet, and side.  We likewise receive the Good News from God and from one another that life and love and goodness are possible in the most trying of times, and that there is a community willing

to bear the image of God into the world…to walk alongside others in pain, through to the other side of what may feel like our own personal tombs.

 

We experience God in worship, music, prayer, and contemplation.  Like the disciples, the community of God found here, by the power of the Spirit, is called to hold open the space where an experience of God in Christ is possible, and every possible opportunity to experience God is open to all. 

From the front door to the font,

from the pews to the altar,

from the bread and wine to our healing stations during Communion. 

The welcome further continues in the ministry of conversation we participate in when we are not in this sanctuary but eating and drinking together at meals, at coffee hour, or in study.  

Christ beckons, and the divine lure calls.

We call what we do here ‘radical hospitality,’ but the best kept secret of modern Christianity is that this hospitality is in many ways traditional. It is the lifeblood of the Way of Jesus. Saint Benedict of Nursia, who wrote one of the most influential rules of life for monasteries in the 6th century, advised that communities welcome all visitors as though they were Christ, and that those who came to the community belonged with the community—and were considered guests sent from God-- regardless of whether or not they were believers. Celtic Christians, well into the medieval period, kept similar monastic practices, allowing all to enter and stay and experience the life of the Christian community before a person had to commit to a series of propositions.  You could belong before you believed.

This community offers God’s welcome and does not hold back the good things of God from anyone.  This community acknowledges that all belong here regardless of whether or not one believes, and exists so it can be a place in which believers and nonbelievers can experience Christ together.  And our questions, our doubts, will be met by the grace of God.