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David Orendorff    Mark 16:1-8    April 12, 2009

Writing his gospel, his good news of Jesus the Christ, Mark is guiding his listeners and readers toward the faith of Jesus and what it means to be a follower of Christ. Mark’s narrative twists and turns toward an unshakeable trust in God’s present and powerful kingdom; it leads the disciple to a life lived close to God in servant love. But when Mark gets to the climax, the moment for the final revelation, he gives us no witness, no final answer, only mystery.

All the other writers of the Jesus’ story tell of amazing appearances of the risen Christ. Mark tells of no resurrection appearances. Instead he offers an empty tomb, an unknown boy’s advice and the women’s fear and silence.

The ending is so unsatisfying that some early church folks decided Mark needed a better ending and so wrote it. But we are quite certain that both of the alternative endings[1] are much later than the original and peculiar ending we have. So Mark leaves us with the question, “Was there a resurrection or not?”

Mark, who has been giving us careful instructions on all things to this point, is saying, “I cannot make you believe what happens next, that Jesus indeed has risen from the dead. You will believe it for yourself or you won’t.”

Mark offers some clues to those who are curious. In the empty tomb there is a young man, a boy. He tells us two things. First, he says, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him.”

The boy announces that Jesus arose. The amazement of the women indicates that they (and probably the other disciples) weren’t listening to Jesus who told them again and again that on the third day he would rise. The women, instead of coming to anoint his dead body, had they and we been listening and trusting, would have expected to find the tomb empty. Amazement is a lack of faith.

Then this mysterious boy says, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” If the disciples want to see the resurrected Jesus, then we must go to where his ministry was most lived, among the villages and towns, the people of Galilee where Jesus taught of God’s immediate, authoritative and powerful kingdom.

Returning to Galilee, the disciples found Jesus still alive among the people who trusted God. They found lepers and demoniacs still clean. They found tax collectors and prostitutes still living renewed lives of servant love. They found a holy people filled with the Holy Spirit, on fire for God. It is in Galilee that Jesus, even beyond death, continues to heal lives, body and soul.

What made the early church strong and grow were not eyewitness accounts or intellectual beliefs that Jesus was raised from the dead. The early church grew because they experienced the living Christ among them even after his crucifixion. The proof for Mark was not what Thomas sought in touching Jesus’ wounds, however satisfying that might be. The proof for Mark and his church was in the lives of those who were metamorphosed from disease and failure to unshakeable trust that God was with them and for them as a loving servant in all times.

I like Mark’s attitude. No amount of reasoned argument or witness reports can make us believe in the resurrection, so Mark doesn’t waste his or our time. We simply will not hear, see or understand that which we choose not to see, hear or understand. But if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, then we will know the resurrected Christ in the transformed lives of those who follow a living Christ.

Of all the gospel writers, my faith in Jesus’ resurrection is closest to Mark’s. It is not the Biblical, archeological, scientific or historical arguments that persuade me that Jesus still lives. I am persuaded repeatedly by the lives I have seen touched by the Holy Spirit. I know Christ lives because I see his faith and work in others and even in myself. Christ is risen because his transforming love continues to touch the unclean and make them clean. He is risen because he continues to touch us and forgive us of our sinful failures, of the diseases of our bodies, our hearts, our minds, and our souls. All we have to do is fully show up to worship, study and serve and we are reborn as the people made to be holy from birth.

Was there a resurrection? I have answered with my faith. And I know many and most of you have answered with your faith because you have come here today to celebrate that which cannot be proved or disproved by empirical science but which is proved to us by our experience of God’s loving, healing presence.

I have a friend who was resurrected. George Harper is one of the great pastors in the generation preceding mine. He could have been a pitcher for the New York Yankees but instead went to seminary and became a pastor. I have a hundred remarkable stories about George, but one stands out for his resurrection. George was officiating at a graveside service. Standing by the grave and praying, the plank gave way and George disappeared into the grave. There was a stunned silence and some fear. Then George leaped straight up from out of the grave singing, “Up from the grave he arose!” It is my experience that every time we fall into the open grave, we are launched heavenward by God’s unfailing love. This is why I believe in resurrection.

I know that for some of you it is not easy to believe in Christ alive. Each day is a challenge to faith. Challenged by our own failures and doubts and challenged because we live in a part of the world where trusting God in and beyond death makes us a minority. When we leave this worship, though we have once again experienced the mighty work of God in us, we will enter a community most of which does not know the resurrection, does not know or acknowledge God working a mystery of healing in the world. But take heart and courage from Mark’s early community. Returning to their roots in Galilee, their faith in God’s constant presence grew in each one and in every village as they saw God alive.

The early Christian church grew not because those earliest disciples were smart, rich or articulate. The church literally exploded into existence because she trusted God and gave Christ- like love to each other. It grew because any fool could witness and experience Jesus alive if they only had eyes to see and ears to hear what was happening in their lives and the lives of their neighbors. And in the power of the Holy Spirit, she gave servant love to the sick, the orphan, the mentally ill, the outsider, the prisoner, the naked and hungry.

As our trust in God grows, God’s work in us and through us grows. God has trusted us to be today’s witness to the world, to His prodigal children-not to coerce them into faith, but to reveal by our witness of God’s love for us our love for the world. And, by our witness to the God- filled and God-loving life, Christ lives; the resurrection is real.

The proof of the resurrection lies in the lives that Jesus continues to change toward courage and forgiveness in the face of evil, toward grace and mercy in the face of suffering, and toward a blessed assurance when facing death. Those who again and again return to Galilee find Jesus alive and shout with all the heavens and their lives, “He lives.”

Shalom and amen.