Sermon Easter 2006

Read Mark 16:1-8

June 18, 1815 and the English Channel is burning. Ships from both sides of the straight are blowing each other to bits. The battle is watched anxiously but it is impossible to tell who is winning amidst the smoke and flame. The Emperor, Napoleon, has sent his best into the fray, hoping to defeat the great British General, Wellington. The British await the news that will tell them whether they will remain an independent nation or capitulate to the control of the French megalomaniac. Using primitive semaphore news is transmitted using light across to the waiting British. A message: “Wellington defeated…” is smothered in noisome fog. The news spreads quickly and despair takes a hold. People wonder when the invaders will land. But the fog lifts and a frantic repetition comes to confirm the message: “Wellington defeated Napoleon.”

Our passage today ends with the same abrupt abbreviation, as if a fog has descended on the story and we are left wondering what happens next, questioning what the message is supposed to be. Is that it? Fear? Nothing else?

Mark’s version of Jesus’ story is the earliest of the four we have in the Canon. Mark’s style is that of a breathless, fast-paced thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Details are sacrificed for pace and every section is prefaced with “immediately”. The original version of Mark ended at 16:8 with the women keeping quiet in fear. Later readers tried to remedy this anticlimax by adding the resurrection appearances in the rest of the chapter. But Mark would have us left hanging, the story cauterised… Why?

To answer that, we must remember that Mark is writing a story well after the events in history have taken place. Mark is writing to an audience that already know that this cannot be the ending for otherwise, how would they have come to know about Jesus? Mark is using a literary device that propels the story into an immediate present reality, drawing the reader (or in ancient times: the hearer) into the story.

Sarah Breuer compares this to the way most movie genres will draw their audience into the story using well-worn, stereotyped devices. Think about your favourite kind of movie:

If you’re a fan of whodunits then you quickly stack up a range of possible outcomes and as the characters play out the unfolding drama, your endings are whittled away by process of elimination, until - if it’s a real good twister - you have none left and you’re guessing all the way to the end. Or maybe you’re a horror addict. You know the plot so well – it’s the same stuff every time - but you find yourself coaching the characters the whole way through the action, especially when they insanely walk alone through the one door they should know spells certain-squishy-death! And then there is the romcom, which is the most predictable genre of all but you’ll bite your nails while the protagonist anxiously tries to cover up some dreadful faux pas, which could cost him the relationship. And you shed a tear when all is finally resolved in a smorgasbord of fluff and sentiment at the end.

So we get sucked in, even when we know the ending. The story is compelling and we are part of it.

Mark has made us part of his story. We know the women must have told someone, the disciples must have gone to Galilee and discovered Jesus’ message alive and well in the hearts of a growing multitude. We know the message must have spread, because we have heard it.

Mark wants us in the story and that is what the resurrection is most fundamentally about. We are the ones who write out the next chapter as we live the life of Christ on earth. We are the resurrection ending that never quite gets finished. In you this story finds another twist in the tale and evil is left guessing. Chalk up one more victory for Jesus, just when a fog of death was about to eclipse the message…

Friday we meditated on all that is not well in this world: taken up into the Cross of Christ. On Saturday we received news that Cecil Fester had died. Cecil has lived a full and vibrant life. No one will soon forget his voice and love of music – especially opera. Just this year he was singing on our radios. If Sunday is to mean anything for us, it must mean that Cecil’s life has now come full circle and he joins the unbroken message of Mark written in the lives of millennia of faithful people who have lived for Jesus. The hope Jesus gave and Cecil sang, continues with us, and will continue long after we are gone. No fog of death can stop it.

So, go good friends and LIVE as surely as Jesus is alive!