Sermon Sunday of the Resurrection/Easter Sunday March 16:1-8 1 April 2018 Year B

Most of us sitting here this morning know where our Gospel reading ends is not the end of the story. At some point those three women told others they had found an empty tomb. People believed their story or we wouldn’t be sitting here. Sure, I know you may have other reasons for being here. Your mother made you come. You did it to please your great aunt Agatha. You thought you should at least show up on Easter Sunday so friends won’t think you’re a total pagan. It started to rain again and you saw the lights on and wandered in. Doesn’t matter. You’re here. Welcome!

And then you hear that ending to Mark’s Gospel. Weird. Puzzling. Strange.
The ending reminds me of a friend of mine. We’d been out of touch for a really long time. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to learn I’d become an Episcopal priest, just curious. She told me she had gone to an Episcopal School where Episcopal nuns were the teachers.

In response to my question about why she didn’t follow the religion of her childhood, she said this. “I was four or five, in preschool or kindergarten, when the nuns told us the story of the crucifixion. When I heard that, I thought, ‘If that’s what happens to the good guys, I don’t want any part of it!’” And you know, I get it. If that were where the story ended, I wouldn’t want any part of it either!

Maybe the nuns read those children the story of the crucifixion and the tomb from Mark’s Gospel. Because here we are, faced with another ending that is not the end. The question is: Why did Mark end his gospel at the point we heard? “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

We’re not the only ones to wonder. Scholars have all kinds of reasons. The “real” ending was lost. And then someone decided to write an alternative ending to make the ending better, more palatable, perhaps easier to understand.

I am convinced, as are others, just so you know I’m not out on this limb by myself, that the ending Mark wrote was a literary device. It’s like a surprise ending to a mystery where the murderer is revealed as someone you never suspected.

Mark’s ending invites each of us to enter the story. He involves us in the story throughout the Gospel and his surprise ending draws us in even further. We know it is not the ending. We wonder. Is it an ending that might, possibly, be a beginning?

This means our faith can have room in it for mystery. Not a mystery to be solved, but a mystery to enter into and explore.

Perhaps on this Easter morning we could begin by remembering why we’re here as part of that mystery. Something brought you, even if it was Aunt Agatha.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find it out like this young woman did. She was visiting an Orthodox Church during the great fifty days of Easter. There, during Easter Season, instead of greeting one another during the peace the way we do, with, “Peace be with you,” they turn to one another and say, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!”

The young woman, not being Orthodox, was unaware of that tradition. And, when the woman next to her in the pew turned to her and said, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” she blurted out, “I know! That’s why I’m here!”

That’s why we’re here! AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018