Easter Sunrise Service - Sugarloaf Mountain
Easter Sunday 2012; Rev. David Williams
There’s nothing more frightening than the unknown. There’s nothing scarier than the unexpected.
Like, say, those time when you’re curled up on the sofa late in the evening. You’ve got the bag of microwave popcorn and a nice cozy blanket, and Netflix is all spooled up, and you’re ready to be scared.
The movie you’re watching serves that right up, because you just know that scene will come. It’ll come in that scene when she’s walking slowly down a dark and shadowed hallway towards a door. There’s someone at the door, and she moves slowly towards it, as softly menacing violins make alarming, tension-building noises on the soundtrack. The doorbell rings again, and she moves even closer. The violins grow louder, and you bury yourself deeper in the blanket. Don’t do it! Don’t open that door!
But of course she pays no attention to you at all, and stretches her hand out to the doorknob. She hesitates, uncertain, her hand hovering right at the knob as the film’s director messes with you.
“Hello? Who is it?” she asks. There’s no reply, but the doorbell rings again. I mean, c’mon! You’ve got to be kidding me! There’s no way she should open it. No sane person would open it! No-one you know would open it.
So of course, she starts to open it.
Her hand touches the knob, and she turns it, and the door swings open as the music screeches raw terror. You cower back into the sofa, trying to burrow away from the terrifying, inevitable reveal. It’s...it’s...its’...
Oh look! Jehovah’s Witnesses!
This is going to be a scarier film than you thought.
But as frightening as that sight might be, what really makes us tremble is not knowing what will happen next. Of everything that frightens us, there’s little that is more disturbing than the unknown, than a closed door in darkness.
So that brings up a question. As we heard the story of the Easter event from the Gospel of Mark today, why do we end today’s reading at verse eight. It seems like such a fearful and grim place to stop. On this morning when we celebrate the most important event in our faith, a celebration of the resurrection of Christ, why do we end with a reading that says, “...terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
That’s not a happy ending. That doesn’t even begin to evoke big family meals, egg hunts and chocolate bunnies.
To understand that, it helps to know a little bit about Mark’s Gospel. Mark is the very earliest of the Gospels, having been put into final form between 60 and 70 AD. In most Bibles, Mark keeps on crankin’ through verse 19. Jesus appears again to the disciples, miracles are performed, Jesus ascends into heaven, and the Gospel message is proclaimed everywhere. That’s a much better ending.
But those verses only came into the Bible later, tacked on in the late second century. The oldest versions don’t have them at all.
There’s also another, shorter ending. It’s just two sentences tacked on to the end of verse eight, with Jesus sending out a proclamation of salvation. But that little snippet comes to us from nearly 300 years later.
So the oldest text about Easter ends with those who have come to mourn Jesus at his tomb fleeing in fear and then maintaining a quivering, terrified silence. As difficult as that might be to read, Mark tells us something very real about how human beings deal with the unknown and the unexpected.
The followers of Jesus had just experienced a huge and crushing loss. Their beloved teacher and rabbi, the one they thought might just be the messiah they’d been hoping for, had died. He had shared the terrible fate of countless others, a public crucifixion. They knew they had to mourn. They knew--they were certain--that they were headed into a dark and lonely time. They knew that their little movement was going to fail, just as countless others had been snuffed out. That was just how things worked.
As those three women approached the stone door to the tomb, this is what they were sure that they knew. But when they came to the stone, it was rolled away. A man dressed in shining white was there waiting for them. In the world of the ancient Hebrews, white clothing was usually understood as a sign of a heavenly being. Remember, this was 2000 years before detergent. Only angelic power could possible get a shirt *that* sparkly white.
The message conveyed by that man left them truly terrified. “He has been raised.” Suddenly, they were faced with a future that was truly unknown.
What did that even mean? He had risen? What was happening?
As bleak and dark as they had thought their future was, at least it was something they understood. Now, suddenly, they were facing an incomprehensible event, one that would transform their lives in ways they couldn’t even imagine.
That’s what the hope of Easter is all about. That’s what Christian faith is all about. If you really think about it, and if you really feel it, it’s more than a little bit scary.
We’re being asked to participate in a hope that transcends death, and in a faith that will change our lives completely.
That hope is a joyful thing, but it can also fill us with fear.
We’re afraid to let go of what we know, and to let ourselves be changed. We can become as unable to speak as those women fleeing the tomb, our voices silenced by the sheer magnitude of how our lives might be changed.
But though Mark’s story stops with fear and silence, we know that this isn’t where the story ends. Fear became excitement, which became joy. Silence became proclamation.
On this morning with the rising of the sun, we also know that the story of Easter still has not ended. We’re a part of it, and it is still being told.
As we tell that story through our lives, moving towards our own future, we have to be willing to embrace that change, and to move beyond our fear of what is to come and into the best and greatest joy that awaits us.
Because the door has been opened. The stone has been rolled away. It’s Easter morning, and He is risen!
Alleluia, AMEN.
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