Sermon for Easter Sunday's main church service

4-12-2009, Easter Sunday
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Mark 16:1-8

Being a fan of scary movies I often see movie promos employ the words every horror film fan lives to hear: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Ever since the days of Bella Lagosi and Boris Karlov Hollywood has tried to scare audiences solely for the sake of scaring people who love to be scared and constantly dare the industry to come up with a new plot line or new special effect to really keep them on the edge of their seats. And it has made a lasting impact on our culture. Who could forget Bella Lagosi as Dracula? Even if you see those old thirties movies for the first time today, you encounter a character you’d be hard pressed to forget and would not want to think too much about in the dead of night. “The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.”

Whenever we think of Frankenstein we will have Boris Karlov to thank for his classic role in the movies. Christopher Lee made a pretty good vampire in those old classic Hammer films. Everyone has their favorite character actors in these films. My favorite character actor, Max Von Sydow once played the part of Satan in “Needful Things,” the movie adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Of course, to balance things out, Max Von Sydow also played the part of Jesus Christ in another movie, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the one where John Wayne, in a role completely out of character for him, played the role of a centurion at the foot of the cross. “Surely this man was the Son of God.” Who could forget that? Which leads us to our unforgettable Gospel reading today.

I’ve heard too many sermons in years past where the promo for today’s Gospel could echo Hollywood: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Personally, I don’t understand that. What’s there to be afraid of in the message from today’s Gospel? Is it not supposed to be the Good News? And as I read the Greek text for today’s Gospel I do not find a call to be afraid, be very afraid. Rather I find an initial fear, fear as in fright and terror, good old horror movie fear, replaced with something entirely different: amazement; amazement as in an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous: the tomb of Jesus is found to be empty. It may be that I have a personal axe to grind here, but as we will see, every sermon based on today’s Gospel that leaves us in the end with nothing but the initial terror of the women and suggests that we, too, should share that terror if we are good Christians contradicts both the man in the tomb and the amazement of the women.

As the Gospel reading opens the crucifixion has already happened. The centurion who stood at the foot of the cross, and no, he probably didn’t look or sound anything like John Wayne, has already given witness, though perhaps unintentionally, perhaps even as a final, cutting, cruel, sarcastic remark that this crucified Jesus truly is the Son of God. Remember that the same centurion also stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. So much for his reverence.

The Pharisee, Joseph of Arimathea, got permission from Pilate to take the body down from the cross and bury it in his family crypt, a tomb cut into a hillside near Jerusalem. In keeping with common burial practices a round stone was placed in a groove and rolled into place to seal the tomb even as the sun was setting on a Friday that would have rivaled any scary movie out of Hollywood.

And there Jesus was expected stay, “descended to the dead,” as they would have said back then.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 36 hours after the tomb was sealed the Gospel of Mark portrays three women setting out for the tomb. They are Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.

Why are they going to the tomb? It’s simple: they have a duty to perform. A responsibility to carry out. And they will faithfully carry out their duty even though Jesus has been laid to rest. How they will do this is a matter of concern for them. The stone that seals the tomb is not in place permanently. It wasn’t meant to be; Joseph of Arimathea intends to bury other members of his family there over time. But it is a heavy stone. Perhaps four feet across, the women are worried that it is too heavy for them to move. Heads down and talking among themselves they wonder who they will get to roll away the stone for them.

It’s at that point that they realize they have arrived at their destination and they look up to see that the stone has already been moved.

But this sight does not inspire hope. To the contrary. When they see the stone has already been moved without their knowledge they become “alarmed,” as the text says. They are afraid, they have fear as in fright, fear as in terror that something very, very wrong is happening here. Their first thought might well have been: The tomb has been desecrated!

Not knowing what to expect they entered the tomb, something that one could not do casually because of the very low entrance; they would have to bend over and creep through it. Now Mark’s Gospel becomes very surrealistic, despite its simplicity. Bible scholars tell us that this is where the Gospel story moves from a basic story telling mode into the mode of spiritual vision where absolute spiritual truth is made known. In the tomb they find a young man, dressed in white as if he were a priest from the Temple, of all places! He appears to be casually sitting there to the right of the entrance in a place of death, a place to be shunned and considered unclean by the Hebrew people, unclean to the point of being absolutely toxic. The women were alarmed. In the words of Hollywood, they were afraid. They were very afraid. Something terrible beyond words must have happened here!

But this young man in the white clothes must have seen their terror. Right away he spoke to them and he used the words that have always announced the Good News, “Do not be afraid.” Hollywood would never hire this guy to write promos for their movies. He would never attract audiences to the latest horror flick. “Do not be afraid.” He calmly stated the obvious: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” Why else would you be here? Then he continued with the most unexpected remarks in the most casual fashion: “He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him.” An empty stone shelf hewn out of the side of the crypt greeted their eyes. “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 keeps the story very simple. Nothing more is said about this odd young man in the tomb, why he is there, where he came from, what his name is, or what his purpose is in the tomb. It’s almost as if he’s a tour guide: “Look, this is where they put him…” So it is unusual, but that’s because of the way Mark portrays the scene.

Despite the casual behavior of the man in the tomb the women didn’t take all this so casually. Even though the man in the tomb told them not to be afraid they found they could not help but be afraid. Mark says they fled the scene, motivated by good old fashioned Hollywood style fear – it seized them! It you want to stay true to the Greek text then you might say it possessed them, or grabbed them like a wild animal and in a panic they ran away! But that uncontrollable terror began to give way to something else:

amazement, an overwhelming awesome respect for something unexpected and surprising and miraculous. And that also seized them. They were amazed at what they had seen and heard: the tomb was empty, Jesus has been raised, he is not there.

No wonder they didn’t say anything to anyone at first. Would you? Caught between terror on the one hand and amazement on the other hand would you tell someone something that they wouldn’t believe, that you had found the tomb empty? That one who had been crucified was not in his tomb but on his way to Galilee? May as well tell people you’ve seen the Loch Ness monster cruising the Dead Sea. The fear that you won’t be believed would be strong.

But in time sheer amazement, wonder, and absolute joy overcame their fear and they could not help but tell the disciples and Peter. Mary Magdalene and the other women became the very first people to openly tell the Good News about Christ Jesus: that the tomb is empty, he has been raised, he is not there.

There is much to be amazed at.

What’s there to be afraid of? Thanks be to God.