Mark
16:1-20
April 8, 2012
When the sabbath was
over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices,
so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the
week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to
one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the
tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had
already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man,
dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But
he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who
was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they
laid him. But 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.” 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.
Now after he rose
early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from
whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been
with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was
alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.
After this he
appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country.
And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
Later he appeared to
the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them
for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those
who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and
proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is
baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And
these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast
out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their
hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay
their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
So then the Lord
Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at
the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news
everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the
signs that accompanied it.
About
5 years ago I had an epiphany. I had an
“aha” moment, a “eureka,” that really helped me to understand much better of
the core of Christianity. Perhaps this
“aha” was the kind that only a geeky pastor would have, but maybe you’ll be
interested in it. I discovered that, for
some reason, Christianity has an obsession with words that begin with RE—with what
I call “re” words. If you look at many,
or even most, of the core words Christian theology uses, the have the prefix
“re.” The fact that we have so may Christian words that begin with the prefix
“re” says something essential about we Christians.
So,
I began to compile a list: Revelation,
redemption, reconciliation, restoration, reformation, renewal, renunciation,
repentance, reflection, regeneration, relationship, respect,… and at the
top of the heap, Resurrection.
This
led me to a question: Why is Christianity
so focused on “re” words? In pondering
that question, I got an insight into Christian faith. The prefix “re” means “back” or “again.” I realized that at it’s core Christianity
recognizes that humans constantly go off the path God intends for us, yet God
is constantly doing things to get us to “come back again.” And this constant calling to come back
teaches us about the essential nature of God.
God doesn’t focus on how we’ve turned away. God focuses on calling us back.
Think
about the words I shared above.
Revelation, at its original core, means to “lift a veil again.” The word, redemption, means to “buy back
again.” The word, reconciliation, means
to “concile,” or “bond, again.”
Reformation means to “form again.”
All of these words really say that God is calling us to come back from
whatever we are doing on our own, and to rediscover what God originally
intended for us.
The
most important “re” word for us Christians is the word, resurrection. Resurrection is
a returning word, which means to “surge or rise again.” It’s a word that we think of in terms of
Jesus rising again from the dead, which is what we celebrate today. But there’s a lot more to the idea of
resurrection than Jesus’ rising from the dead on Easter. Resurrection describes an ongoing reality for
Christian life. It’s not just something
that happened 2000 years ago, nor is it just something we hope will happen to
us some day when we die.
At
the core of the Christian faith is a belief in, a faith in, a hope in the idea
that no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how low we go, not matter
how far we stray, no matter how much our lives fall apart, when we re-turn to
God, our lives can be resurrected. In other words, central to Christian belief is
the faith that we are not defined by how low we go, by how far we stray, by how
much we’ve screwed up, or even by our sin.
Christians are defined by how, with God’s help, we are able to rise
again—a rising again by returning to God’s way for us. God created us with a purpose, but we
stray. But God is always calling us
back, and when we return, we can become resurrected and reborn. When I think of this broader meaning of
resurrection, my mind often goes to a man named Starr Daily.
You
probably don’t know that name, but he was a very, very popular Christian
speaker in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He
travelled both nationally and internationally, speaking about God’s love and
the power of personal resurrection. In
the 1920s he had been quite infamous, but for entirely different reasons. He was infamous as a criminal. By the time he was sixteen he had one goal in
mind. He wanted to become one of the
most feared criminals in America. This
was the age of Al Capone and countless bootleggers, and he wanted the
fear-focused respect these criminals received.
He
ended up being put into prison twice by the time he was twenty, and while in
prison he learned his lessons well. In
prison he learned how to plan and pull off capers. He learned how to crack a safe. He learned how to plan a getaway. His imprisonments served as a school for his
later criminal work.
Upon
his release from prison, he formed a gang of criminals who robbed banks. Daily had the reputation of being the best
safecracker one could find. There was no
safe he could not open. Only his own
drunkenness allowed him to be captured.
He became careless and was caught.
The judge, upon sentencing him in 1924, said “I know you are a sick man,
and putting you in prison will not help you.
Still, my hands are tied. I am
sending you back to prison for the rest of your life.” The judge knew him well. Before he had become a judge, he had been
Daily’s defense attorney to first time he came before the court.
In
prison, Daily remained as fearsome as he was in freedom. He terrorized the other prisoners, trying to
strike fear into their hearts. Twice he
tried to escape, but was caught both times.
Then he tried to start a prison riot, all for the purpose of capturing
and harming the warden. He hated the
warden because he was a harsh and tyrannical man. What foiled the plot was a prison
snitch. Daily was caught, taken, and
thrown into the “hole.”
The
hole was a dank dungeon in the basement of the prison where prisoners were taken
to be “reformed.” Few could last more
than a week in the hole. The hole was a
small, cold room with water seeping down the walls, and only a small slit near
the ceiling for light to come in. The
routine was simple. At 6:00 a.m., a
piece of bread and a cup of water were slid into the room. Soon afterwards, Bull, a violent and
mean-tempered prison guard, came in and shackled the prisoner to cuffs that
hung from the ceiling, forcing the prisoner to stand for twelve hours a day
with his arms raised. Within days the
prisoner’s feet swelled and turned black, while his wrists chafed and cracked,
seeping blood from the shackles. After
twelve hours, the prisoner was taken down, given another piece of bread and a
cup of water, and then left on the cold floor to sleep.
Daily
survived fifteen days of this, and then was left for another two weeks
unshackled as life ebbed from him. The
warden wanted to make an example of him.
If Daily died, so be it. During
those two weeks a question formed in his mind:
What if he had used all of his energies for good instead of bad? Daily began to hallucinate. They were filled with weird images, but slowly
they began to coalesce. Eventually he
found himself standing in a horseshoe shaped garden that he remembered from his
childhood. Even though it was a
hallucination, or a dream, he later said that it was the most real experience
he had ever had. At the other end of the
garden stood Jesus. Jesus then walked
toward him and stooped a few feet away.
Jesus looked him up and down, and then looked into his eyes in a way
that pierced Daily’s very soul. What
surprised him was that Jesus didn’t judge him in a punitive way. Jesus loved him. He felt Jesus’ love penetrating his soul, and
as it did Daily felt all of his hatred, anger, and bitterness leaving him. He felt nothing but love.
Soon
afterwards, Daily witnessed a parade of people walking before him. It was all the people he had ever hurt. Daily poured out his love onto them, asking
them for their forgiveness. Then another
parade of people walked by, and these were all the people who had ever hurt
Daily. He then poured out his love and
forgiveness on them. Suddenly he heard a
sound. It was the prison door
opening. In walked the guard, Bull, who
looked down at Daily on the floor and said, surprisingly, “Do you want me to
steal a sandwich for you from the cafeteria.”
Daily’s response was even more surprising: “No, that’s okay. I don’t want you getting into trouble on my
behalf.” Soon afterwards he was taken
from the hole and put into the prison infirmary to recover. Over the course of the next five years doors
miraculously opened for him. By 1945 he
was remarkably released from prison.
He
was a transformed man, a reformed man,
a man determined to make a difference for good and for God. Over the ensuing years until he died, he
spoke everywhere about God’s love. He
wrote books about God’s love, books with titles like Rebirth and Resurrection, Release, You Can Find God, Love Can Open
Prison Doors, This Is the Life, Recovery, and Faith, Hope, and Love. In
all, he wrote over 27 books. He also
worked to transform the prison system so that it focused more on reforming
prisoners rather than merely punishing them.
He was a man who descended into a tomb, and discovered Christ, and as a
result he was resurrected.
The
fact is that most of us never have and never will go as low as Starr Daily, but
we don’t have to go that low in order to discover the possibility of
resurrection. All of us will struggle at
some point in our lives, if we haven’t already.
None of us gets out of life alive.
Whether it is a broken relationship, illness, unemployment, or anything
else, we will find ourselves at some point in something that feels like a
tomb. If we are willing to return to God in those times, we can
experience resurrection.
Paul
talks about this a lot in his letters. In
Romans he says, “Therefore we have been
buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from
the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Paul was saying that the whole focus of
Christian life is to live a resurrected life that’s defined by what God is
doing in us, not by what we’ve done wrong or by what wrongs have been done to
us.
On
Easter Sunday, we celebrate the fact that Jesus was crucified and came alive
again. I know that many people have a
hard time with this concept, with this possibility, because it doesn’t make
rational sense to them. And as a result,
they shut themselves off to the deeper messages of resurrection in life as a
result. I will tell you that I made my
peace with Jesus’ resurrection many years ago when I decided that if God can
create a universe, God can certainly become incarnated in a man and be raised
from the dead. But I certainly can’t
prove this, nor will I try. But what I
can prove is that for many who open up to God in this faith, especially when
their lives are down, their lives can be resurrected.
We’ve
seen this at Calvin Presbyterian Church during Lent. We offered a sermon series titled “Preachers
from the Pew.” And each sermon
demonstrated how lives can be resurrected.
Bill Lambert talked about how his ambition and drive led him to
eventually attain all he had wanted, at the price of feeling estranged from his
family and discovering things falling apart at work. He put Christ at the center, and he
experienced a resurrection in his life and career.
Harley
Allen spoke about experiencing a resurrection while struggling with his
re-diagnosis with cancer, and while two of our prayer ministers prayed with
him. Karen Stubenbort spoke of her
resurrection after having to kick her heroin-addicted husband out of her house
and life. Carrie Baker spoke about
having to turn to Christ, and about having her life be resurrected after being
told by her husband, on Christmas Day three years ago, that her marriage was
over, that he was moving away, and that there was nothing she could do about
it. We heard Cary Efaw talk about turning
to Christ and having his life be resurrected after a life of pain from being a
Vietnam vet, suffering two major accidents that crushed a hand and left major
parts of his body burned, and being fired and unemployed 6 times in 7
years. Finally, last week we heard from
our associate pastor, Connie Frierson, about having to turn to Christ and
having her life resurrected after her husband died suddenly at age 54. What I can prove from their experiences is
that each of these people experienced a resurrection of life, which is what is
central to Christian faith.
We
celebrate the resurrection today because it is a reality and a possibility for
all of us. We’re not defined by the
mistakes we make, or by the struggles we face.
As Christians who are part of the resurrection, we are defined, in the
end, by how God allows us to rise again in this life and in the afterlife
Amen.
