Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Mark 16:1-8 + Easter Day + March 31, 2024

In our house, with two pastors under one roof, both planning Holy Week and Easter services, preparing sermons, you would think that the energy in the household would be shaped by that holy work.  No, the biggest event in our household most Holy Weeks is March Madness, the annual college basketball tournament. I’ll admit that there might be one member of the family that’s more interested in how it turns out than the other.

My favorite part is the early upsets.  They happen every year.  One of the highly ranked teams loses to one of the lower ranked teams.  You hear the pundits say every time, “I didn’t see that coming.  It totally blew up my bracket.” If you have a bracket hanging on your refrigerator door, as we do, you can literally see the cascading impact of that one upset on the entire tournament.  Sometimes it even affects the final result.  It opens the door to wins that no one imagined when the games started.

I didn’t see that coming.

Maybe that’s the best translation of Alleluia!  Christ is risen! We didn’t see that coming.

It’s certainly the experience of the women at the tomb.  Mark’s telling of the resurrection leaves us at that moment when the women realize that the tomb is empty.  The story abruptly ends with the strange words, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Full stop.  End of the story.  End of the book.

This is probably what they were feeling when they left before dawn, they must have presumed that Jesus’ mission to liberate and heal the world had ended with the crucifixion.  His words of compassion lost on the breeze with his final breath.  His fury at the oppression of the poor had turned into mocking laughter at the military police headquarters.  His humility and vision of sacrifice and service now looked foolishness.  The love that had animated his eyes, his whole body, was gone. If this one, who seemed so close to God, could be silenced, what hope do we have?

As the sun rose, now another piece of information.  The body isn’t there.

Of course, we know it didn’t end there.  Someone, Mary Magdalene according to the other gospel accounts, stopped being afraid and spoke the words for the first time, “Christ is risen.” All the things that Jesus stood for were alive. This was the first upset.

That win is still cascading through history.  A word of love spoken instead of a word of judgment sets into motion wins that reshape the world.  One healing act two thousand years ago at the hand of Jesus has led to the establishment of thousands of hospitals and care centers around the globe.  When Peter opened the door at the knock of a Gentile, it set into motion an idea that there can be a world with no insiders and no outsiders.  One passionate act of resistance to injustice set into motion the end of slavery, the liberation of women, and invitation for people who are queer to step forward, and the truth that Black Lives Matter. One experience of that empty tomb changed the way we sit at the deathbed together.

Of course, there are still forces trying to hold it back.  We read about them every day on our phones or in the newspaper. Sometimes it’s the fear and wounds within ourselves that hold us back. And let’s be honest, the future right now is complicated, the earth is dying, the coming election is scary, our family struggles so ongoing, and people we love are getting sick. We’re living in a time with a lot of fear about what’s next.

The grandeur of Easter morning, all the brass and Alleluias is what the collection of all the upsets sound like when you put them together.   It’s our attempt to pull the end into the middle. It’s like reading a mystery novel backwards, knowing all along who did it, so you can recognize how the story is moving. This dead isn’t actually a dead end, but a clue.

The Spirit of Christ is alive and is on our team.  The world’s brackets have been blown up.

The future is open.  There is hope. In that moment when our eyes close in death, opening into eternity, maybe we’ll even laugh and say, “Oh wow, I didn’t see that coming.”

Friends, it’s Madness.  It’s Easter.

Alleluia.  Christ is risen.

Christ is risen, indeed.  Alleluia!