Sermon: Easter, 2003

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A Place at the Table -- Easter, 2003

By Charles Rush

April 20, 2003

our present context, it is hard to stay positive is it not, between the ups and downs of the economy, the war, terrorism threats at home? I was reminded of that this week, reading an inter-office e-mail from one of our top Wall street firms. The memo began:

“If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains; If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles; if you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time; If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong; If you can take criticism and blame without resentment; If you can relax without liquor, sleep without worry, then… then you are probably the family dog.” For the rest of us there is Xanax. It is hard to stay positive in our world.

I got a note from a colleague this week, a director of Christian education who was asking the kids last week about Easter during the children's sermon time. The first 3 year old blurted out, ‘Easter is when we wake up early and get presents.' ‘No, that's Christmas.' The second one said, ‘Easter is when we have turkey'. ‘No that is Thanksgiving' said the dejected educator on our abysmal job of teaching the next generation. Finally, one young lady said, ‘Easter is when Jesus dies and comes out of his grave.' ‘That's right' said the Minister. And the youngster continued, “And if he sees his shadow, we have 6 more weeks of winter.” The Minister was deflated. One other kid raised his hand and said, “It looks like he saw his shadow this year.” Whatever the point of the children's sermon that day, the Minister just threw up his hands and went straight to prayer.

Our story begins this morning with dejected people. The men sit in stunned silence. The women go out to look. They want to know, “is he dead?” Is Jesus dead or not? It makes a big difference.

Just now people in the Middle East want to know the answer to the question is Saddam Hussein dead for reasons nearly polar opposite? They want to see him dead so they can be rid of the fear of living under a fascist rule. They want to see it, touch it, know it for sure.

Those of you old enough remember how difficult it was at the end of World War 2 because Adolf Hitler could not be definitively identified as dead. For months, years afterwards he was reportedly spotted in Argentina, in Chile, in South Africa. All manner of speculation abounded that he was surrounded by a cabal of leaders that were waiting for the opportune time to regroup and rebound.

People want to know, they need to know, to see it, feel it for tyrants, as well as for heroes. If tyrants are cursed with ignominy, the full wrath and fury of which can be released upon the occasion of their death, hero's are enshrined, their words and deeds embossed in a patina of virtue, their legacy an icon of inspiration for generations to come.

Our text this morning is, unquestionably, the oddest of all the gospels. It appears to just quit. This is the original ending of Mark. “They (the women) went out and told no one for they were afraid.”

Now if you look in your Bible, you will notice that after a break, there is more text. Jesus makes an appearance, makes some pretty unambiguous remarks about the resurrection, and the emboldened disciples are ready to conquer the world. This material was added decades, centuries later, by some pious editors that were uncomfortable with the original ending. I can imagine these monks discussing this issue. “They went out and told no one. What kind of ending is that? Obviously, they told someone because we are here. Someone told someone who told someone who told us. This ending is a downer. This ending needs some editorial conclusion to find its completion.” So they added several more verses, their own ‘they all lived happily ever after.'

But there is a logic to the original ending. Today we know that the Gospel of Mark was written for a church that was experiencing persecution, probably in Rome itself. In the first century, Christianity was an illegal religion, a seditious religion, and the Romans killed many people that they caught worshipping together and imprisioned others. As you might imagine, the main way that the Romans stamped out the religion was to get one Christian to betray everyone else in the small church and it was very effective. Being afraid was the normative experience that people in the church had practicing their faith.

The story of the Gospel of Mark leads up to this point. The women come to the tomb. They have this ineffable, transcendent experience that leaves them dumbfounded and yet unmistakably sure that through Jesus, God is present to them in extraordinary ways.

Now the Gospel of Mark is written decades after the fact. It is not just reporting what happened, Mark is writing for his congregation that is in fear. For them, they know the end of the story, they know that Jesus is resurrected. They know that the beacon of resurrection hope on the horizon of history holds the key to the promise of the future. So why do they sit there in fear and tell no one? Why do we? Would it make any difference to you if you knew what the end of the story was?

I know some options futures traders that would love to know the end of the story ahead of time and we could erase some debt around here if they did.

“Ken Burn's documentary about the American Civil War contained a scene 50-years after the conclusion of the war. Rebel and Union veterans, now all of them old, old men, gathered for a reunion at Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg, as you may remember, was one of the bloodiest of that war. At one point, during this 50-year reunion, the veterans decide to re-enact the so-called ‘Pickett's Charge.' They lined up on either side of the field...only now, fifty-years later, they did not have rifles and guns, but crutches and canes. Someone signaled the charge, and the groups rushed toward each other....or at least, at their age, they started walking toward each other. And the story goes that, as each side converged, they did not fight. But instead, they fell into each others arms....weeping...and crying...and embracing....

The writer, Frederick Buechner, commenting on this scene said this: ‘If only those doddering old veterans had seen in 1863 what they now saw so clearly fifty years later… Half a century later, they saw that the great battle had been a great madness. The men who were advancing toward them across the field of Gettysburg were not enemies. They were human beings like themselves, with the same dreams, needs, hopes, the same wives and children waiting for them to come home… what they saw was that we were, all of us, created not to do battle with each other but to love each other, and it was not just a truth they saw. For a few minutes, it was a truth they lived. It was a truth they became.'”[i]

Rarely do we get that experience within history. We spend most of our lives- wandering sometimes aimlessly, sometimes on track- in search of ourselves. In some sense we are all like the lead character in the movie Antwon Fisher. Antwon was a orphan. He spent his youth in foster-care homes and orphanages. His experience was not good. Sometimes he was controlled. He was slighted. He was even abused. He never knew unconditional love. He enrolled in the Navy out of high school, really his only choice. There he got into trouble because of anger management issues and he was assigned to visit a psychiatrist. Together, he reluctantly peeled back the layers of frustration and resentment, layers of internal fear and control…

And he could do it, I should hasten to add, because of two things. He had a new girlfriend who was a really solid emotional/spiritual person that was showing him the early face of real love and support and caring. And because the psychiatrist did too. He really took him under his wing, professionally as a psychiatrist, but also like a son.

At one point, Antwon decides that he needs to go find his birth mother. He wants to know why she gave him up, why she couldn't love him. And he is half-hoping that she will take him in now and some kind of new birth will happen.

He goes back to his home town with only the name of his father and mother, gets out a very large phone book, and just starts calling everyone with their last names. Finally, he gets someone on the phone who says she knows his mother. It is his aunt. She invites him over to her house.

He goes to her house and his aunt and uncle greet him warmly and tell him all they know about his father, the brief relationship with his mother, how he had since died. His uncle offers to take him to see his mother.

They drive over to a tenement apartment. His uncle goes inside and calls her name. The two men walk in. They walk into a tattered living room with one woman sitting in silence. His uncle tells her that her son is there. She never moves. The uncle leaves to give them some time alone. Antwon sits down and asks her many of the questions he had always wanted to ask her. She never responds. She just rocks… She is just not right.

Finally, he gets up and walks out of the room. He had come all that way, with all those hopes, all the questions that he wanted to get answered, to be comforted and held… only to find that spiritually he was a motherless child. He is just numb, leaden.

His uncle was waiting for him in the car. They drove across town in silence to another house. The two of them get out together and walk up to this other house. There are people out on the porch, people inside milling around. As Antwon walks up to the house, they start introducing themselves to him, “Antwon, I'm your cousin Clarice.” “Antwon, I'm your great uncle George.” There are more people in the living room, more in the hall. Dozens of people, all introducing themselves to him, until finally he gets back to the dining room, crammed full of people. They finally lead him up to a regal, elderly woman sitting at the table. And the table is spread full of Sunday Soul food- bowls of vegetables, steaming mashed potatoes.

She takes his hands in hers, her eyes brimming, and she says, “Antwon I'm your grandmother… Can you stay for dinner?”

In the resurrection, God comes to tell us the end of the story. You may not have the life that you would have chosen if you could have it all your way. You may have a lot of disappointments and pains. But you have a place at the table.

God, the great Matriarch of the family, is loving you, pulling for you, surrounding you with people that will build you up, praying for you when you are away, calling you back home. You are surrounded by a great throng of people that are pulling for you.

You are somebody. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are. Live forward into the full potential of your stature. No matter how lost or alone or confused you may feel, God is calling you home. In the midst of the darkness do not fear. In the terror, be not overwhelmed. You have a place at the table.

The story of Easter is not that we can avoid death, but that even in death, even through death, God is with us and for us. As St. Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither principality, nor powers, nor things above, nor things below, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God we have known through the Christ.”

Wherever we are, whatever our condition, God is calling us home. You have a place at the table. So live with courage, the God force is within you. Live with daring, the God force is growing your character into your fullest potential.

Amen.

[i] From a sermon by Eric Folkerth, “Dealing with our Emotions” that was found at http://www.northaven.org/sermons.html (link now gone). I am thankful to Jeff Markay who gave me the sermon.