The Life App

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry United Methodist Church April 5,2015, Easter Sunday.

Text: Mark 16:1-8                                                                  

 

 This is no way to run a resurrection!  Fleeing in terror?  Really?  That’s what we’re left with?  According to the oldest and most reliable texts we have of Mark, the answer is “yes.”  Those earliest versions of the text end right where our reading ended today—with verse 8.  That’s why, in most Bibles, you’ll see a flurry of notes to try to explain the “alternate” or “longer endings” of the story.  There are many hypotheses as to why these alternate endings were tacked on to Mark’s story.  But the most obvious is that the early church couldn’t stand the abrupt ending—this totally unacceptable closing scene to such an amazing drama… “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.”  The early church evidently agreed that this, in fact, is no way to run a resurrection.  It’s like when we’re watching the big game and the power goes out just before the pivotal play, leaving us without the satisfaction of seeing the outcome.  It’s like having the credits begin to roll when you feel the movie isn’t really over.

 

I don’t know about you, but I hate that.  I want resolution!  Oh—let’s face it—I, for one, want a happy ending.  In this case, I want the assurance of a Jesus-sighting.  I want the director’s cut from other Gospel versions of this story:  to hear Jesus speak Mary’s name, to see Jesus making up with those who betrayed and denied him, to see him break bread with his friends, to hear him tell us what to do next…  I want someone to explain the whole thing—to tell the rest of the story—so that maybe we could understand why everything didn’t get tidied up after the crucifixion and resurrection to explain why things are the way they are:  why there is seemingly endless violence, war, suffering, death and on and on… //  We all want resolution to the drama, we all want to see the final play of the game, we all want answers to the questions raised by the story, raised by our own lives.  And yet, with Mark, we don’t get want we want.  We get unfinished business.  The story doesn’t get tied up at the end with swelling violins and thinly fabricated happily-ever-afters.  The reality is that we are left with the devastating ambiguity of an empty tomb, with the empty space between us and Jesus who (we’re told with NO scientific explanation) has been raised and is out ahead of us calling us to follow. 

 

These days, if you needed to get to, say, Galilee to meet up with your friend Jesus who’s texted you to meet him, you’d likely use Google Maps.  If you want to connect with someone, you simply put their name into FaceBook.  Want to watch a story with a happy ending?  Want to hear a certain song?  Want help managing your calendar or your stress levels or your caloric intake?  There’s an app for that.  Well, today, it would be nice to have an app to know what to do with the empty tomb, with the empty space between us and Jesus who is out ahead of us.  But what if the empty space IS the “app?”  “Apps” allow us do things, hear things, find things.  What do the empty spaces in this Easter story allow us do or hear or find?

 

The proclamation Christians make today is that the empty tomb allows us to have hope.  Because an empty tomb that once held the dead body of Jesus, that One the domination system thought they had killed, means that death does not win, that despair does not win, tragedy and injustice do not win.  An empty tomb means cruelty, cancer, racism, sexism, homophobia do not win, our brokenness, ignorance, and greed do not win, war, anxiety and guilt does not win.  The emptiness of that tomb gives us reason to hope that God’s love and justice wins and that LIFE not death is our destination both in this world and in the world to come. 

And to follow Jesus into the places we have been told to go, to wander into the empty space between where we are and where Christ is, is a confirmation that the story ISN’T OVER; the credits haven’t yet rolled.  The game is STILL ON.  And we are in the middle of it, you and I.  The empty space stretches out before us and is meant to be filled with something that resembles true life.  The Easter app, the Life App, allows you to hope and to be set free from fear and anything that keeps you from stepping out into that space, into the uncertainty and risk of living—really living as Jesus lived.  That means living a life not free from struggle and pain, but a life infused with love and meaning, a life of beauty and power even in the midst of suffering.  I think of writer Anne Lamott’s friend who, in the face of terminal cancer, was determined to soak up and savor every moment of his life—and, because of that, he says “he no longer feels that he has a life-threatening disease: he now says he’s leading a disease-threatening life…I’m going to live until I die.”[i] 

 

The poets echo the call:  Emily Dickinson says, “Love is the Fellow of the Resurrection / Scooping up the Dust and chanting ‘Live’!” Mary Oliver famously asks, “What is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”  And Rainer Maria Rilke offers this, one of my favorite poems about stepping out of safety and into the wondrous and terrible adventure of our lives:

Dove that ventured outside,      flying far from the dovecote:
housed and protected again,      one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is,      for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear      in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,      never exposed to lo ss,
innocent and secure,      cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart      can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up,      to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself      over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared,      that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn’t it fill our hands      differently with its return:
heavier by the weight      of where it has been.[ii]

 

The empty spaces in our Easter story call us to “pass through all distance and fear” so that we might truly live, that we might dare to throw ourselves into “infinite space” and to return heavier, more full, upon our return.  The promise is that we will meet Jesus along the way and be filled with ever more love, strength, grace.  But, it can be a fearful thing, to step out of what feels safe—to venture out of the dovecote.  It can be a fearful thing to set aside our cynicism and sophistication and to enter into wonder and mystery.  It can be a fearful thing to let go of our need to control and prove everything and instead to surrender to beauty and grace.  It can be a fearful thing to hope.  After all, the less we hope for, the less we have to lose, right?  Oh no.  That is Death talking.  Not gentle death who was understood as a friend and companion by the desert Ammas and Abbas, the death who was known to be a passage into life in God.  No, the Death who tempts us to fear and to lose hope has nothing to do with God.  And that Death tries to convince us of all sorts of ridiculous things:  that you have to be blasé about the whole Easter thing, to hide behind cynicism and refuse to do anything that might make you appear foolish.  Death wants you to take cover in the safety of rules and comfort and familiarity and never “venture out.”  Death has been working overtime to convince people that it is categorically impossible to be socially progressive AND to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  Death would say you can’t call yourself Christian if you experience doubt.  Death wants you to believe that your life will never be different than it is today and that the world is doomed and that bad news is all there is.  Death is an agent of evil, of destruction, of soul-killing, hope-killing, trust-mangling, mind-numbing, responsibility-squashing, wonder-stifling ruin.  Death doesn’t want you to live, to thrive, to survive.  And Death has a way of trying to keep showing up like an abusive partner who just won’t let go.  Just think about how negativity, fear, cynicism, control, bitterness, hatred, selfishness and other deathly things can be so hard to shake.  But on this day of days we are empowered to kick Death to the curb.  Call on the power of the risen Christ and tell Death to go back to hell where it belongs.  As I was writing these words, a song came on the radio that I’d never thought of as an Easter song.  But it is a classic “kicked to the curb” anthem.  And I found myself singing these words to Death:

At first I was afraid I was petrified
Thinking I could never live without you by my side
And I've been spending oh so many nights
Thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
[And now you're back
From outer space
And I find you here with that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I've known for a second you'd be back to bother me]
Go on now, go walk out the door
Turn around now
You're not welcome anymore
Aren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye
Do you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die?

Oh no, not I, I will survive
Long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And all my love to give and I'll survive
I will survive.[iii]

 

Death doesn’t want you to hope, to live, to survive.  But God knows how to run a resurrection after all.  And as long as you know how to love you will stay alive.  You’ve got all your wild and precious life to live.  And all your love to give.  Oh you will do more than survive.  This story is not over.  The game is still on.  And the risen Christ brings hope and life and strength and resurrection power to you and to me.  And the credits won’t roll until ALL God’s beloved world is healed, reconciled, restored and at peace.  In the meantime, let’s sing and dance and…LIVE…in this world and into the next.

 

 

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[i] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anchor Books, 1999, p. 119.

[ii] Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Dove that ventured outside,” Ahead of All Parting: The Select Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell, New York: Random House, 1995.

[iii] “I Will Survive,” Performed by Gloria Gaynor, Songwriters, Dino Fekaris & Frederick J. Perren, Published by Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group.  Accessed 4/4/15 at http://www.metrolyrics.com/i-will-survive-lyrics-gloria-gaynor.html