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“Crucifixion and Discipleship”
Mark
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Welcome one and all to the morning of mornings. We have traversed the season of Lent with all of its starkness.
Before getting to this morning, we shared a meal on Thursday night and shared in the anguished prayers of Gethsemene.
We saw darkness fall all over the temporal world as we relived the crucifixion on Friday.
But here we are on Easter.
We’re in our Sunday bests.
The cold black cross has changed to
the bright colors and art of
The colors have returned to our worship space, the banners, the flag outside, the flowers before us.
They all represent something magical, the triumph of God over God.
It is the triumph of Jesus, at God’s hands saying a final good-bye to the old systems of violence and destruction that the powers that be thought would topple us all. Through the resurrection, we witness to a new world order. And we are challenged once again to believe and to live in a new way.
We started our journey through Mark’s Gospel in September and now it’s finally over. There’s a resurrection for you. As expected, it has given us a clear vision of how to live a Christian life.
The worship planning ministry team chose Mark’s Gospel because it is the earliest, earthiest and most dramatic of the four gospels. It seems that each episode implores us to make a decision of whom to follow, God, or the powers and principalities of this world. We remember that we are told as it says in the fourth chapter to be the good soil, the soil where seed grows and provides for a 30, 60 and 100-fold harvest. We are not to be like the crowds who pay scant attention to the good news around them and the seed never takes root. We are not to be rocky ground like the disciples who flee when persecution arises. Their fruit does not last long because it’s root is not deep. We are not to be thorn infested soil, like the rich young ruler or even Pontius Pilate who accept the word but then the cares of this world and the pursuit of riches chokes out the saplings of our faith.
Rather, we are to be good soil like the Syrophoenician woman, like blind Bartimeus, like the Geresene demoniac, like the Centurion, and like the women who witness the resurrection. This is what we are called to do and to be. At the end of the book, the women emerge as the good soil, as the true disciples. Ched Myers calls this Mark’s most radical social reversal.
Mark’s Gospel does not mince words. It does not give us an easy out to the problems which we face as Christians. It is a difficult book which calls us to embrace a new day and a new way of living under the watchful eyes of God.
It gives us a challenge to write our own next chapter as we seek to walk in the ways of true discipleship.
We know the Easter story so well. Each Gospel tells it a bit differently. Listen again to the slant Mark gives it:
After the Sabbath had ended, very early in the morning, Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices to the tomb that they might anoint his body. In Mark 15:40, these three women were the only ones who witnessed the crucifixion. It is no accident that they were there at the tomb, too. This is not simply a pious act on the part of the women. In fact, it was risky. They could be imprisoned or stoned for being associated with Jesus. But they bravely did it anyway. It was an act of defiance. It was a form of disobedience. It was the way they got to say that they were in control. There was no power that was going to keep them from their honoring of Jesus’ life.
The disciples, on the other hand, were all hiding for their lives. They had been brought into Jesus’ inner circle, yet they never quite understood the import of all of Jesus’ teachings or actions.
But these three women were clearer than the others and kept closer and perhaps even more faithful than any disciple. They conversed with one another as they trudged toward the tomb. Standing between them and a new beginning was a stone. It was not just some small stone, but it was a huge stone, probably four feet high. “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” was their first question. They knew their task, but they knew there was a huge obstacle in front of them.
Think of the obstacles that stand in the way of our new lives, of our being the good soil.
That stone could represent our fear,
our cynicism,
our paralysis,
our constant feeling that no matter how hard we work, everything is going to stay the same, so why even bother.
It could represent our addiction to violence, or any other addiction that stands in the way of God’s plan for us.
It could represent our tendency to lose heart after a first try, or to not even try at all.
But here’s the first miracle of Easter, when they arrived at the tomb, the huge stone was rolled away.
I think that this means that even though our problems seem insurmountable, like a huge stone, the miracle of Easter is that someone has already moved the stone for us. All we have to do is believe and walk past it.
That’s what the women did. They entered the tomb, clearly expecting to see Jesus’ body, stripped of its dignity and killed as an insurrectionist three days before. They expected to clean out the wounds on his hands, feet, side and back. They expected to say one last good-bye to their friend, their would-be savior.
But when they entered the tomb, they didn’t find a body. That’s the second miracle. They only saw a young man off to the right wearing a white robe. They were terrified, just as you and I would be if we had gone seeking the dead and encountered the living instead.
We live our lives so planned and with such expectation that we seldom leave open the room for God to rock us and roll the stones away from the tombs of our habitual existence.
Living habitually is not what Easter is all about. That is not the stuff of hope. John Lennon was right when he sang, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
The young man said to them, “Do not be afraid.” These words conjure up images of 33 years prior when a similar figure said similar words to shepherds who were rocked out of their normal lives by the glory of the heavenly host never to be the same again.
Then the angel had said, “Be not afraid, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day a savior which is Christ the Lord. “
But this was nothing like that time. They expected to see a dead body and they saw nothing but another unnamed member of the good soil club. The young man said, “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.” They looked and saw that Jesus was in fact gone.
The white
cloaked one then imparted the third Easter miracle, “He is going ahead of you
to
And the story goes in Mark that they left the tomb and that terror and amazement had seized them, and here is how the oldest of the Gospels ends, “and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”
Now, surely, this is not the end of the story. If it was, we would not be sitting here right now. The story did get passed on. The word spread and hope was reborn. But on that morning, it was a terrifying event.
What was there to fear?
Perhaps they were looking forward to their lives getting back to normal.
Perhaps they wanted to forget that the whole thing happened.
Perhaps they thought that as much as they loved Jesus, the fact that he was dead meant that they would be safer.
Having snuffed out the leader, people would be less likely to come after them.
Terror and amazement filled them and they fled and said nothing to anybody, for a while.
When hope is born, it is often born on the back of fear.
Fear in knowing that we can no longer go back to looking at our world in the same way.
Fear that we must take the risk of trying something in a new way.
Fear that people will not understand us.
On the back of this fear, hope is born. And this kind of hope in the face of fear is what Easter is all about.
Mark says
that Jesus went ahead of them to
It is the
boondocks, the country where Jesus did most of his ministry.
The white
robed one said to the women at the tomb, “he is not here. He is risen and he goes before you to
He is your guide if you are willing to take up the cross of your own lives and follow him. He is saying, come with me.
Cross to the difficult path.
And don’t be afraid.
Because hope is reborn today.
At Easter, and as we finish the gospel of Mark, our discipleship either ends or it begins. God has already rolled away the stone, all we have to do is walk in the ways of discipleship, tend the good soil, and clear it of rock and thistles.
The point of the gospel is not to
show how Jesus overcame the world so we don’t have to worry about it. The point of the gospel is to show us how we
can live the good news. How we can be
the true disciples, like the women at the end of the story, how can we tend the
good soil and not be thrown off by the stones of trouble and persecution or the
thorns of wealth and the cares of this world.
With the resurrection and the call of the young man at the tomb saying
that Jesus has gone before us to
Sisters and brothers, there are three miracles in the gospel story today.
There is the miracle of the stone being rolled away.
There is the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus.
There is the miracle that Jesus
goes into
But there could be more miracles today. They are the miracles that happen in our own lives when we know that we choose to walk in the ways of true discipleship.
When we choose to be the good soil.
When we choose to realize that those figurative stones in our lives have already been rolled away by a power way beyond ourselves.
When we realize that the old ways of this world are not a part of God’s plan,
And when we join the risen Jesus
out in
When that happens, then crucifixion has brought discipleship.
Hope is born once again.
And we can say with conviction, because it has happened in us,
that Christ is risen,
Christ is risen indeed.