Creekside Church Sermon of April 20, 2003 "The Rest of the Story" Mark 16:1-8	Rev. David Bibbee
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It is a strange way to start an Easter sermon, I know, but I must offer you an apology. There you are, dressed to the nines - the children look like sugar confections, to borrow someone's description. Some of you are here today because you come every Sunday. Some of you are here because mom and dad made you come. Some of you are here because the tables have been turned and your son or daughter told "you" to come. And some of you have come precisely because it is Easter. If you are going to church, you may as well do it on Easter. If there is any day on which we lift up the foundation of Christianity's faith and hope, it is at Easter.

For whatever reason you have come, please accept my apology. I am sorry. You are probably wondering, "What's up with this apology business?" I guess that before you forgive me you need to know the reason. If my guess is correct, some will leave here disappointed. Chances are that I won't say something you wanted to hear, or I might say something you don't want to hear.

Easter is an occupational hazard for preachers. Easter expectations run high. If a preacher has anything worth saying, Easter is the time to say it. Many of you have lots of Easters under your belts, and you keep hoping, "Maybe this year he will explain the resurrection and exactly how it will be for us when it's our turn." Just once, you would like the whole thing laid down as square and smooth as a linoleum floor. How did Jesus' heart start beating again? How did the neurons start firing in his brain? How did his battered, broken body just get up and leave? You want to know what really happened.

But here is the catch…no preacher with a lick of sense will say too much about what they don't know. No one saw the resurrection. It happened inside a pitch black, sealed tomb. It was a private moment between Father and son. Thank God Geraldo Rivera wasn't there to cover the event. The mechanics of what happened to Jesus are unknown. It is a mystery, and not all mysteries can be or, are meant to be solved. Saint Paul said, "This is how we should be regarded; as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." We are stewards of God's mysteries, not solvers. We live with God's mysteries. We don't call Robert Stack to crack the case on "Unsolved Mysteries". If this is what you are looking for I'm afraid I cannot deliver. Like I said…I'm sorry.

Moving on, can I tell you what bugs me? I don't like coming to the end of a book or movie that doesn't end, but evaporates…leaving me dangling until the sequel comes around. I hate putting something together and discovering that the most important piece is missing. It bugs me when someone tells a joke, and forgets the punch line. It's like listening to a piece of music that ends on a sustained chord. It's incomplete. The ear begs for resolution with a major chord. Having most of a story or song isn't enough. We want to know the rest of it.

It was sunup on Sunday. The two Marys and Salome were on their way to Jesus' tomb. They were the real disciples. Peter and company were hiding, afraid to show their faces. The women watched Jesus die on Friday. They saw his limp lump of body taken off the cross and placed in a tomb. When the Sabbath was over, they could embalm him with spices. Give him a decent burial. Pay their last respects. "One last farewell, kind Jesus." Bring some closure to the tragedy and get on with their lives. Little did they know as they walked with heavy steps toward the tomb that Jesus didn't need it any more. A sign had already been posted at the entrance…"For Sale: Slightly Used Tomb. Looks Brand New."

The stone had been removed. Inside sat a young man in a white suit. "Don't be afraid. Save your spices for another funeral," he said. "Go tell his disciples and the others that the tomb was no place for Jesus. Tell them to head to Galilee. That is where they will see him." Incredible news! The story wasn't over. The rest of the story was waiting to be told.

Many of you remember the radio commentator, Paul Harvey. He was a great story-teller. He told a story at the end of each broadcast. What made them so great was how he told them. He would not tell it all at once. He told just enough to pique your interest, and then broke for a commercial. While he pitched a product, you were guessing the outcome of the story. There was often a surprise ending. The character you assumed was a person turned out to be a baboon. He had you leaning one way, then snapped you back another. The segment that ended the broadcast was called, "The Rest of the Story."

But how do the gospels tell the rest of the Easter story? Matthew says that when the women heard the news, they ran back in wonder and full of joy to tell the disciples, and on the way, ran into Jesus himself. In Luke, the women ran the four-minute mile to tell the disciples what they had seen and heard. But the disciples accused them of making the whole thing up until that night when two disciples walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

Now, look at Mark. The man in white tells the women, "You won't find a good man like Jesus in a place like this. He's been raised. He has gone to Galilee. Tell the others to meet him there." And what did the women do? Mark says they were beside themselves, and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. This is the rest of the Easter story according to Mark.

"But keep reading," you say. "That isn't how the story ends.. You left out thirteen verses! Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and the disciples. He pops up all over the place." You are right…it does go on. There is just one problem. Mark is the oldest of the gospels and in the oldest manuscripts, the chapter ends at verse 8. Most Bible scholars have concluded that the extra verses were added sometime during the second century. I think I know why. No one likes to be left hanging with an unresolved story, especially as a story as important as this one.

Apparently Mark had no problem leaving it as it was with the women running away, too afraid to say anything. Maybe they started talking on Monday. Maybe, but if that's what happened, Mark chose not to tell us for some reason. I am glad he didn't.

Matthew and Luke's versions of Easter have a "happy ending". But Mark's Easter comes closer to our experience. The women were looking for a corpse that wasn't there. Jesus had done it again... he put another one over on them. Just when they thought they had him figured out, he put the slip on them. He didn't behave as expected. He didn't talk the way they thought God would talk. Why should it be any different in death? "He's waiting for you in Galilee. Go and tell."

People describe encounters with Jesus in different ways. Some speak of glorious visions or some intensely personal moment when they knew Jesus was just as present as the person sitting next to you. Some say they've experienced something like a a light hand on the shoulder, a voice, or a presence. Most of the time our experience is like that of the women… "Sorry ladies, you just missed him."

So where is he? I can tell you with certainty where Jesus is not. He is not on view in parlor B at the Hartzler-Guttermuth Funeral Home. He is not under a slab of granite at Rice Cemetery. You won't find the living among the dead. But you will find his presence in his absence. That's right. Jesus is present in his absence.

We confuse absence with emptiness. An empty glass in empty. If someone is not there, they are not there. But what do we say that absence does to the heart? "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Have you ever found yourself thinking of someone you loved who is either dead or miles distant, and in your thoughts felt as though that person was close to you?

Jesus absence serves a useful purpose…it creates the longing for his presence. It gets us up and following. Where? To where Matthew, Mark, and Luke say his followers found him.... in Galilee. Why Galilee? Galilee is where the women and the disciples were from. It is where they lived when Jesus met them. It is where they had families, worked, and worshiped. It is where they experienced life's joys and sorrows, birth and death and everything in between.

Jesus rose on a Sunday. Saturday was the Jewish sabbath. Jesus rose on the first day of the work week. After Jesus was entombed everyone went back to work and lived ordinary lives.

Mark has no neat resolution. It is an open-ended…and for a reason. The ending, the rest of the story, is you! You are the rest of Easter! To find you must seek, and the place to seek the Risen Lord is where he may be found... in the Galilee of your ordinary lives.

I learned about a man whose final week of life was difficult. He had the gift of gab. He loved to talk, but suffered a stroke that rendered him speechless. It was torture for him as he and his family struggled to communicate. His wife, daughters,and son were with him on his final day.

It was painful because they sensed the urgency of what he was trying to tell them. He made a gesture to his son for a glass of water. His son filled the glass and put it up to his father's lips, but he wouldn't drink it. He motioned for his son to drink it. He took a swallow. The father then motioned to his daughter. She took the glass from her brother and swallowed. Again, another motion and her sister drank. Finally they caught on. The father was serving his family communion!

The risen Christ was recognized by his disciples on Easter evening. They sat down to eat, and he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. In a hospital room, Christ was known to a family sharing a glass of water. An extraordinary event took place in an ordinary moment in one family's Galilee. They found Jesus-- or did Jesus find them?

Like I said, "I am sorry if you came here today and didn't get what you expected." But those who follow Jesus will tell you, the unexpected is the norm. So what do you plan on doing the rest of your life? I suggest you live the rest of the story. The wonderful thing about Christianity is this-- you don't have to wait till you die to live. What God has arranged for hereafter can be known here.

Speaking to us from across 1,700 years, St. Augustine has something to tell us:

Let us sing Alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety,
that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... We shall
have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. God's
praises are sung both here and there.
But here they are sung in anxiety, there in security;
Here they are sung by those destined to die, there,
by those destined to live forever;
Here they are sung in hope, there in hope's fulfillment;
Here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by those living in
their own country;

So then... let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in
order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do-- sing,
but continue your journey... sing then, but keep going.

So go to ordinary, everyday Galilee. There you will find him. There and here, you will tell the rest of the story yourselves.

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