Easter Sunday

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the Bible, we find four gospel accounts. Four different men wrote the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, death and resurrection. The first among them was Mark, the author of the Easter story we read this morning.

Mark decided it was time to write down everything he knew and heard about Jesus for a couple of reasons. One was that it was now 40 years or so after the resurrection and eyewitnesses to Jesus’ time on earth were beginning to die. Their testimony needed to be recorded for future generations.

Another reason was that Mark’s contemporaries could really use some good news. Researchers agree that the Gospel according to Mark was written during or right after the Jewish War in the Holy Land. A group of independence fighters had rallied a militia and had tried to expel the Roman occupation. This started a four-year-long war that devastated the country and completely destroyed the capitol Jerusalem and its temple. Everything lay in ruins.

Mark’s congregation was experiencing a catastrophe. In the midst of war and devastation and fear, Mark encourages his people with the story of Jesus, especially the story of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection. Living through such disaster and chaos, his people would find comfort in hearing how Jesus suffered, died, and then rose again. It’s a story that has given countless Christians throughout the ages hope in times of trial. We all are among them. That’s why we are here today.

However, Mark’s way of telling the story is a bit strange, even frustrating. His people would have wanted some certainty, would have wanted to hear about the risen Christ, would have wanted to meet the living Savior through the experience of those who were there. Yet Jesus doesn’t show up in Mark’s Easter story.

All Mark’s people get, and we get, and the women that morning get, is the empty tomb and a young man in white with the message that Christ has risen. We don’t get a resurrection sighting; we get only the report that it had happened.

The young man has these words for the women: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

No one sees the resurrected Jesus in the Easter story according to Mark. If you want to see Jesus, you have to go back to Galilee; you have to go back to where it all started; you have to go back and hear anew the story of what Jesus said and did; you have to go back to your ordinary life and expect to meet Jesus there.

Jesus is going ahead of you, the message says, and he will meet you in your everyday life.

Mark writes for people who had been plunged into war and destruction. And he is writing for us in our chaotic days. Our world is shifting, as well. Wars in the Holy Land (again!) and in Ukraine, and unrest in Sudan and Haiti worry us. The global climate crisis worries us. The rise of hate crime incidents and gun violence worries us. The political climate in our nation worries us. Mental health (ours or that of loved ones), rising prices, housing shortages, immigration, collapsing infrastructure, and so much more worries us.

We would love to meet the risen Christ. That would give us the hope and energy and direction we need to cope with all this, right?

But Mark doesn’t give us the risen Christ. Instead, Mark sends us back to the beginning. Go to Galilee. Go to your homes, even if they are destroyed. Go to your lives, even if they are challenging. Go where your life actually happens and look for the risen Savior to meet you there.

Read the gospel story from the beginning, again and again, and remember what Jesus did and what he said and what he taught and how he lived and how he loved. Then do that. And you will meet the risen Christ. You will meet him in the midst of hopelessness and defeat. You will meet him in good times and joyful periods. You will meet him all over the place, all the time.

Whenever we begin our ministry as Jesus began his in Galilee, whenever we share the good news in word and deed, we will encounter the resurrected Christ. And those encounters will give us wisdom and strength and hope for life in this chaotic world.

Let’s look at this more closely with one aspect of Christ’s ministry that shines bright on Easter morning: forgiveness.

In the days leading up to Easter morning, Jesus’ friends had let him down terribly. Judas betrayed him to the authorities. Peter denied knowing him at all. Everyone fled when Jesus was arrested. The women were the only ones who dared to watch the crucifixion, but even they watched from a distance.

Now Jesus is alive again. He would have ample reason to ignore this faithfulness bunch, if not even enact revenge against them. But that is not what Jesus does.

In the tomb sits the young man in a white robe. Who is he? The Bible doesn’t say. He might be an angel. Most people think so. Or he might be the young man who was present at Jesus’ arrest. Soldiers tried to grab him, but he shed his white robe and ran off naked.

If this is him, then he is once again clothed, restored, dressed, at the place where the resurrection happened. And he is entrusted with the message for the women. If this is the same young man, then this scene shows that the relationship between Jesus and this follower who had deserted him is restored. Jesus has forgiven him.

The message to the disciples is one of forgiveness, as well. Jesus has every reason to drop those losers and find himself new friends. Instead, he promises to meet them again. Jesus wants to see them again. Jesus wants to repair their relationship, and that happens through Jesus’ forgiveness.

The message highlights Peter. Jesus promises to meet Peter again. This is one of his closest followers, yet also the one who denied knowing Jesus after Jesus’ arrest. Peter was shamed to tears over this. The message that Jesus promises to see him again is a message of forgiveness.

During the time of his ministry on earth, Jesus was offering forgiveness to many, many people. Through forgiveness, he healed people, he restored people to community, he invited people into God’s presence. Now after the resurrection, Jesus continues that ministry of forgiveness. He extends it to the young man, to Peter, to the disciples. He extends it to us in worship, through words of forgiveness after confession and through holy communion.

Today we receive the message to “go back to Galilee”, back to the beginning, to remember and enact Jesus’ way of loving people. Forgiveness is part of this calling. Through offering forgiveness, we encounter the risen Christ.

A couple of years ago, my colleague Jimmy Schwartz was driving to work when he was hit by another driver, a woman who was on drugs. Jimmy suffered severe injuries, spent months in hospitals and rehab, and now depends on a wheelchair.

He attended the trial of the woman who hit him. When it was his turn to give his victim impact statement, he addressed the woman directly and forgave her and wished her well in her life.

Everyone in that courtroom was moved, many to tears. It was such a powerful moment. It was a moment when the risen Christ was present and touched the lives of those who were there and those, like me, who heard testimony about it. Jimmy was able to do what Christ had modeled: He forgave, in in his forgiveness we were able to meet the risen Lord.

The Easter story in Mark’s gospel account is open ended. There is no neat closing line like “they lived happily ever after – the end.” By ending his account in this way, Mark is calling us to go deeper. He is challenging us to become the new ending by revealing the resurrected Christ in our lives.

The Apostle Paul writes: “You are the body of Christ raised up for the world.” That is also the verse with which we will be sent into the world at the end of worship today. We are the body of Christ raised up for the world. We are the presence of the living Christ in the world today. We are the ongoing ending to the Easter story.

We want to experience the risen Christ? Let us live as he lived; let us love as he loved; let us forgive as he forgave; let us believe as he believed; and we will experience Jesus. For Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, alleluia!