Winthrop Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
No matter who you are. No matter where you are on life's journey. You are welcome here.
John 15:1-8 Jesus the True Vine ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Several years ago, a colleague invited me to preach at her installation. She was the associate pastor to two congregations. The senior pastor of the two congregations had been there for a couple decades at that point. She really wanted to have a message of welcoming something new to a body that had already been together for a long time. I immediately began to think of my neighbor’s apple tree. It produces five varieties of apples. That can only happen because of one technology: grafting.
I am certain that I have told you about this tree before. I'm going to talk about grafting again because I think it’s a useful metaphor for church. For that sermon years ago, I read up on grafting trees in particular. Grafting has myriad uses. One use is cloning. Because of the particular ways that apple and pears reproduce, if you have a delicious fruit and want to grow more trees that produce that fruit same fruit, it is better to clone that fruit’s tree than try to grow another from seed. A second reason that I learned that people add grafts to trees is to help heal injured parts of a tree. A third reason that I learned that people graft trees is probably the one I find most interesting. Grafting can be used to make a healthy tree stronger and create more variety in its fruit. New, healthier parts of the tree can be grafted in to keep it from cracking with wind and age. Also, you can help the tree pollinate more easily and successfully by introducing new grafts. Sometimes you can even make plants with several different kinds of fruit on them. This is how my neighbor ended up with an apple tree with multiple varieties. Last week, when I preached on part of John 10, I noted that Jesus said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Dr. Gennifer Benjamin Brooks said this part of the reading on the Good Shepherd reminds us that a single faith community as it stands at any given moment does not complete the body of Christ. This has been true from the time of Christ and continues to this day. Jesus calls sheep from all corners to join the fold. And, as the sheep are gathered, they become one flock... one body. Foundational to our Christian faith is an understanding of God that allows people who are pretty different from one another, and often people forced to live at the margins of society, to come together across difference and become one body. In John 10, Jesus used the flock as a metaphor for this coming together. In John 15, Jesus uses the image of the vine and branches. How do you introduce a new branch into a plant? How do you support the health of an existing plant? How might you help a plant grow? Perhaps by grafting. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches and new branches can be grafted in at any time. Just as each new branch that is grafted to a root stock adds to the strength and viability of a Vine of Christ, so, too, does it change how vine grows. If the grafting is done well, by a skilled farmer, a vine will respond to the new graft’s presence by knitting together old and new, creating a stronger plant. In time, this new plant will bear new fruit. Growing this fruit is only possible because the root stock and graft grow together. Doesn’t this sound like the part of the reading where Jesus described himself as a vine who relies on the vine grower? But, it also helps us see the way the vine grower tends to new vines to make the old vine stronger. The central metaphor of today’s reading, the vine and branches, I think, can show us something about how Jesus’ followers, with all our wonderful variety and necessary differences, grow with Christ into one whole body. Jesus said that he was the vine and God was the vine grower. The ones who hear the Gospel and are moved by it, becomes branches of that same vine. The branches cannot grow without the vine and the vine cannot grow without the vine grower. Though, we should note, the vine grower receives sustenance from the fruitful vine. The scholar Karoline Smith says we need to pay attention to the fact that the relationship between growers and plants is mutual. Each party is necessary for abundant growth and life. No one part grows by itself. Intimacy among God and Jesus and Jesus followers is necessary for the vine and branches to thrive. According to this chapter of John, we build intimacy with the Divine from following Jesus’ teaching. In John, this is called abiding in Jesus. According to Karoline Lewis, this is one of the most important ways Jesus understands his ministry in this Gospel. He says that the ones who abide in him and in whom he abides will bear much fruit. To return to the work of Dr. Brooks, in her commentary on today’s reading, she says that “The guiding principle by which all would be transformed into the image of Christ is boundless love of God and neighbor.” A thriving vine of Christ will be fed by this love of God and love of neighbor. When you love God, you love your neighbor. When you love your neighbor, you tend to your neighbors’ well-being and make sure that any body of Christ you are helping to cultivate is capable of incorporating new branches. A vine that doesn’t grow can’t produce the fruits of justice and love. And what are we doing here if not growing towards the Gospel that Christ has shared with us? This is where the part of how to make one vine out of many branches comes in. We are still in the season of Easter, where we spend time considering how Jesus would prepare his followers to carry on the Gospel without him being physically present. He did not preach the Gospel alone. He called disciples to help. The disciples, too, will need co-workers, and will invite others to be grafted into the Vine. The Gospel is always the work of community, at work through relationships. The branches will be called and empowered to grow and carry on Christ's work in the world, long after Jesus himself returns to God. These branches must grow, pruning that which does not produce love and justice, and reach out into all of creation, bearing fruit of God's love on this earth. One way we will grow is by making sure that the branch that we steward is prepared for new branches. Perhaps instead of cloning beloved varietals, we can understand that people will come to our church with great gifts for ministry cultivated in other communities, be they churches or neighborhoods, and decides to use those gifts to serve a new congregation in a new way. They may be able to replicate the attentiveness, prayerfulness, and dedication with which they went about developing these gifts in another situation to fit the needs and joys of a new congregation. One of the great joys of being grafted into a new community is being trusted to bring all of the experiences you have had up until that point and being allowed to use these experiences to serve in a new way. It is a joy to see these gifts bloom in a new place. I mentioned that grafts aid in healing. Healing is certainly foundational to the Gospel. Congregations, if we’re following Christ, spend a lot of time healing, too: Healing old hurts and arguments, offering comfort for the pains of everyday life, working to heal systemic injustice that wounds whole communities. In recognizing the ways that we need healing and that the world needs healing, we are abiding in Christ and Christ is abiding in us. If we love our neighbors, we will seek healing. We will be confident that God is at work in our healing, too. Grafting on new branches can bring such joy and creativity, too. Like the tree with many kinds of apples, we may be surprised by who we grow next to. This body of Christ, the vine and branches, is not complete. There is always the possibility for new and different growth meeting the needs of new and different times. Whatever we will become is already growing in us, like the graft growing with the root stock. And, we’ll likely get some new grafts, too, helping us reach out with Christ in directions we can’t even imagine right now. Storms will come. So will droughts, freezes, and caterpillars. Do not fear, though. We have a vine grower with water to refresh, patient hands to pick away the bugs, and tools to prune and shape us as we grow. May we rejoice in this unfinished, ever growing, pruned, and grafted Body of Christ. May we never lose sight of the growing that we have yet to do. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Gennifer Benjamin Brooks: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-1011-18-5 -https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-151-8-5 Helpful information on grafting: http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/fruit/grafting-and-budding-fruit-trees/ Karoline Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014).
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John 10:11-18 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’ I remember Palm Sunday four years ago when I was trying to figure out something I could do that was fun and engaging for the service when we couldn’t gather together in person. We emailed out some paper palms people could color and print and left some real palms for people to pick up at church, so that seemed to cover the palms. What I had to think harder about was the parade. Before Covid, I often invited the youngest ministers of the church to lay palms and cloth down around the sanctuary and march with me while the whole church shouts “Hosanna!” I do not live with a bunch of children to reproduce that kind of parade. I did, however, live with some chickens and guinea fowl. So, I drafted them into service. Bribed. I bribed them into service with many freeze-dried worm treats. A whole bunch of the families at church also sent me clips of parents and kids shouting “Hosanna” for the video. This video of me and my silly birds and so many of the kids of this church and their families may be one of the best things we’ve ever made together as a church. I’ll share the video when I post the sermon so that you all can be reminded of the glory of it. If you haven’t seen it, it starts with me and the birds. I shake a bag of worms and start walking around the driveway with my palms. The chickens and guineas eventually started to follow me, even though I was shouting Hebrew words they didn’t know. At some point, they got spooked and peeled off towards the woodshed instead of following me towards the coop. The video records my dismayed shout of “You’re going the wrong way!” I shared the finished video on social media and two of my clergy colleagues immediately noticed the birds acting a lot like Jesus’ human followers. Rev. Alexis Fuller-Wright said, “[T]hose chickens make the BEST and most accurate followers of Jesus.” Rev. Liddy Gerchman-Barlow heard echoes of Jesus’ own exasperation in my words. Putting my words in quotation marks, she typed: “’You're going the wrong way!’ - Jesus.” How many times did the disciples get scared or confused or distracted and start running towards the woodshed? Pretty often, if we’re being honest about it. Even though we are well past Palm Sunday and into the Easter season, I bring up my poultry and that video because I don’t know much, really, about having sheep. I do, however, know a little bit about having chickens. Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay points out in her commentary on this text, Jesus used agricultural images that were familiar to the people who lived around him. Just about everyone would have known a shepherd. They would have known what it was like to deal with real-life, often troublesome, behavior of sheep on a regular basis. As Lindsay notes, even though sheep are often gentle and easily domesticated, that doesn’t mean they always do what their shepherds want. And, they are vulnerable to many predators.
Just about all of those things can be said of my birds, too. It was a challenge to keep them healthy and safe, especially through Maine winters. After five years of not losing any to predation, last year, we lost our last two hens to a hungry fox. It is not always easy to care for other living things, even things you may one day eat or rely on for eggs or wool. The people who first heard Jesus preach would have known that. It is no small thing to keep a herd of sheep safe. Shepherding was a challenging and necessary job. Shepherds could end up in danger themselves while tending to and protecting their sheep. When Jesus speaks of himself as a good shepherd as recorded in the book of John, he is making a couple interesting choices in how he teaches. One, he is choosing to use a metaphor to describe himself that many people will be familiar with, which is good pedagogy. And, two, he’s aligning himself with a hard-working, ubiquitous, often dangerous kind of work in his society. It is interesting to me that Jesus chose to describe himself as a shepherd and not a king or a warrior or even simply as a teacher. Knowing that people hoped for the Messiah to lead them out from under the thumb of Rome, you might expect Jesus to speak of himself as a king or a warrior, but he doesn’t. And, he doesn’t simply refer to himself as a teacher. The common ideas about being a teacher would have left out the danger that Jesus understood himself to be facing. Though, were Jesus speaking now, in this country, with far too much easy access to firearms, and teachers who regularly prepare themselves to lay down their lives for their students, the ideas of shepherd and teacher aren’t so far apart as they once were. Jesus started talking about being a shepherd at this point in John, as Karoline Lewis reminds us in one of her commentaries, in response to a community that has forced a man out after Jesus healed him. I won’t retell that whole story, but it starts in John 9. Jesus heals a man who had been born blind. Religious leaders disagreed as to whether or not Jesus’ power to offer than healing came from God or from somewhere bad. The powerful leaders grew angry with the man when he asserted that he believed Jesus to have come from God because only God could have healed him. They drove him out of their community. Jesus went and found the man, who declared that he believed Jesus to be the Son of Man. Then, Jesus began to talk with the Pharisees about what happened. That’s when he says he’s a shepherd, and he’s come for sheep like the man who had been born blind. Notice how Jesus acted like a shepherd by going and looking for the man who had been run off from his former herd. Karoline Lewis notes that the man heard Jesus before seeing him, and still believed. Seeing him confirmed that belief. The man chose to become part of Jesus’ flock, and Jesus would claim him and care for him when he was cast out. “I know my own and my own know me.” Jesus also promises that the flock will grow. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Lewis speaks of this as the promise of abundance that comes with being a part of Jesus’ flock... not an abundance of money or power, but of healing and renewed community. “Healing leads to belonging,” Lewis says. And belonging leadings to abundant life. You may have noticed that this story happens before the crucifixion and resurrection in the book of John. This isn’t a post-resurrection story like we’ve heard the last couple weeks. I do wonder how the memory of this encounter would have felt to those who would have witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection. Would this image of the shepherd who was willing to lay his life down, bolster them after the gift of the Resurrection, that is Christ’s renewed life? Jesus, who had promised abundant life, lived out that promise by defeating death and returning to his disciples. Did they remember the man born blind, to whom Jesus also returned with a promise and a gift of community? In this time where we are watching too many people with power, hoard more power, and harm people with the authority they’ve amassed, what can we learn from this shepherd who laid his power down on behalf of the ones he loved? And, how will we share the abundant life we are cultivating guided by his Spirit? Even though we sometimes act like my poultry, running off in the wrong direction, away from the treats promised us, like the birds, may we know that the shepherd will come looking for us, ready to share abundance with us. May we help find the rest of the flock so they can share the abundance, too. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Palm Sunday 2020 video: https://youtu.be/BfT92jbsyVY?si=1kTjuXKy9dY7lt-K Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-power-to-lay-it-down/ Caroline Lewis: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-1011-18-6 Luke 24:36b-48 Jesus Appears to His Disciples While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Last week, I had an extraordinary meal... well, several very good meals. That’s part of the joy of weddings. The people getting married, or their friends and family, will feed you. I want to talk about one of the good meals. When I am anywhere between Texas and California, I want to get Mexican food. Our friend Cherie, who grew up in Phoenix and went to college in Tucson, made sure we got some. After conversation with our other friends Simone and Shauna, we went to a local chain with loads of options. I spied something called a birria taco and knew I had to have it. Birria is usually a stew, often with beef that has been cooked for a long time so that it is tender enough to be easily shredded with a fork. When you get the shredded meat in tacos, they give you a little bowl of soup broth in which you can dip your tacos.
The food was so good that I got it on both my shirt and pants and used not less than three napkins to clean up my face and hands. The meat was cooked perfectly. The broth was delicious. The corn tortillas were just the right amount of crunchy. There was also guacamole and salsa that was made right at our table. We sat outside on the patio on a beautiful, if windy, 70-degree day with a good friend who we hadn’t seen in-person since before the pandemic and ate really good food. It wasn’t exactly Easter dinner, but it was only four days after, which is close enough for me. I can’t imagine Jesus’ ministry without food. How many times in each of the four Gospels do we see him sharing a meal with his friends, sharing a meal with his enemies, being hosted by other friends while he teaches, feeding people who show up to hear him teach, talking about the ethics of harvesting, and declaring keeping hungry people fed to be a central act of faith. The post-resurrection accounts of Luke share a couple of poignant resurrections accounts where food plays a central role in the disciples’ recognizing a Resurrected Christ. The first is one I often share with communion. On the day we call Easter, the women disciples saw two heavenly representatives at the tomb who told them Jesus is resurrected. The men disciples didn’t believe them until Peter went and verified their account that Jesus was no longer in the tomb. On the same day, two other disciples were walking to a village called Emmaus, and they met a man who they thought was a stranger on the road. It was Jesus. He asked them what they were talking about, and they shared their story about the death of Jesus at the hands of Rome and about how the women disciples told them he’d been resurrected. Upon hearing uncertainty in their voices, Jesus began to teach them. It is fascinating to me that they don’t recognize Jesus when he teaches them. You would think, with all the hours of teaching they had heard, through the months and months of his public ministry, that those words would have been familiar enough to shake loose their understanding so they could realize that Jesus was walking with them. But, it wasn’t Jesus’ words that helped them understand, it was his actions. Specifically, it was his blessing and sharing a meal with them that made his identity clear. Of course, Jesus, the one who told his disciples to feed the hungry and, also, invited them to share the bread and cup to remember him, would finally be recognized in his resurrected form when he shared food. That story is the story right before today’s reading. Once the two disciples recognize Jesus, he disappears before their eyes. They ran all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the rest of the disciples what had happened. While they were telling the eleven their story, Jesus stood among them. You might guess that he’d say, “be not afraid.” He says something close: “Peace be with you.” Understandably, the disciples don’t have a lot of peace in that moment. They are terrified and pretty sure they are seeing a ghost. Again, it is actions that bring a measure of clarity, not simply his words. María Teresa Dávila notes in her commentary on this chapter, even the loving power of the resurrection has not removed the marks left by torture on Jesus’ body. Jesus knows that his friends will know how he was harmed and invites them to look at and touch the places he was hurt, his hands and feet. “Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones,” he says. The next part is my favorite part. They are overjoyed but still unsure about what to make of his appearance, so he asks for some food. The subtext here is that ghosts can’t eat food, so he’s going to eat food with them to demonstrate that he is alive. Dávila points out in her commentary that lofty ideas such as “reconciliation and victory over injustice” always take place within the concrete realities of human bodies harmed by injustice. Salvation doesn’t take away scars from previous harm. In a similar manner, resurrection and renewed life require concrete sustenance and reconnected relationships to flourish. Ghosts don’t eat, but Jesus did. And his disciples did. And, upon his direction, they fed other people. Remember that story about the bread and the fishes? That miracle over a simple meal showed them something about who Jesus was. So, did this simple meal of broiled fish. To be clear, I did not see Jesus when I was eating my birria tacos. It was close, but, it wasn’t what happened to the disciples. I was reminded, though, of the unique joy that comes along with sharing a meal with people I care about. It is the memory of that kind joy and everyday connection that happens over food that appears that seems to have made the greatest impression on Jesus’ disciples. Dr. Jin Young Choi describes Jesus as being present in hospitality. I would argue that Christ in still present in our hospitality to this day. In the times when we share food with those who need it, fight for the workers who grow it and serve it, and welcome strangers into our churches, communities, and nation, we are enacting the hospitality that shows people who Jesus is. This might be the power God clothed the disciples with from on high.... the power to follow the work of Christ in our time, guided by his spirit. This week, I hope you get to have a meal that makes you see Jesus. Sustained by that meal, may you go forth, belly and heart full, as a witness to the power of resurrection and as a worker for the kin-dom of God. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Jin Young Choi: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-luke-2436b-48 María Teresa Dávila, "Third Sunday of Easter," Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B, eds Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) Mark 16:9-15, 19-20 The Shorter Ending of Mark [[And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. ]] The Longer Ending of Mark Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene [[Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. Jesus Appears to Two Disciples After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Jesus Commissions the Disciples Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The Ascension of Jesus So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it. ]] The Long Ending of Mark
“Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table, and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation… So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” My friends, it is wonderful to be amongst you all again. Pastor Chrissy and I have joked that the Sunday after Easter will soon be known as “Sarah Sunday” at Winthrop Congregational Church. In the year since I last visited with you, I have taken more courses through the Maine School of Ministry, continued my work on the MESOM Advisory Team, and begun a chaplaincy internship at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. My journey of pursuing my call has continued in new ways. That is also where we find ourselves in this, the first post-Easter service, looking to how we can pursue our call as disciples of Christ in a post-Resurrection world. Now, your reading last week, Mark 16:1-8 closes with the women being told by the white-robed man they do not recognize to leave the empty tomb, for Jesus is not there. He had told them to let the disciples and especially Peter know that Jesus would go ahead of them to Galilee, but what did they do? They leave the tomb and don't tell anyone because they're afraid. Fear and doubt are a common theme in the gospel of Mark and so it makes sense that this would be where Mark asked us to leave the story of Christ. We are left with people who are afraid, people who probably doubt what they've just seen and what they've heard from this mysterious figure. Now the reading that we heard today seems to fly in the face of this mysterious and doubt-filled ending. What we instead get is the rest of the story or so it would seem. What we might not know from hearing these verses is that this is very likely an addition to Mark’s Gospel from perhaps 200 years after the original text was completed, a text which ends with the verse you heard last week, the women who leave an empty tomb and tell no one, so we have to ask ourselves, why make this addition to the text? What is it about people that means that we can't sit with a story of Christ that features an ending centered on doubt and fear? In the original ending, the robed individual says that Jesus will go ahead of them to Galilee and that the disciples will meet him there. Now, Mark usually portrays a Christ who is true to his word and so when we read that Jesus will appear to them all in Galilee, and then we don’t get to hear about it happening, well, I don't know about you, but I would be upset. That can’t be how it ends! To make a comparison to a different epic story, it would be like having the Lord of the Rings end with Sam and Frodo having completed their goal of getting the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom, escaping the rising tide of lava as the mountain begins erupting, but then Tolkien deciding that he will just leave the story with them clinging to the rocks, happy to be free of the ring and completed their quest. We want, no, we need to see Gandalf fly down on the back of an eagle and rescue them both before the fires can claim them. We wouldn’t be happy to just know that the ring had been destroyed and Sauron had been defeated. We long for happy endings that tie up ALL the loose ends. There is a reason many people say “The Return of the King” has too many endings. The truth is, we want to know that it’s all been worth it and everyone’s stories have tidy endings. In that same way, we long for more stories about Jesus after Mark 16:8. If I were an early Christian, I would be shouting “That can’t be how it ends! Come on! Tell me everything you know!” Give me those 25 more minutes of climatic ending sequences! What we have in the added verses we read today is what Ched Meyers in his book “Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus” calls an “imperial rewriting of Mark”. This imperial rewriting symbolizes our unending efforts to domesticate the gospel. Meyer states that this longer ending represents the work of those who cannot see the meaning of chapter 16 verse eight as an invitation to which to respond, but only as a scandal that must properly be resolved. These rewriters are looking for a happy ending, not content with the ending Mark originally offers; one where we are left to wrestle with whether or not the women at the tomb (that is to say ourselves) overcame their fear in order to proclaim the new beginning in Galilee. Instead, they preferred to insert an ending that has neat closure and allows the reader to remain passive. In these added verses, we hear that the women did indeed speak to the disciples, but they were not believed, and after that, Jesus appeared to two more disciples who were walking into the country and they went back and told the rest, and they did not believe them either. Now, it would seem our imperial rewriters are not doing the best job here. I thought this was supposed to be the happy ending that set up the foundation of Christ’s kingdom on earth, but all these people don't seem to be believing what they're hearing. Well, then we get to Jesus himself showing up to the 11 as they are sitting at a table and berating them for their lack of faith and they're stubbornness because they had not believed those who had seen him after he had risen. To me, this is those imperial rewriters coming in and saying “Listen! We know you don't all understand and believe as much as we do so we're here to tell you that Jesus is really mad. If you don't believe in him and those who try to tell you about him, he might just shout at you for your stubbornness.” In fact, I left out a pretty sizable chunk of verses that, to me and most theologians, seem to subvert so much of what Mark’s original gospel is trying to say in place of providing the early Christian church with more imperialistic, measurable proofs of Christ’s power. Maybe this will sound familiar to you, but in verse 16 it says, “the one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” And one verse that we may be all know, verse 18, says that true-believing Christians “will pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. They will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover.” For a gospel that is otherwise almost entirely concerned with sacrifice and a suffering Christ and mystery and silence and misunderstandings, these verses seem to give very clear directions on what people need to do in order to both be a good Christian and then to go out and properly represent Christ and his power. I don't know about you all, but I'm about to go into the desert and pick up the first rattlesnake I see and see how my luck is!… Obviously, I'm not going to do that! So much of Mark’s Gospel refutes the idea of miracle working as being theological proof that Jesus is who we believe Jesus to be. It is easy to criticize the many efforts at Christian magic that are inspired by this text. Think of those folks in churches, particularly in Appalachia, who handle dangerous snakes during their service as a sign of their faith. This emphasis on miraculous Christian magic betrays Mark’s message by instead endorsing the idea that to be a Christian means to demonstrate visible power. You are taking one of the most dangerous creatures and lifting it up in your bare hands, you're drinking poison without fear of dying. You're showing off how powerful you are because you have been baptized and are now a Christian. There is suddenly an emphasis on the idea that, because you are a chosen, baptized person, you can do all of these amazing things. What this notion ignores is Mark’s rejection of those visible signs of power in favor of servanthood and sacrifice. So, given all of this, why did I decide to pick this as the reading for today, you might wonder. Well, as I said earlier, I like the fact that, even though this is an addition to Mark’s Gospel, it still embraces the idea of people reporting things and not being believed, not being fully understood. I like that the resurrected Christ is almost as much of a mystery as the Christ in the earlier portions of Mark's gospel, appearing to a select few people until he just can’t take the fact that his closest friends aren’t believing their fellow disciples when they hear of his encounters with their comrades. The disciples are just as useless in this additional writing as they are in the rest of the book, not understanding what Jesus is doing. I like the idea that we end with the disciples being told to proclaim the good news everywhere (even though they may struggle with doubt and not understand everything) and that, during their witnessing to the world, the Lord worked with them. Christ remains collaborative, even after his ascension to heaven. But I also picked this reading for all of the things that I don't like about it. I picked it in part for the verses that I did not have our liturgist share: the idea that someone looked at an ending of a gospel text and felt so lost, still felt like they did not have a good grip on Christ yet, and just wanted that happier ending. I understand wanting to have a list of things that you need to do and that you should do in order to best serve Christ after his resurrection and prove to those you meet that the power of Christian belief can be visibly demonstrated. I understand the desire for a risen Jesus who shows up and tells people who still don't believe the stories of others to stop being so stubborn! He really is not in that tomb anymore! I understand, wanting to have this earliest story of Christ’s ministry end with people actually seeing him being taken up into heaven and sitting at the right hand of God. Warren Carter and Amy-Jill Levine share that Mark’s original ending “maximizes reader engagement with the story. Readers are called to continue the story. [But it also] is not surprising that some early interpreters found this unresolved conflict to be unsatisfactory.” After nearly 200 years of questioning Mark’s ending, a choice was made by people like you and I to unify its closing narrative with the other gospels. Maybe this was a sign of a young faith seeking firm foundations and prescriptive sacraments around which to root their discipleship. A faith longing to model the empire all around it with signs of strength and visible power. But I also love the idea that Mark originally ends with a question mark. It invites us to consider what we would do in place of these frightened women running from a now empty tomb. We can put ourselves in their place and imagine telling others, "Now I know how this sounds, but…". In this post-Resurrection world, we are called to return to the beginning of the gospel, to Galilee, and share it with everyone; called to begin our own journey of discipleship in the model of Christ. We may not see a physical risen Christ in our midst, as the rewriters decided to include, but we must strive to follow his example as detailed right the way up to Mark 16:8, and pursue our call to be like him nonetheless. Indeed, as C. M. Tucket says in his commentary on the end of Mark: The rest of the gospel is to be completed by the reader, but the reader can only complete the story by following as a disciple of Mark's Jesus, and that means going to Galilee being prepared to follow in the way of discipleship as spelt out by him, i.e. the way of the cross. There, and only there will Jesus be seen and experienced. There is then no happy ending to the gospel… It is up to the reader to supply the ending – and that is the perennial challenge of this gospel to all its readers today. We do not always have experiences with neat and tidy happy endings. As humanity, we are sometimes forced to learn from the saddest of stories and find the hope and the love in them wherever we can. We must continue to wrestle with tales that leave us wanting clearer answers. And while we may never catch a glimpse of Jesus literally sitting at God’s right hand, we can certainly hold fast to the belief that he is working right along with us as we strive to live a life of discipleship like his own, one rooted not just in signs of visible power, but in the strength of sacrificial love and servanthood to all of creation. Amen. Sources consulted for this sermon: Carter, Warren, and Amy-Jill Levine. The New Testament: Methods and Meanings. Abingdon Press, 2013. Coogan, Michael David, et al. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version; with the Apocrypha; an Ecumenical Study Bible. Oxford University Press, 2018. Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. 2nd ed., Orbis Books, 2008. Tuckett, C.M. “Commentary on Mark.” The New Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2001, pp. 886–922. Mark 16:1-8 The Resurrection of Jesus When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘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. But 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.’ 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. They had to have told someone, right? We know that the book we call Mark wasn’t written down live as it happened. The author wasn’t a court stenographer or me sharing my reactions to a show I like on social media. The book we call Mark is a product of memory, curation, inspiration, and faithful labor produced well after the events it describes. One of my favorite things about comparing the four Gospels is considering the message the author hopes us to find within its sermons, parables, and miracles. As a person whose job it is, in part anyway, to tell stories and read stories and listen to stories, it is interesting for me to consider how the discovery of the resurrection is so different in Mark than in the other three Gospels. If you were telling a story with as wild an ending as resurrection from the dead, would you then turn around and have the heroes of the story be too scared to tell anyone what happened?
Maybe I’m exaggerating a little in calling Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mom Mary, and Salome heroes. I don’t think I’m exaggerating much though! In his introduction to Mark, Richard Horsley, when comparing the women disciples to the 12 men disciples, says that the women “serve as models of faithfulness.” Unlike we who show up on Easter morning expecting a Resurrection, these women came to the tomb assuming they would only find the dead. In her commentary on this text, Cheryl Lindsay describes what they are doing as the “unfinished work of caring for the dead body of Jesus.” It is necessary and valuable work that is also difficult and heartbreaking, and yet, they show up to tend to the One They Love. They are assuming that they are arriving to do what Lindsay calls “a final act of honor, care, and presence” in spite of the danger that could have lingered after Rome sentenced him to death. Instead, what they become is witnesses. Léoncienne Labonté says of these women, “The dead don’t scare them.” But, that young man in white sure does! Which is fair! I would have been alarmed, too! It doesn’t matter that, as Cheryl Lindsay notes, the Gospel of Mark shares predictions that Jesus will rise from the dead three times (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34), the women who had been so faithful still didn’t expect the tomb to no longer contain Jesus. This angelic figure says what so many angels end up saying in Bible stories, “Do not be afraid.” The word that is translated as “alarmed” in the translation that we heard today carries with it a sense of being amazed, but not in a totally joyful way. Instead, according to Aubrey West, “alarmed” means something more like “overwhelmed by surprise or perplexity.” She goes on to say, “Nothing they see (or do not see) makes sense.” Even though Jesus had tried to tell them, I’m not sure they could have truly prepared for the empty tomb and angelic presence they found. I’m not sure that they could have truly prepared for the words “he is going ahead of you to Galilee.” Mark is the only one of the four Gospels where we don’t see Jesus after the resurrection. Now, if you open the Bibles in your pews, you might see that there are some post-resurrection encounters that might be under a heading that says something like “the shorter ending of Mark” and “the longer ending of Mark.” But scholars generally agree these were added on later. The oldest versions of Mark that we have don’t include them. While John has Jesus comforting the ones who came to the tomb, and Luke has Jesus appearing as a traveler his friends don’t immediately recognize, and Matthew has Jesus being the one telling the women not to be afraid and telling the men “I am with you always,” Aubrey West points out, Mark has the simple promise that Jesus is going ahead of them. Even though we’re pretty sure that the last thing the author wrote is that the faithful women run from the tomb in terror and amazement, what could be the end actually opens up for us a new beginning. A story’s meaning doesn’t only come from the writer. It also comes from those who hear it. When you hear that the faithful ran away and said nothing to anyone, I hope you will remember that we are here as a reminder that they must have finally moved through their fear and told the truth of what they saw. Even though, as Cheryl Lindsay points out, Mark leaves the story of what they say to be told by others, we have heard the promise that Jesus goes before us. Audrey West offers up what I think is helpful insight: there is no place, including death, that Jesus’ followers can go where “Jesus isn’t already there.” Mark isn’t showing a story of Jesus’ abandoning his followers, but instead repeating his first instruction to them, the instruction to follow. As you think about the meaning of Mark’s resurrection story for your life at this moment, I hope you’ll take this promise to heart. Even as we carry grief and pain in our hearts, even as our actions are shaped by fear, even as we are overwhelmed and confused, Jesus is known by his promises. He has promised to go ahead of us into the worst we can imagine and show us a way through. May we hear this promise and know that we can follow, even when we have to take a break because we are afraid. The story hasn’t yet ended. It is up to us to tell the next part. |
AuthorPastor Chrissy is a native of East Tennessee. She and her wife moved to Maine from Illinois. She is a graduate of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University and Chicago Theological Seminary. Archives
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