"Past the Empty Tomb" - Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009

Last Sunday there were two fine sermons at St. Paul’s - one from our Bishop, Patrick Yu, and the other earlier in the day from Annette Brownlee.

And in them, two kinds of people described who have encountered Jesus who, for our benefit, the Gospel of Mark offers us in stark and plain terms.

The first is the Palm Sunday follower, with a palm branch in their hands, singing hymns at full voice, thrilled at the thought of what Jesus will do for them - and about to be bitterly disappointed.

It is worth a moment’s pause to consider the disappointment which Jesus Christ can bring.

The disappointment of the person who follows him thinking that a moral life, like one we imagine Jesus living, will lead to an orderly life, hopefully one of some success, at least one quiet and contented. But who discovers that following Jesus one is led into the centre of the storm.

It is the disappointment of the person who follows him thinking that a Christian life will always be happy and one of rich personal relationships. Away from the world's hatreds, into the company of Christians who will never betray or disappoint. Who discovers that following Jesus, one will face the darkness of the human heart. The darkness in our own. The darkness in others.

It is the disappointment of the person who says I want Jesus, I just don’t want anything to do with the church. I’m above institutions, and party spirit, bureaucracies, and blimpish traditions. I want nothing to do with superstition or hypocrisy. But who hears, in dismay, that it is in order to raise up a holy people, a nation of priests, that our Lord inhabits the church and gives his body into our shaking hands and offers his blood to our trembling lips.

And it is the disappointment, quite frankly, of the one who follows Jesus Christ thinking that they can get ahead by doing so.

“We want to be on your left and right,” James and John tell Jesus. But this is a King who serves - and expects his followers to do likewise. And who only once in Mark’s Gospel will be honored with company on his left and right - when two criminals are pinned to crosses beside him (15.27). It is not the glory they were hoping for. It is not the glory Jesus offers.

Jesus Christ loves us. He reaches out to us. He comforts us, heals us, protects us. He answers all sorts of simple, personal prayers upon which we can look with gratitude. But it is love given in order to enlarge our hearts. It is love given in order to draw us in and send us out. It is love with a back bone which simply won’t be manipulated by our narrow goals and prejudices. And every short-sighted Palm Sunday follower discovers this on Good Friday when they hear their hollow cheers descend into cries for crucifixion.

And there is another kind of follower who the Bishop described. It is Simon of Cyrene, the man on the road forced by the soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus to Golgotha.

And I liked the Bishop’s joke. Simon is the great ambassador for everyone who is here today at the insistence of their husband or wife. Simon represents all those who know that there’s a price to pay for Easter Dinner: “you gotta go to church.”

For a month in seminary, I was a student volunteer at a skid-row mission in Chicago. I met a man who bounced back and forth off the street. He was clean and sober when I knew him, was serving as a volunteer at the mission, and was simply a great friend to me.

One night we went out onto Madison Avenue for a tour of the neighbourhood. If any of you remember the TV show Hill Street Blues, that police precinct was not far away and was our first stop.

But the tour included a walk past several of the street missions, some with better reputations than others. “Had all my stuff stolen in that one,” he told me.

“And in that one,” he said, “chapel comes before dinner.”

“There I was born again, and again, and again. New converts get better lunch.”

Simon of Cyrene is the great ambassador for all those who say, “I am here because my grandmother told me. I am here because my father dragged me. I am here because I can’t stay home without making a scene. I am here in body, but don’t think for a moment you have my heart, or mind, or my soul.”

He is the ambassador for all those who have had Jesus thrust upon them. They weren’t looking. They aren’t interested. But they can’t get around him. They have a Roman spear in their back, and they discover - they truly discover - they can’t get around him.

I’ve mentioned before a man who I knew as a pastor in my home church and a chaplain to the local police. But as a teenager he was part of a street gang. One night there was some gun play and he made the national news because he was the nephew of the mayor.

In the gun fight he had tried to shoot his enemy but tripped and shot himself. Because of the injury, the police caught him, arrested him and sat outside his hospital room. And inside the room he was stuck with a kind, old man from our church, lying in the bed next to him. Determined to challenge him. Determined to love him. Determined to follow him to court and to prison. Determined that, whether he wanted it or not, this young man would see Jesus.

Mark’s Gospel is a stark one. It is one in which the mission of Jesus Christ is portrayed in dramatic, violent, agonizing terms. It is one in which the most reliable ending we have portrays everyone frightened and confused.

It is the Gospel in which only two people clearly understand who Jesus is. The devils who see the spiritual battle being waged. And a dusty old soldier, experienced in cruelty, who stands at the foot of the cross, and looks upon the dying Jesus in reverence and wonder.

It is a stark Gospel portrait. But echoing just beyond its border is the triumphant news of the resurrection, waiting for those who will make the trip past the empty tomb.

As Bishop Yu noted, the Gospel of Mark has this beautiful little tease. It says that Simon of Cyrene was the father of Rufus and Alexander (15.21), names which appear nowhere else in Mark’s Gospel. But which almost certainly mean that the sons of Simon would later become known to the Christians who read Mark’s Gospel. Simon and his sons were known because Simon who first followed Jesus by force, discovered the truest thing he’d ever known and would come to follow Jesus in love.

Pope Benedict says, what do we need in life?

We need fellowship. We need relationships that matter. We seek harmony and peace.

But before all that, we need the truth (Behold the Pierced One, Joseph Ratzinger, Ignatius Press, 1986, p. 125). And in the life of Jesus Christ, vindicated by his resurrection from the grave, heaven has shone down upon us, and we have seen the truth.

What did Simon discover? What would the frightened women discover? What would the betrayer Peter discover?

They went off to the grave, armed for the stench of death, and discovered life - life vindicating all which Jesus taught and did and the great mercy he displayed.

The mercy of God who chooses the least of all people to become a holy nation, a beacon of light in the world, who reveals himself in the master who will serve. In the king who will give his life for his enemy.

The mercy of God who clings to these humble people, in their rebellion and disobedience, because of an unrelenting pursuit and a promise he will not give up on to redeem the world.

And the mercy of God with power to reach into the core of this world, grabbing death and sin, and pulling it inside out into light and life.

Those unlikely people, with Jesus thrust upon them, discover the new life of the risen Lord vindicating the great mercy he had displayed among them. They discover life, and mercy and know it to be true. The truest thing in heaven and earth.

“Let the same mind be in you,” says St. Paul, “that was in Christ Jesus.”
. . . who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave . . . And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of . . . death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name . . . in heaven and on earth and under the earth. (Phil. 2:5-11)

And because of him, says Paul, I have come to regard everything as loss . . . “because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord . . . I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings. (Philippians 3:7-11)

Pope Benedict concludes the matter perfectly:

[Jesus] Christ summons us to find heaven in him, to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here. Jesus stretches out his hand to us in his Easter message, in the mystery of the sacraments, so that Easter may be now, so that the light of heaven may shine forth in this world and the doors may be opened. Let us take his hand! (p. 128.)