Sermon preached by John C. Hall on Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000
Text – Mark 16:9-20
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. 10 She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. 11 But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.
12 After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. 13 And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
14 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. † 15 And he said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news † to the whole creation. 16 The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes in 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."
19 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. 20 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.
This really is an absurd story. And because of that, I’m going to ask you to do something that may cause you to feel a bit foolish. Try to imagine Jesus’ resurrection in a literal way, the way the Bible presents it, without our usual psychology and mythological interpretations. Suspend your disbelief, for just a few minutes. Try to picture this, in your mind.
Jesus died on the cross. He was buried in a cave-like tomb, carved out of solid rock. His body was in that tomb for two nights, the night that began the Sabbath and the night just after the Sabbath. Then, on the first day of week, when work was once again permitted, a group of women went to the tomb, not to see if he was still there. They went to complete the burial rites – that is, to wrap his body in preserving spices.
As they approached the tomb, they saw that the large stone that sealed the door of the tomb had been rolled away. Their first reaction was that Jesus’ body had been stolen, but that was not what happened. Angels – messengers from God – appeared who told them "Jesus is not here. He is risen from the dead."
By these details, and others I’ll mention, the Bible takes pains to point out that Jesus’ body had not dematerialized, or vaporized. Jesus’ body had left the tomb the same way it had entered – through the door.
But this wasn’t a simple matter of his body starting to breathe and pump blood again. This is not a resuscitated corpse. After rising from the dead, Jesus’ body was somehow changed. It looked different. It wasn’t immediately recognizable, at least not to everyone.
As he appeared to some, he still had wounds on his hands, feet, and sides. He ate a piece of fish to show that he wasn’t a ghost. And yet, this physical body could enter a locked room where the disciples were hiding by walking through the door. In at least two other cases, Jesus appeared to people he knew but they mistook him for someone else, in one case as a gardener, in another as a stranger walking on the road to Emmaus. This is quite a fantastic story, to say the least, but can you imagine it taking place?
Here’s the point I’m getting at. If such a thing were to happen in our sensory experience – I dare say, it would not only be a shock, but a terrifying shock. It would be a terrifying shock because we would have to conclude either that we had lost our minds, or that the world, what we take to be reality, doesn’t work the way we thought.
Even if we believe in ghosts, or if we believe in the immortality of the soul, at least in terms of the human body, we take it to be a well established fact that when a person dies, that person’s body stays dead. And if we found that to be untrue, even in one instance, we would have a lot of work to do, because just about everything else we believe would be thrown into question.
The reason I bring this up is because, however we understand Jesus’ resurrection – even if we disbelieve it, and dismiss it, as many do, what we can say with a high degree of confidence is this: What happened to the disciples (both men and women) who testified that Jesus appeared to them after his death, either bodily, or in the form of vision – what happened to these disciples and followers, who were also, at first, inclined not to believe, was that this event, whatever it was, somehow changed their understanding of how the world works.
This is the heart of the matter. Something happened to this small group of fisherman that kept them from going back to their fishing nets and instead motivated them, inspired them, to expend a lot of time and energy walking, and sometimes risking their lives at sea, traveling to faraway places, and to preach this message, what we call the gospel: that this man Jesus, his life, what he did, was God in the flesh, that he had been crucified, and they knew he was God because he had appeared to them alive. And this message, of course, is the same simple message that shaped all that would come to be called western civilization.
Now think about that. How likely does that seem? Does any part of that story sound probable?
Now tuck those questions in the back of your mind, and consider this. Have you every pondered an ant hill? An ant hill is quite an amazing thing, with all those industrious creatures coming and going.
I’m sure an anthill and the surrounding quarter-acre or so seems like quite a complete world from the ants’ perspective, but of course an anthill is not the whole world. There is a lot beyond what the ants can possibly know. Ants, I suspect, know nothing about the planets of the solar system, or Mt. Everest, or the Wadsworth Atheneum, or modern art. They don’t have the equipment for these matters. These things are just beyond their range.
Or take a fish. They’re quite impressive creatures in their own right, with things like gills to absorb oxygen from the water and swim bladders to control their depth in the water.
But of course, there is much beyond a fish’s watery world that a fish cannot possibly know. This isn’t the fish’s fault. A fish just doesn’t have the right mental and physical equipment to know about certain things. A fish, even the smartest fish, can’t know about travel in outer space. A fish can’t know about the Bible, even the book of Jonah. They can’t know about quantum physics. I don’t know anything about quantum physics myself.
Are we really so different from ants and fish in this respect? Are we to believe that, unlike them, we really do understand exactly what the world is about and how it works?. Are we to believe that there is nothing about reality that is out of our range? Do we really see the world, and how it works, and why – do we see things exactly as they are, with nothing beyond the capacity of our physical and mental equipment?
The gospels take pains to point out that even those who saw Jesus risen from the dead, with their own eyes, at first did not believe. It just seemed too unlikely. We can understand that.
But how likely is anything in this world we live in? How likely is it that there should be a universe at all? How did that happen? But even after the universe happened, how likely is it that, purely by chance, simply by molecules bumping into each other, that out of a barren universe there should come to be things like ants, and fish, and elephants, and Shakespeare, and people like us, who dream, dance, suffer, rejoice, sing hymns, fall in love, care for each other in sickness and old age, and ponder what all of this means?
How likely is it that this should just happen, without some will, or intelligence, or designer behind it? And if there is a designer, a will, and intelligence, a Creator behind it, how did that Creator come to be?
Does Jesus’ resurrection really seem so preposterous compared to all the rest? Do we choose not to believe the resurrection because we feel we see things the way they really are, and the resurrection just doesn’t fit into that?
What are we supposed to do with this wild story of Jesus’ rising from the dead? That’s the question we try to answer on all the other Sundays of the year, and I hope you’ll come back on future Sundays to hear and participate in the elaboration and fulfillment of what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection mean.
But for starters, try this. The next time your life presents you with a cross to bear, the next time you can’t sleep because of worry, or the next time you get furious because of what God has handed you, or the next time you hear the still, small voice both calling and terrifying you, try thinking this thought:
There is more to reality than I can see. The world does not work exactly the way it appears to work. There is much beyond my range.
Jesus lived as we all live. He was crucified, as we, in our own ways, are crucified. He died, as we die. On the third day, he rose from the dead, as God’s sign, as an opening, to a future, to a reality, we cannot know. That isn’t our fault. We just don’t have the equipment.
Jesus’ resurrection is not a description of the world we see and touch. This is not something to demonstrate with a test tube and a bunsen burner.
On the level of this world, we cannot believe such a thing because it’s absurd. But for the sake of what is beyond our range, as the image of Christian hope, we believe it precisely because it is absurd, because only something so seemingly absurd can even point to the mystery that lies at the center, the heart, of all living and knowing.
