The Challenge of Happy Endings

“The Challenge of Happy endings”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – EASTER Sunday, April 12, 2020
Text: Mark 16:1-8

Hello, friends. My name is Brad, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  Welcome into this unique Easter Sunday that we are sharing together. Even though the weather is turning nice, we are inside more these days and so our family is watching more movies together.  I want you to think for a moment about a movie that you have watched either recently or in your past where the ending of that movie surprised you in some way.  You expected one thing and something quite different ended up happening.

For me, I think back to the very first movie I can remember seeing in a theatre: the Disney movie BAMBI.  Not the 1945 version – I may have some grey hair but I’m not that old!  It was the 1982 edition and I can distinctly remember being first and foremost horrified that – spoiler alert – Bambi’s mother dies in the film.  And then; the ending! Where the forest fire gets out of control.  I gotta admit, I did not see that coming!   In fact, in an article in 2007, this Disney movie is “listed in the Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time by Time magazine. “Bambi,” Time states, "has a primal shock that still haunts oldsters who saw it 40, 50, 65 years ago”.    

Another movie, also from Disney, where the ending still shocks me is the classic Old Yeller.  This is a dog movie where we all fall in love with the mischievous but endearing golden lab-retriever mix.  I had also forgotten till recently that this is a movie for our times, with a communicable viral disease, that is circulating throughout the community.  The family cow contracts rabies and has to be disposed of, and as they are doing this, a rabid wolf attacks and bites Old Yeller on the neck.  The dog is placed in quarantine to see if he has the disease – it does, and (spoiler alert #2) it has to be put down.  Still to this day, I cannot watch the ending of this movie without tearing up.  I did NOT see that coming! 

What about you?  What movies have you watched where the ending is not quite the happy ending you may have imagined? If you are joining us live this Easter Sunday morning, then use the comment feature on YouTube to let others know your movie and why the ending shocked you so much.  I’m very interested in seeing what you have to contribute to the conversation.   

I think part of our desire for happy endings is good and right.  We want good to triumph and evil to lose.  And often at Easter, this is the message that is brought forward as we think about the resurrection and the victory that God won over the powers of darkness by Jesus’ death on Good Friday and resurrection.    

BUT one gospel account of the Life of Jesus doesn’t have the same happy ending to the Easter story that you find in the other three.  We’ve been studying the life of Jesus in the New Testament gospel of Mark this spring at Jericho, and spoiler alert - Marks’ account ends on a decidedly different tone. It leaves us asking questions not so much about what happened but about our response to it in our lives personally and our world today collectively.

Let’s look further at Mark’s unique telling of that first Easter morning.

Thank you to the Kwon family for reading the text for us so capably.  If you follow along in Mark 16, the first thing you notice is these women Mary and Mary and Slaome, are the first ones to head out very early in the morning to the location of Jesus’ tomb.  On Good Friday, after the crucifixion, Jesus’ body was handed over to soldiers to burry and so the women were unable to perform a proper burial ritual for Jesus.  Mark 15:47 tells us that Mary and Mary saw where the body was placed.  So in their minds, the least they could do was to try to gain access to the gravesite and anoint Jesus’ body with the customary burial spices. 

But enroute as the coffee kicks in and they begin to wake up, they realize that they are going to have a problem… there is going to be a large, heavy stone placed over the entrance to the tomb.  Ancient tombs were. A bit more like caves and these large stones were put in place to prevent grave robberies and they were heavy.  But despite this identified obstacle, they keep going.  I love the persistence and perspicacity of these women!

And when the women arrive, to their amazement, the stone is rolled aside.  And then they do what I would NOT do.  They go inside the tomb!    

And once inside they encounter their second problem: the body they expect to anoint is not present.  Instead, of a recently deceased body, they encounter [photo: folded cloth] a divine messenger, an angel.  This, of course, shocks the women. 

And the angel gives them a message. Look with me at Mark 16:6 (NLT).

The angel said, “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! [or he has been raised from the dead] Look, this is where they laid His body.”

The first word that the angel addresses is their fear, and quickly the angel reorients them towards hope.  Dr. James Edwards notes in his commentary on this text that “the women, intent on their funeral errand, are preoccupied with death…. But all their preparations leave them unprepared for the reality they encounter.  What they intend to be a terminal visit is but a commencement. The Jesus they are looking for enshrined in a safe place cannot be found… [irony] The living are consumed with death, but the Crucified one is consumed with life.” 

This, friends, is at the heart of the message of Easter and indeed, the Christian faith.  The divine declaration that the Risen One, Jesus, IS the crucified One.  Resurrection is not a spiritual analogy for newness of life. The angel reminds the women that Jesus of Nazareth, the one they knew and loved, IS the risen one. 

The angel takes up both sides of the Easter event and fuses them together with an inseparable continuity between the Risen Jesus and the crucified Jesus.  [altarpiece photo] There is no Easter Sunday without passing through the agony of cross of Calvary.  We can’t know resurrection until we taste death. 

Friends, this is true of our own lives as well.  Each of us must come to terms with the reality that the pathway of each and every human being who has ever lived ends at the grave.  And that can be sobering and frightening, but the message of Easter and the hope of Easter is that just like Christ was raised, you and I can also experience resurrection.  The Apostle Paul, writing a few short decades after the resurrection of Jesus put it this way in I Cor 15:42: “It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever.”

What you and I need to come to terms with personally is that there is no resurrection without death.  First and foremost, a death and dying to self.  To self-righteousness and self-reliance and an acknowledgement that the paths we have been walking as humans and as individuals are unfulfilling and unsustainable.  And we need to die to them. [gravestone photo] Death to sin, death to self.  Alive to God because of the work of Christ Jesus.  The pathway to resurrection always leads through death.  If you don’t have that sense of living, eternal hope, then today is your day to start walking out a new pathway.  A path that leads to life and peace, not just someday but starting today.  Even in the midst of trying circumstances.  We would be pleased to walk with you on that journey. Email me and I’ll be in touch and we can start a discussion.

But we haven’t yet reached the unusual ending of Mark’s story.  The women have become witnesses to an empty tomb but the key question now becomes: what will they do?   Let’s look at what the angel tells these surprised and shocked women next in Mark 16:7: “Now go and tell His disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there, just as He told you before He died.”

 The angel gives them not just information, but a commission.  They have heard about the resurrection. They have seen the tomb is empty.  Now they are to go and tell.  The women have receive an invitational imperative to bear witness.

Kids, you have been placed into online learning environments. So here is your grammar / linguistics lesson for today.  This statement by the angel is a future indicative used as an imperative.  That’s a fancy way of saying you MUST do this. As in, “tomorrow, you must take a shower and get some exercise.” 

But in this, just like with shaving or showering, you and I do have a choice.  Mark has structured his narration such that we are drawn into the account, not simply as dispassionate readers, but as participating actors.  Mark wants you and I to wrestle with the same invitational imperative: We also have heard; we also have seen… Do we also intend to go and tell?

And this is where Marks’ ending gets odd.  If he concluded with verse 7, it would be challenging and intriguing but not particularly troubling.  But the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of the Gospel that we have end not with verse 7, but 8:

Mark 16:8 “The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.”

 There’s a level of irony here to me.  After being brave enough to confront Roman soldiers and ask for permission to anoint a dead body, then after being bold enough to actually enter a tomb, and after sticking around long enough to talk with an angel, NOW the women are frightened?!  They don’t leave the grave with this look of joyous, rapturous hope on their faces.  They leave trembling, bewildered, fleeing in silence because they are frightened.  Not exactly a happy, picture perfect ending, is it?   Why might Mark conclude his gospel this way? 

I can remember growing up I would go to the library almost weekly to grab another installment of the popular Choose Your Own Adventure Books.  And what I loved about them was that instead of the author, I as the reader had control over how the story would or could go.  I could choose my response and that choice determined the outcome. 

In many ways, that seems to be exactly what Mark is doing by finishing without a tidy, happy, ending.  In addition to mirroring real life and the fact that we know deep down from personal experience and current realities that things don’t always turn out rainbows and unicorns, Mark is doing something powerful.  In finishing on this note, Anabaptist scholar Tim Geddart say that Mark is confronting us as readers with choices and opportunities father than an excuse to close the cover of the book and say “glad that ended well!’”  Mark is inviting us into the story.

Because the story that God is writing in God’s world does not finish with an empty tomb.  The story of God’s love, God’s redemption of all things, God’s care for you and for those around you is still being written.  But there is a catch: and that is that There’ll only be more if we continue the story  If we take up the invitation to follow Jesus.

There will only be more to the story if you and I choose to take our place in this adventure and to invite others to bear witness alongside of us to God’s work in our lives and in the world. There will only be more to the story if we choose to follow Jesus into places of despair and see hope break through.  There will only be more to the story if you and I choose to follow Jesus into places where there is fear in our own hearts and let Christ’s love win the day.  There will only be more to the story if we choose to follow Jesus into places of anxiety and be those who bring peace and sooth troubled hearts and minds. 

This is our mission, Church, should you choose to accept it.  This is what it means to be a Christian.  To love others not only in words, but also in deeds.  And so this Easter, “If you want to see Jesus, then follow where He leads. This is the end of Mark’s story because it is the beginning of discipleship.”

The resurrection does not magically transform fear into faith. But it does hold out the possibility of fallible humans like you and I can be transformed into followers of Jesus.  Messenger of hope and good news in a world that desperately needs it.  I invite you to pause during this visual prayer and to invite God to speak to you about what specific steps you can take this week to be a good news kind of person.  Here’s a prayer for this very different Easter…