Easter Sunday "The Mystery of the Open Tomb"

“The Mystery of the Open Tomb”

Easter Sunday, April 8, 2010

OPENING WORDS

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery. Paulo Coelho Brazilian poet and philosopher

READING

Mark 16:1-8 From Inclusive Bible

When the Sabbath was over, Mary of Magdala, May the mother of James, and Salome bought perfumed oils so that they could anoint Jesus. Very early, just after sunrise on the first of the week, they came to the tomb.

They were saying to one another, “Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked they found that the huge stone had been rolled back.

On entering the tomb, they saw a young person sitting at the right, dressed in a white robe. They were very frightened, but they youth reassured them: “Do not be amazed! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the One who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. Now go and tell the disciples and Peter, ‘Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee, where you will see him just as he told you.’”

They made their way out and fled from the tomb bewildered and trembling; but they said nothing to anyone, because they were so afraid.

The Mystery of the Open Tomb

Our reading of the Easter story this morning ended with the mystery of the open tomb. The early storyteller Mark tells of the brave women disciples who rose early to go to the tomb of their beloved rabbi to anoint his body. On the way, they worried they could not move the stone from the opening of his tomb. When they got there, the tomb was open. Mark says a young person was within and s/he told them not to worry, Jesus had risen and was on his way to Galilee. “There,” this young person said, “there you will see him.”

“They made their way out and fled from the tomb bewildered and trembling; but they said nothing to anyone, because they were so afraid.”

That is the end of the story. It ends with a mystery.

Over the two thousand years since, humankind has created the elaborate stories of Easter. The scribes added the resurrection story to Mark and the other scribes of the New Testament followed the same story. The resurrection story is as old as humankind—birth and rebirth, winter turns to spring—nature’s cycle is one of renewal.

Except for the One Creator of the Hebrew people, we believe humans have always told the story of the resurrection of one god or another. But the first Mark, the Mark that ends with Chapter 16 does not tell of a resurrection.

Marcus Borg, John Crossan, and other scholars of the Jesus Seminar call the Jesus of the mysterious open tomb, the pre-Easter Jesus.  And there’s a lot to be said for “that Jesus.” There will be more about this pre-Easter Jesus, but first...

For myself, I like the story as a mystery.

We all love a good mystery because we are, sociologists tell us, a “curious animal.”

Remember what Alice said at the beginning of Chapter 2 in Alice in Wonderland when she was about to begin her amazing, mysterious journey?  

`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English);

`Curiouser and curiouser!'

Our every day lives are full of wonder and mystery.

There is the man who is assigned a new sales territory.  He’s driving to a town where he has never been. On the way, he realizes it is the hometown of a friend from college. A man he hasn’t seen in twenty years. He got a late start, it is getting later, and later, and all of a sudden, his car begins making an awful noise. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with it, but he hopes he makes it to the town where he is headed. Just as he gets to the outskirts of the town, the engine stops, and he coasts over to the side of the road. And while it’s late, he sees there are lights ahead so he's not too worried. As he gets out of his car, a man in a pickup slows down, pulls over, and says, “Can I help you stranger?”

You know who it is, don't you; it is his friend from college.

`Curiouser and curiouser!'

Our every day lives are full of wonder and mystery.

A woman gets depressed every spring. Just as the world becomes brighter and greener, she becomes depressed. Finally, after many years of this, her husband succeeds in getting her to go to a therapist. On her very first visit to her therapist, she discovers that it was in the spring, right after Easter when she was sixteen that she had a baby and gave it up for adoption. 


What could be more unsettling or mysterious than knowing you have a child you know nothing about?

After that profoundly enlightening first-visit to a therapist, the woman goes home, sits in the dark all afternoon. About three o’clock her doorbell rings. It is an express delivery letter. It is from her long ago lost daughter who had just turned twenty-one and who is now able to know her birth mother’s name, and was this woman the Helen ...

Yes, her name was Helen, of course, she found her. And do you know what else? The daughter had grown up less than two miles from her birth mother and had gone to the same schools as her half-siblings. 

`Curiouser and curiouser!'

Our everyday lives are full of mystery. We never know the full story of our parents or grandparents, what they were really like as young people, what they did—what they don’t want us to know about. Even, even when someone writes a biography, that does not mean his or her mystery is told.

What about the love in our lives, our relationships, of course there is mystery there. The complexities of the human heart mystify us each and every day.

Lily, the protagonist in The Secret Life of Bees said, she certainly had mystery surrounding her parents, said,

I realized it for the first time in my life, there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, brow beat days, shining brightly and we don’t even know it.

Yes, our everyday lives are full of mystery, even when we don’t pay attention to it.

And humankind faces mystery all around. We don’t have to say any more than: deep oceans, deep space, seemingly infinite cosmos, and prime numbers.

Leonhard Euler, Eighteenth Century mathematician, one of the world’s best, said:

[We] have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

The mystery of the eighteenth century is still “unsolved,” however, I understand, science is getting closer to solving this mystery.

Which brings me to the point; it is mystery that calls to

our reason,

our intellect,

our curiosity, and

our creativity.

It is mystery that calls us to search, research, and investigate. 

Neil Armstrong, astronaut, man of science, who has been in “space,” said:

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of human desire to understand. [Adapted to be inclusive]

“Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of human desire to understand.”

`Curiouser and curiouser!'

If you have been a Unitarian  Universalist for more than a couple of years, and if you have heard a  UU minister preach an Easter sermon, then you have heard, I’m sure, about the roots for Easter, about earth-centered spirituality, about eggs, the many different traditions that tell the Easter story, and all the possibilities of what could have happened. Today, though, I want us to look at the tomb. The open tomb…

If mystery calls us to our best selves, then the tomb is calling us to our best self.

Gwen Frostic, an unrecognized “great” American poet of the Seventies, wrote,

Our life is full of wonder and mystery. / Mystery opens us up, opens us up to the discovery of our fullest potential / Mystery offers no limits

It is in the face of mystery where we can find our best selves.

Set aside what others have said about the tomb. Set aside the idolatry of the post-Easter Jesus. That doesn’t have anything to do with us as people of a free religious faith.

What has to do with us is the mystery of the open tomb.

What did the pre-Easter Jesus say to us, you know, the historical Jew in that tomb?

Love your neighbor as you love yourself,

Do not do to your neighbor what you would not do to yourself,

Turn the other check

Revenge is not the answer

Seek peace in your relationships; do not go to worship without first making things right with your neighbor

Feed the hungry

Give water to the thirsty

Clothe the naked

Visit the prison

Do all these things, the pre-Easter Jesus said, and you will find within your best possible self.

Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, a UU minister and friend gave us a glimpse of what the open tomb can mean for us in her poem “Easter Is Breaking”:

Easter Is Breaking

Somewhere across the world,
Easter is breaking
not the Easter we may think of,
with arms upraised and "he is risen" echoing from canyons,
but a much quieter, less dramatic Easter.

Somewhere in the world -perhaps not this day, but some day soon,
a woman and a man rise from their beds,
shaking the sleep from their eyes,
and find their children already awake and
preparing for their morning prayers
There has been no gunfire, no drug wars, no yelling or shouting or screaming,
only the quiet of the night and the peace of silence around them.

And somewhere in the world, perhaps not this morning, but soon, very soon
A soldier is packing his duffle bag,
has emptied out all his bullets,
is changing into civilian clothes,
and is coming home, for peace has … been established,
and there is no need for his presence.

And somewhere in the world, Easter dawn breaks over the earth,
not only on this day, but every day,
and the familiar pulse in our veins throbs of "peace, peace, peace."

Yes, our everyday lives are full of mystery; let us pay attention to it.

Blessed Be