This is the final part of my blog series for Easter 2022, taken directly from the sermon I preached at St Pauls Waiheke (New Zealand) on Easter Day this year. It is focused on the gospel of Mark, and the unconventional way Mark presents the good news of resurrection to his people in mid-century Rome.
Like any sermon, it draws together thoughts and concepts from the miscellany of writers and preachers that I encountered during my preparation. The positive response of those who were there gives me the courage to think my integration of these ideas may be useful to others. I therefore need to acknowledge that here you will find the echoes of, and possibly even whole sentences from, works by N T Wright (Mark for Everyone), Frederick Buechner (Peculiar Treasures) and David Rhoads et al (Mark as Story). I apologise for the lack of detailed acknowledgement; this was after all a sermon used for Christian worship and not in pursuit of academic rigour.
“Here is love, vast as the ocean ” is a favourite hymn for the Easter season. I wanted us to sing it on Easter Day but the musicians were away, and getting a video version was too hard for kind volunteers. The hymn was written in Welsh in the 1870s by William Rees and later sensitively translated into English. In 1904 it became a theme tune of the Welsh Revival, which was a powerful move of the Spirit not based on “hellfire and shame” but rather on the drawing, attracting power of love:
when the Prince of Life, our Ransom, shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten, throughout heav'n's eternal days.
Easter Day is the preeminent evidence of God’s love. In the cross, Jesus gave his all out of love for us – even when the crowds made fun of him saying, “Save yourself, come down from the cross”. He could have, but he stayed there and saved us instead.
"God has poured out his love to fill our hearts… through the Holy Spirit…..God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."
(Romans 5:5, 8).
"Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 39)
Both these passages were written by Paul to Roman Christians. And John’s first letter sums it up:
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us". (1 John. 3.16)
This is a very powerful message to those in our community who feel they don’t matter. Through us, God can help them experience the unconditional love and compassion of a faith community. The passage that comes to mind here is the demon-possessed man over in the pagan region of Gerasene. He was excluded even from Gentile society, living in a graveyard, slashing his skin, and despised as untameable. Jesus reached out to him in love and healing power, ridding him of the demons that beset him and restoring him to his right mind. Darkness is part of the human experience. But in God’s time it is overcome by light. I love the way NT Wright picks out the fugue motif with its counterpoint tunes:
“At the climax of the gospel Jesus himself will end up naked, isolated, outside the town among the tombs, shouting incomprehensible things as he is torn apart on the cross by the standard Roman torture, his flesh torn to ribbons by the small stones in the Roman lash. And that, Mark is saying, will be how the demons are dealt with. That is how healing takes place. Jesus is coming to share the plight of the people, to let the enemy do its worst to him, to take the full force of evil on himself and let the others go free.” (Mark for Everyone 2004 - section on Mark 5). Deep compassion leads to deep commitment.
Jesus strode into his death, a death that he believed would pay a ransom, seal a covenant and open the way to God. And at the end the tomb is found empty. There is liberation but not through a Messiah with political power or military might. This suffering, serving Prince steps into our Iives, setting us free to follow him in love. As I mentioned in Part 2, Mark’s ending is missing; the best manuscripts break the text off at verse 16. The women are told to take a message to the disciples, but they rush off shocked and silent.
Some commentators think Mark meant to end with that – in a dark uncertainty that bequeaths us a brooding puzzle to solve. But that’s unconvincing. Much more likely is that that last section of a very early copy was mutilated in some way – torn off, waterlogged, burned. Tom Wright does allow one intriguing alternative – that Mark planned to end the reading of his manuscript with a live testimony from an eyewitness, one who was there. But more likely the author wrote more than we have, in a conclusion that confirmed Jesus appeared in a new but bodily way, spoke to the women and the disciples, and commissioned them to tell others the good news.
To Consider: Take those concluding questions to a quiet space and pray them for yourself. As we approach the Pentecost season, ask the Holy Spirt - the companioning, guiding Spirit of Christ - to form in you the hope, love and deep peace of God in your own life.
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