Sermon by the Rev. Andrew S. Rollins

Easter Day, Year B (April 12, 2009)

Text: Mark 16:1 – 8

Title: “The Empty Attic”

They Said Nothing

On Palm Sunday, I preached about how Mark depicts all of the male disciples as failures; they all desert Jesus. However, Mark portrays the women who follow Jesus as more faithful. Mark tells us that some women, Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, stayed to witness the crucifixion from a distance when all of the men had gone into hiding (15:41).

But then, Mark tells us that those same women had their critical moment of weakness at the empty tomb. He says that those same three women went to the tomb that first Easter morning intending to anoint the body. There they were confronted by an angel (in Mark’s gospel he’s “a young man dressed in a white robe”) who tells the women: Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.

They are told to go and tell. But instead, according to Mark, the women were too scared, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

They are commanded by God to boldly tell the Good News about Jesus Christ. Instead, they remain silent. Obviously, they were Episcopalians! The women are told to go and tell. But bewilderment and fear reduced them to silence.

Why do you think that was? Why was it that they fled away and said nothing to anyone?

Not What They Were Expecting

I can venture several guesses. First of all, this is not at all what they were expecting. They had expected to spend that morning rubbing ointment all over the cold, dead body of Jesus. Instead, the stone is rolled away and this strange ‘young man dressed in a white robe’ tells them that Jesus is up and headed for Galilee! That’s not what they were expecting.

It’s not so different for us today. Those crucial opportunities to tell the Good News about Jesus usually arrive when we least expect them. You parents know this. You quiet the house for the night. You read the Bible to your children. You pray with them. You set the stage for spiritual growth. You say, “Do you have any questions, Susan” She replies, “Yes, why do dogs have tails?” But then a day arrives when you’re late for work. You have to drop your son off at school. You’ve had a fight with your wife. You’re distracted by a check you may have bounced. That’s the moment your son will ask, “Dad, do you really believe in Jesus?” The most important moments in life never seem to happen when we expect them. So maybe the women were so caught off guard they just couldn’t speak.

Hard To Talk About Jesus

Or, those women may have kept silent because it’s just hard to talk about Jesus. God says, “Go and tell the Good News that Jesus Christ is risen!” We wonder, “Could we have a brunch instead?” How do you put something so enormous, so unbelievable, into words without people thinking you’re crazy? (In Luke’s account, when the women did tell the male disciples, the men thought they’d gone nuts.) It’s hard to talk about Jesus. Most of us are not very good at it (though it is possible to get better). We can talk around Jesus. We can talk about church programs. We can talk about who might be the next bishop. We can talk about spirituality or economics or psychology. But we’re not so good at talking about Jesus.

How do we put “Jesus” into words that don’t sound pious, or foolish, or sentimental, or contrived? Perhaps Mark is telling us that it wasn’t any easier for them to talk about Jesus then than it is for us today.

Not Necessarily Good News
But maybe the best explanation for why these women kept silent is this: Jesus Christ arriving back from the dead is not good news in and of itself, is it? We have to remember that the disciples had just betrayed the man. They had all deserted him. If the women go and tell them, “Jesus is alive!” their first emotion is not likely to be joy, but fear. Has Jesus Christ come back for retaliation? I think of the movie The Godfather where the rival mob family attempts to assassinate the Godfather. They think they’ve succeeded. But he survives the hit. So now, in one bloody sweep, his son Michael makes certain that every man who betrayed his family pays in blood!

Has Jesus returned with retribution on his mind? That’s not really as strange as it sounds. If you mention Jesus today, many people will automatically hear judgment and condemnation because that’s the fear they carry in their hearts: “Will all my mistakes, sins, bad choices, and betrayals finally catch up with me? Is there really such a thing as forgiveness?” We experience so little real, unconditional forgiveness in life that it seems too much to hope for from God. Jesus arriving back from the dead is not Good News unless I know for certain that he comes with forgiveness for me! So that can make Jesus an uncomfortable subject. Maybe that’s why those women kept silent.

These women, we know, eventually overcame their silence. The other gospel writers recount how they did go tell the Good News that Jesus was alive. But Mark seems to want us to remember that silence was their first response.

Jesus in the Church Attic

I want to close with some reflections on yesterday’s workday. If you’ve never attended a St. Alban’s workday then you’ve missed one of the great experiences the Church has to offer. We eat together, work side by side cleaning our church home, and get to know each other better. Every Holy Saturday, we clean the sanctuary, library, chapel grounds, and Common Hall. But yesterday, we also cleaned out the attic. The attic was full of decades of treasures (or junk, depending on your point of view). The problem is that it’s been so full of treasures that rodents have made a home there. They’ve eaten all through the security wires and caused lots of damage.

So we opened up the attic and Charlie Williams, Dave Brown, Jamie Duvall, and Will and Heather Monroe started passing stuff down those steep attic stairs to a long assembly line, through the hall, and finally out to the dumpster.

The whole scene was an interesting study in personalities. Some people just have a real tough time throwing anything away; others (like me) were chanting, “To the dumpster!” The problem is that, in a church, no one feels they have the authority to throw away anything. But it was amazing to watch as relics from the nineties, then the eighties, then the 70’s (a disco ball), then the 60’s, back to the 50’s were all brought down, covered in dirt and dust. We found some old church records, some nice doors, a machete, windows, old bulletins, and some children’s toys that were salvaged. But mostly everything had to go to the dumpster. I had to remind several people that, in the Anglican tradition, we don’t revere church relics.

We even found an old parishioner -- an old guy who’d been up there since about 1950. But he hadn’t written us check in decades so we put him in the dumpster. We removed about three dumpster loads of junk that that was not of any real use to anyone anymore.

Then, we found something really strange. Heather Monroe came down and said to me, “Drew. I don’t know how to tell you this. But, we just found . . . Jesus, up in the attic. We don’t know who put him up there. But he says he wants out. He’s covered in dust. And he’s kind of insistent.”

I said, “Heather, like I don’t have enough to deal with during Holy Week and you come and tell me this. Please just put him back up there.” So I made the executive decision to put Jesus back up in there in the attic and seal the door. When things slow down after Easter, I will appoint a committee to explore all our options.

I’m just playing with you. But sometimes it does feel like the Church has put Jesus himself away in the attic and gone on with important church business. Sometimes it feels like he’s up there gathering dust.

Of course, the Church can’t really seal up the Living Christ in the attic. But I suppose we do seal that Gospel message away when we choose to just keep silent. We can choose to bury the Good News deep in the attic to gather dust and become a memory of something the Church used to have. If we do that, we cease being the Church. God entrusted to the Church the Easter message that Jesus Christ is alive! We’re not meant to keep that in the Church.

But we couldn’t keep Jesus locked up in the Church, even if we wanted to. That’s the point of this Empty Tomb story, isn’t it? Since that first Easter morning, Jesus Christ has simply refused to be kept in any grave. When those women went to the tomb, the Risen Christ was alive, and already on the move.

The grave could not contain him. The angel told those women to proclaim what had already happened: “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!”