We're almost finished with our series that I've been calling
living the Easter life this Sunday, next Sunday, we're going
to be looking at the Easter life as means living a life of power.
We're going to jump ahead to Pentecost and and but today
we're looking at the Easter story from the book of Mark,
which is really an extraordinary Easter story.
Now, if if you've looked in your own Bible and you see that that
Mark chapter 16 goes beyond verse 8.
But in many Bibles, in fact most modern translations and
publications of the Bible, it will put the remainder of the
chapter from verse 9 on in brackets or in italics and put a
footnote there that says most ancient manuscripts do not
contain these verses or, or something to that effect.
And what they're trying to communicate is that that
scholars in this is not controversial.
This is not divisive. This is not, it's just one of
those things that's come to be accepted within the world of
biblical scholarship that the original ending of the book of
Mark was at verse 8. The women left and told they
were afraid and said nothing to anyone and that somewhere along
the way people thought, you know what, that's not a great ending
to the story. Let's make it more like Matthew
and Luke. And so the rest of the book was
added. But I want us to focus on
whether that rest, if you want to, if we want to think of that
as scripture, that's cool. But I want to focus on this kind
of ending because each of the Gospels gives us a different
perspective on the resurrection and life after the resurrection.
And Matthew, the, the, the clear emphasis is on mission that
Jesus is giving his disciples. You have a job to do.
Go out into all the world and make disciples.
I'll be with you while you do it.
And, and John, the emphasis is much more on relationship and
community. The the time Jesus spends with
his disciples after the resurrection is not to give them
an assignment, but it is to make sure that they know they're
forgiven. They're still part of the
Kingdom of God, They're still part of the family of God.
And the way they can show their love for him is by loving one
another and loving the people in the world around him,
meaningfully serving one another and meaningfully serving people
in the world around him. In the book of Luke and Acts,
which is, is all written by Luke and, and it's a two-part thing,
we get the resurrection account in Luke and, and at the end of
the book of Luke, Jesus is telling his disciples, you will,
you will be my witnesses. You will, you will preach the
good news of the baptism of repentance through the
forgiveness of sins. And then at the beginning of
Acts, he emphasizes just before he ascends into heaven and we'll
look at this next week, Jesus saying the Holy Spirit's going
to come upon you and he prophecies, you will be my
witnesses throughout the world. And so the emphasis is much more
on what God is going to do in and through his disciples.
Then on an assignment given to the disciples, Mark, Mark ends
in mystery. It ends with a big unknown.
It's like, you know, driving down the road and coming to a
river and the bridge is out and it's like, where do we go from
here? The women go to anoint Jesus to
put the spices on him to do all of the things that they do and
and the other gospels. When they get there, they don't
encounter Jesus and Mark and they don't encounter 2 angels.
They encounter 1 Angel who says Jesus is risen go and tell his
disciples and Peter, which is we're not going to get into the
end Peter much today, but the the emphasis really there is is
to make sure Peter who denied Jesus knows that he's still part
included in all of this. Jesus wants him there too, and
the women are so utterly overwhelmed by what they have
encountered and what they have experienced that they can't say
a word to anyone. It's mystery.
It's it's unknown that the story ends so abruptly with the sense
of what happens next. Where is all of this going?
There's no assignment, there's no call to forgiveness, there's
no call to mission, there's no prophecy of great things that
are going to come. It's just the story ends with a
mind shattering surprise that no one was expecting even though
Jesus told them all that it was coming.
Part of what I believe Mark was trying to do by ending the
gospel this way is to communicate to us that the life
of Easter really is a life of mystery, that it doesn't get all
mapped out for us. That fear is a normal and an
appropriate response sometimes when God shows up in the world
and in our lives and, and, and sometimes we don't know what to
do in response to God's call. And sometimes even when we know
what we're supposed to do, like the women, they were given very
clear instructions, very simple instructions.
Sometimes it's so overwhelming and so terrifying, we can't
bring ourselves to do it. Living the Easter life is living
a life of mystery. This was true from the beginning
of Jesus's life. Now it's Mother's Day.
So I got AI got a, I've got a Mother's Day video to show and,
and we're going all the way back to beginning of Jesus's life.
We're going to see a woman. She's an actress that is is
portraying A fictionalized scene from Jesus's childhood that we
don't get in the scripture, but you know, I think could have
happened and, and let's let's, let's watch here.
So Jesus did the funniest thing the other night.
We were sitting down to dinner and I said jokingly, Mama could
use a glass of wine, it's been a long day.
Next thing I know he had waved his hand over my goblet and turn
my water into a a really delightful Cabernet.
I said OK, OK, give yourself a rest because he had raised our
dog from the dead just a couple hours earlier.
Mary literally says stuff like this all the time.
And we're always like, you gay. Yeah.
What did she say? Last time we wanted fish for
dinner and the boats came back empty and then suddenly there
were fish in the Nets. And like this morning, we're all
just kind of like, okay, Mary, all of her babies, we all think
they're special. We all want them to have those
milestones first. But she's just like competitive
on a new level. My baby actually is super
special. She's probably going to walk
before hers. She might even walk on water.
Wouldn't it be funny? I think they think that I'm
lying. They also asked me recently if
if Joseph was really Jesus's dad.
Yeah, but also, no. It's hard.
You know, there's no real good parenting book for what to do
when your child is the Son of the Lord, but we're figuring it.
Life is a mystery. Motherhood is a mystery even for
Mary and for Mary's, you know, friends and relatives around.
And I don't know, you know, I, I, I know that, that, that, that
motherhood have never experienced it personally.
Well, I've had a mother, but I've never been a mother.
Now I'm just going to leave that there.
What I seem to pick up from the mothers that I see around me is
that that being a mother can be very challenging.
You know, there are lots of books, but none of them really
tell us. We don't really know what the
future is going to hold. There's, there's, there's this
tendency for moms to compare themselves to one another.
And, and boy, it would have been tough to be in Mary's
neighborhood when Jesus was growing up in those kind of
conversations at the playground, in the in the McDonald's Place
in it would have been challenging.
But here, the fact is, it's, it's mystery.
Mary didn't know what was coming.
Mary was as surprised as everyone else at Jesus's
resurrection. She was as as heartbroken, and
maybe more so than anyone else at Jesus's crucifixion.
Not knowing what's coming, not being able to see the future,
not knowing exactly how to respond to God, or even when we
know what we're supposed to do, being able to bring ourselves to
do it. That's a part of the Easter
life. Much of life, including
motherhood and faith, can feel like an unsolvable mystery.
I just don't know what to do. I just don't know where to go.
I don't know what the right answer is.
I don't know how what to tell my kids.
I don't know what to tell my parents.
We get to that point to where we're needing to tell our
parents. We don't know what to tell our
parents. I don't know don't know how to
make it through the day, through the week.
How are we going to get to the end of the year?
How are the bills going to get paid?
How are the school supplies going to get?
All of these things are simply part of living the life that God
has given us to live. And mystery, saying that life is
a life of mystery. Humans are uncomfortable with
unsolved mysteries. That's why scooby-doo worked so
well. Everybody loves.
I've never, well, he's I've never met anyone that openly
admits that they didn't like scooby-doo.
If you're one of those people, I don't want to hear about it.
When there was a mystery, they had to solve it.
I won't get into this. There's an entire episode of
Star Trek on that theme. People have to solve.
When there are clues and there's a mystery, there's something in
its that compels us to seek out an answer to the mystery, to try
to figure out what we don't know, to fill in the gaps, to
shine light into the dark places, to eliminate the shadows
and get to know everything as well and completely and
thoroughly as we possibly can. And there is a sense in which
the scientific revolution, which has been a wonderful thing over
the past several years, gives us the illusion that we have the
capability of eliminating all of the shadows and all of the
mysteries, that one day we'll figure it all out.
The testimony of the Bible is no, we won't.
No matter how much we learn, there's going to be more that we
don't know. No matter how many questions we
answer, it will. It will end up opening up more
questions that are still unanswered and and the grand
unification theories that are out there.
If we can come up with a single equation that explains
everything, I think are ultimately going to be shown to
be false. That that if we can understand
it completely, it doesn't explain everything because
there's too much in this life that is beyond our
understanding. By definition, mystery is
unknown. It's mysterious.
It's what we don't know, in some cases what we can't know.
And that as frustrating as it is, as challenging as it is, as
frightening as it is, is simply part of the life that God has
given us. Having to deal with and live in
and live through and live into the unknown.
Making decisions without really knowing what the short term,
sometimes outcomes will be and and often what the long term
outcomes will be. Either without knowing how it's
going to affect, without knowing how our kids are going to do
down the road. Without knowing how you know
where our lives are going to be a year from now, or five years
or now or 10 years from now. The way the world is changing
and science is developing and technology is developing now I
it's it. Who can guess what this world is
going to look like 30 years from now, much less 50 or 60 or 80
years from now? The future is a mystery, the
future is unknown, and that's part of the way God has created
it and made it. What Isaiah said, God said to
his people through Isaiah. For my thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways. My ways, declares the Lord, as
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God says you can never know everything that I know.
Our little brains are not big enough.
Our little minds cannot contain the mysteries of the universe,
can never fully comprehend God, God's ways, God's purposes,
God's plans, and God's designs. Even when God says it to us
clearly and directly and explicitly, like when Jesus told
his followers, I'm going to die three days, I'm going to rise
again from the dead, they still didn't get it.
It still didn't make sense. The Ecclesiastes, which Elena
read earlier, he has also said eternity in the human heart.
Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God's power, God's work is a mystery beyond our knowing and
beyond our understanding. And, and, and I, I, you know,
I've heard people over the years how we can explain it.
We can know, you know, there's just stuff we can that we can't
predict, we can't control, and we can't know.
And that's the life God has called us to leave.
Now, mystery is, by definition, sort of unknown for the Greek
scholars in the room. And I have to say this because
occasionally my daughter listens to these messages online, and
she knows Greek much better than I do.
And she would have already interrupted me to tell me that
that's not what mystery means in the New Testament.
And she would be right, and she is right in in the New
Testament, mystery is not like an unsolved mystery crime drama.
It's used to talk about the part of God's plan that God has not
revealed yet. And when you look up the word
mystery throughout the New Testament, what you read is that
Jesus is God's answer to the mystery, the mystery.
How is God going to redeem the world?
The answer, Jesus, the mystery, how is God going to reconcile
the world? The answer, Jesus, the mystery.
How is God going to deal with sin?
How is God going to deal with pain?
How is God going to deal with suffering?
How is God going to deal with redemption?
The answer is Jesus through his life, his death and his
resurrection. And we can know that.
And the, the much of the New Testament, when it talks about
mystery, talks about the fact that the mystery that was for
all ages has now been revealed and made known.
US, the people in the past, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses, and
others could only look forward and wonder, how is God going to
do all of this? How is God going to answer all
the prayers and, and, and fulfill all his prophecies?
But it has been revealed to us and that revelation is Jesus.
So mystery is by definition sort of unknown.
But we got to be honest here too, that knowing the answer is
Jesus doesn't mean we really understand the answer.
Simple things about Jesus that we say.
We say Jesus is fully God and fully human, right?
If you've grown up in the church, I I hope you've heard
that before. If you haven't heard that
before, shame on us pastors who haven't said that, that Jesus is
fully God and fully human. We say that we have no idea what
that really means. I had a seminary professor who's
who explained it this way. He said the notion that Jesus is
fully God and fully human is like taking a quart of water and
a quart of oil and pouring them together into a single quart
container and it holds it all. That makes sense.
Not right. We say the Trinity, we talk
about God and we have one God, one very important.
We don't have three gods. We have one God and three
persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
What does that mean? We don't know that this is not
how things work in our experienced universe.
We, we, we try to parse it out like, like, and I used to do
this one, the egg, you know, it's got an egg, it's got a
shell, it's got a white and it's got a yoke 3 in one.
I later learned that's heresy. I don't think, I don't think I'm
going to go to hell for that. The technical name for that is
modalism, and Christians killed each other for teaching that at
one point in time it was we were dumb.
We've been dumb that they said that's because the shell, Jesus
is fully God. He's not part of God.
The shell is only part of an egg.
Jesus is fully God, and the shell is only part of an egg.
The white is only part of the egg.
The oak is only part of the egg, but somehow Jesus is fully God
and and God is the Father is fully God and the Holy Spirit is
fully God. But there's not three gods,
there's one God. And if there's one God who was
running the universe when Jesus died.
All of these questions people that aren't part of Christianity
ask, and when we tell them, well, it's the Trinity, they go.
That doesn't really help. It's a mystery.
Part of our teaching about the incarnation of Jesus is God in
the flesh of teaching of the Trinity, part of our of teaching
about the resurrection and and how Jesus's life, death and
resurrection has somehow opened the door for our salvation and
our forgiveness and the reconciliation of the world to
God. We're saying those things as
statements of faith, not something that we can ever fully
or completely explain. Our brains just aren't big
enough. That's that should be good news.
Because if we can understand everything, that means we really
are kind of the high point of the universe.
It doesn't get any better than us.
And Oh my goodness, are we in bad shape if the universe
doesn't get any better than us. But there is someone out there
who is bigger, who is greater, who is beyond our understanding.
Because if God were not beyond our understanding, God would not
be bigger, and God would not be greater.
Beyond all question, Paul writes, The mystery from which
true godliness springs is great. This is the mystery.
He appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit, was
seen by the angels, was preached among the nations, was believed
on in the world, and was taken up into glory.
All of those statements true. All of those statements faith.
None of those statements ultimately scientifically
verifiable and provable. As we live the Easter life, then
one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is how do we
respond to mystery? The book of Mark, those women
who went to Jesus tomb, they responded to mystery with fear
and with silence. They were so overwhelmed they
couldn't do or say anything. Now obviously it didn't stay
that way because we never would have heard, right?
Mark's not making the point that that that we should never tell
anyone about Jesus. Mark's talking about that that
experience of God that is so overwhelming that we don't know
how to respond, or even if we know what we're supposed to do,
it's so overwhelming we can't bring ourselves to do it.
Silence, silence. Well, don't be, Don't be
alarmed. He said you were looking for
Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.
He has risen. He is not here.
See the place where they laid him.
But go tell his disciples and Peter.
He's going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him, just as he told you.
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the
tomb. They said nothing to anyone
because they were afraid. Their response was silence.
Silence is not a bad response to mystery.
It's really not. One of the disciplines of of
Christian spirituality that has been lost in our contemporary
society is silence. To, to turn off all the noise,
all of the inputs, all of the phones, all of the computers,
all of the tablets, all of the televisions, all of the
everything and simply be silent before God challenge you to do
it sometime. If, if, if you're not used to
doing that, I, I, you might be surprised at how hard it is to
do that, to decide to sit in silence for 10 minutes, for 15
minutes, for 20 minutes. Try it and see what bubbles up
inside. One of my favorite songs, band
by the name of 21 Pilots called Car Radio and, and, and the he's
he's singing in rhyme. I'm not going to try it.
Don't worry about the fact that he's got a car.
But someone stole his radio and now he has to sit in silence and
it's making him nuts. It's driving him crazy.
And he said the quiet is violence.
Silence and quiet are hard for us to deal with for the same
reason that mystery is hard for us to deal with.
We want answers. We want clarity, we want to
know. And when we sit in silence, what
often bubbles up within us are all of those things that we
don't know and that we don't have answers to, Experiences and
future possibilities that frighten us, memories of past
things that frighten us. And.
And ancient Christian spirituality says one of the
best ways in the world to respond to mystery is with
silence. To sit in silence, I got to
double check to see where I am. OK Yeah.
Now I got a couple more before I get there.
Psalmist writes this. He says God says, be still and
know that I am God. I will be exalted among the
nations. I will be exalted on the earth.
They were faced with a terrifying threat and external
harm, something that they couldn't control, something that
they had no power over. And and the advice of the
prophet, the advice of the poet, is be silent, be still, know
that God is God and God will be exalted.
Whatever else happens and comes out of this, God will be exalted
on all the earth. Silence is a good response.
It's not just not a bad response, it is a good response
to mystery. I'm forgetting what's coming
next. Tell me.
I got several more. Boy, I thought this was thought
I was getting to the video sooner than this.
Silence allows mystery. Why silence a good response?
Because silence allows mystery to be mysterious.
It's a decision to turn off the compulsion within us to solve
and know everything, have everything sorted out to
everything planned out, to have everything laid out.
And it simply says I will allow the mystery to be mysterious.
It's a way of saying I will allow God to be God and not
demanded that God explain himself to me.
Saint Augustine had a vision once.
He's a smart guy. He was a really smart guy, one
of the first great theologians within Christianity, educated,
intelligent, good communicator. He had, it was the whole
package. And he had a dream one night and
he was on a beach and he had a little jar and he was scooping
water out of the sea and putting it into the jar.
And a person walked up said I got the story wrong, I have
messed my mind, just went just brain fart right there.
No I didn't, I had it right. Person came up, it was an Angel.
Takes a minute. Angel says what are you doing?
Said I'm putting the ocean in the jar.
The Angel said, you can't put the ocean in the jar, the ocean
won't fit in the jar. The man said, oh, I guess you're
right. And then the Angel said, and you
also can't understand the Trinity you'll never under.
It's the same kind of thing, the mysteries of God.
To try to seek to comprehend God is like trying to fit the ocean
in a jar. It's just not possible.
And when we're silent before the mystery, we allow the mystery to
be mysterious. Silence in that way is an
expression of humility before mystery.
It's a way of saying, I don't. I let go of my demand to know.
I let go and surrender my right to understand, and I choose to
simply trust and simply believe. Psalm 131 is all of three
verses. This is the whole chapter.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too
high, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too
marvelous for me, but I have calmed and quieted my soul, like
a child quieted at his mother's breast, like a child that is
quiet. It is my soul.
O Israel, hope in the Lord, from this time forth and forevermore.
There are great and mysterious and wonderful and marvelous
things, and sometimes it's good to gaze at those things and be
overwhelmed by those things. But there are times when we just
need to be silent before that mystery and allow it to be the
mystery. And trust.
Trust that our hope is not in our understanding.
Our hope is not in our ability to comprehend.
Our ability to figure out our hope is in the Lord.
That phrase my calm and quiet in my soul, like a child quieted
its mother's breast. The the Hebrew word for child
there is specifically for a child that has been weaned.
So because an unweaned child is at his mother's breast to get
something right. Lunch, dinner, snack, lunch,
dinner, snack, over and over and over again.
But the weaned child is not at his mother's breast to get
something except to be in the presence of his mother.
And that's what the psalmist invites us to.
To live in the presence of the mystery of God without
demanding, without craving, without insisting, without even
trying to fully and completely understand anymore.
Then your two year old, your mom's out there, your two or
three-year old can really understand your love for them.
They don't, they can't, they won't.
And a lot of us, when we became parents, realized that what our
parents told us was right, that we wouldn't really understand
until we were parents ourselves. I was like, OK, well, they were
right about that too. Our kids don't know and we can't
know. We can't know.
I think I'm at the almost all right.
One more here. One possibility for dealing with
mystery is to say just get comfortable with mystery.
But we shouldn't be comfortable with mystery.
Mystery should make us uncomfortable.
I've got a song I keep looking over but want to make sure I get
to this slide. And it's, it's actually a song,
2 parts written by two different people, Amy Carter or Cardi, I
think is is is is the first person.
She's the one on the top who a few years back wrote a song
about her experience a few days into college, 3 days or two days
into college. And then there's another woman
who in response to that song, and she goes on on YouTube by
I'm sad Alex wrote a song about her experience of life 10 years
after college. And I want you to hear the
mystery in all of this. Let's listen together.
I'm two days into college and I'm three lectures behind.
There's this guy, let's name him Colin.
He says he wants to be mine, but it doesn't really sit with me
quite right because he doesn't really like the things I like
and I keep accidentally look at myself out of my dorm in the
middle of the night. I'm 10 years out of college and
I'm still 10 years behind. All those things I thought I'd
have by now are still so out of sight and it doesn't really sit
with me quite right. I'm 32 years into this life.
I should have more WS than L's so use the hell I don't even
feel the fire when it's in my face.
And I'm a play tonight thinking am I OK?
Should I change to something safer about and very good on
paper? Settle down and fall in love
when they recall and it up? Did everybody succeed now?
Are they happier than me now? Now I'm sad Alex wrote a third
part in response to comments when she posted that video and
folks said, well, what you know, what about older?
What about 20 years out of college?
So she wrote a verse about 20 years out of college.
I deliberately cut that out because two reasons.
One, at that point she's pretty. She's not writing about her
experience, but but now here 10 years out of college, she's
wondering. I don't get it.
I don't understand. Life is not what I thought it
would be. I'm not as far along as I
thought I'd be. I don't know the things I
thought I'd know. I don't even had the experiences
I thought I have. I don't have the winds I don't.
I can't even tell our people. Both people seem to be doing
better than me and and she's struggling with this mystery.
But when she wrote the the 20 years out of college, she
figured it all out. And I got bad news for I'm sad,
Alex, if she's not going to have it figured out 20 years out of
college, either 30 or 40 pushing.
No, I'm not at 50 yet. So far 40, I'm confident not got
it figured out. We need to allow ourselves to be
uncomfortable with the mystery, not to get comfortable with it,
but to be uncomfortable with it, to allow ourselves to look at
the world around us and look at our own lives and say, you know
what? I just don't know.
I don't know. Am I doing it right?
Am I doing it wrong? My kids going to turn out OK?
Am I screwing my kids up? Am I screwing my parents up?
And my there are so many things in life and in faith that we
want to know that we just can't know.
But we know this. We know this, that the answer to
all of the mystery is Jesus, his life, his death, and his
resurrection. How that's the answer we cannot
explain. But that is the answer which
means this, that in the mystery we can rest in the arms of God,
trusting that what God has said will be true.
Trusting that when we stand before God, we will stand before
him. Not as people who need to
present a perfect resume of our past experiences, but as a
people who can trust in His mercy and in His grace because
He loved us enough to die for us, so we allow ourselves to be
uncomfortable for the mystery. I know that there's nothing
better for people than to be happy and to do good while they
live. That each of them may eat and
drink and find satisfaction and all their toil.
This is the gift of God. I know that everything God does
will endure forever. Nothing can be added to it,
nothing taken from it. And God does it so that people
will fear Him. All right, when we get afraid
before the mystery, God's going. That's right where I want you.
Don't get comfortable. Live in the uncertainty, live in
the fear. And while you're at it, enjoy
your life. Eat and drink, raise your kids,
have fun, play, laugh, as well as work and rest.
Do these things in your life with which I have blessed you.
And when the future mysteries get overwhelming, rest in my
arms and trust in my mercy and my love and my power.
Allow yourself to be uncomfortable with mystery.
That's living the Easter life, not having all the answers, but
living with the mystery in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen.