The Sabbath is Over


Sunday, April 16th, 2006
Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 16:1-8

1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “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. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The Gospel according to Mark is a challenge in many ways. It is blunt. It’s almost staccato-paced delivery is short on style as well as abrupt in manner. Read through the text and you will find more uses of the word ‘immediately’ within the span of the 16 chapters than in any of the other gospel accounts. Mark is not nearly as well written as is Matthew, nor as detailed as Luke, nor as theologically profound as John.

What Mark DOES have is immediacy. There is a sense as you read it that you are almost right there, in the middle of the action, as it were. It’s a short read. It can be read from beginning to end in the course of a couple of hours, at most, usually less.

So the writer has told the story up to this point, zapping Jesus here and there throughout Galilee and Judea, healing, preaching, teaching and walking, always walking. It stands to reason, actually, since, other than an occasional boat trip or a ride on a horse, or a donkey, walking was THE primary form of locomotion in first century Palestine.

And the style of writing doesn’t actually change as it draws to the end of the story.

There’re some pretty interesting things going on at the end of the Gospel of Mark. With the version authorized by King James at the beginning of the 17th century, scholars of the day who worked on that first English translation of the scriptures worked with the manuscripts they had available at the time. Those they had at their disposal included the text of the Gospel through verse 20 of chapter 16. Since that time, Biblical scholars have approached the text in different ways, in addition, further discoveries have uncovered earlier manuscripts than the ones with which scholars were working at the turn of the 1600’s.

The oldest manuscripts that have been found of the Gospel of Mark ALL end with the last verse I read a couple of minutes ago.

8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

It is, don’t you think, something of an inauspicious ending to the greatest story ever told? It doesn’t have the sweeping majesty we find in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, or the fantastic scene of Jesus being taken up into heaven we have at the end of Luke, or the oddly introspective comments at the end of John – about the fact that Jesus did many other things, and that if they were all written down, the world could not hold all the books that would be written.

Mark is generally agreed to be the earliest Gospel written. It was put down in writing between 50 and 70 AD, in other words, within the generation following Jesus’ public ministry, death and resurrection. The person who wrote it is most likely the person who actually lived through the events described. It almost has the feel of someone trying to put everything down before they forget it, in some ways. It’s a very human rendition of the story of Jesus; a very earthy tale of a sometimes unearthly series of events.

So let’s just take at face value for a while, the assertion of Biblical scholars that the last twelve verses of Mark were not there during the first, say, fifty to a hundred years that the gospel was being copied and circulated around and read to the groups of believers who were popping out all over the middle east and southeastern Europe.

What kind of an ending is that?
What kind of an ending is that?
What kind of an ending is THAT?

There’re are no resurrection appearances, there’s no doubting Thomas saying he’ll believe only when he can place his hand in Jesus’ pierced side, and put his fingers in the nail holes in Jesus’ hands. There’s no Peter running to the tomb, to be confronted by Jesus. There’s no gathering of followers, or a mention of Jesus’ appearing to more than 500 of them before his ascension. There’re no travelers on the road to Emmaus meeting up with Jesus and having their hearts burning within them as they listen to him explain the scriptures.

Nope. None of that. Mark is not interested in making the telling of the Gospel literature. He is more interested, it seems, in getting the stories down in such a way that the reader, or the listener, is confronted in as close a way as possible with that with which the writer himself was confronted – not just with the Christ who practically ran from town to town, faced down injustice, hatred, prejudice, sin, and showed through his acts and words what God wanted for this world from the beginning, and for US – his children, from OUR beginning, but also with the RISEN Christ. Who through that single act proved all he’d said to be true.

I think the writer of Gospel meant for the telling to end that way: abruptly, suddenly, without warning, without flourish, without fanfare, without any of the usual clues you’d get if you were simply reading the story.

But it changes if you read it as a part of an ongoing story … a story that really HASN’T finished … it hadn’t finished when the first author dictated the last word back 20 or 30 years after Jesus’ resurrection, the writer knew that the people who would hear the gospel read to them would readily step up and continue to tell the rest of the story. What had happened SINCE the women fled from the cemetery, the first evangelists with the news that Christ had risen, that he was going to meet them in Galilee … only THEY, the readers, and hearers, would insert the name of the place THEY met Christ at that point in the story. For some, Christ met them right there in Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost, for others, it was 15 years after that event, somewhere on the coast of Syria, or on one of the Greek Islands, or in the interior of Turkey, or in Damascus, or on Crete, or Cyprus, or in Rome.

You see, the Gospel writer didn’t want to tie everything up in a neat little package because his experience of Jesus was anything BUT a neat little package.

This past Thursday afternoon I drove to the airport in Richmond and dropped off a package, a manila envelope that held some letters and other documents that needed to get to Chimalhuacan, Mexico. I came home that evening and began tracking it online. It left Richmond that evening, was in Ohio just after midnight, and by midmorning the next day it was in Mexico City. It is now just a few miles from its final destination. It’s amazing how manageable a neat little package is if you know what to do with it.

As humans, we have a tendency to think that if we understand something, then, what is the term? If you know something inside and out, you are considered to have MASTERED the subject. The Gospel of Mark makes it clear that what he lived through was something that, though experienced, did not lend itself to complete understanding, did not submit to being ‘known’ in the fullest sense of the word – though God DID make God’s self known THROUGH Christ, at some point this side of heaven we cease to understand. And that point came this past Friday. When the package we thought we understood, the package of platitudes and good thoughts and reasonable and appropriate ideas on treating others with respect and kindness, and standing up to falsehood and vanity and pride and whatever other sin you’d like to fill in, all that fell away when Jesus took the cross upon himself and told the writer and the readers “this is for you, THIS is how much the Father loves you”.

And he did away with our need to meet requirements, to fulfill expectations, to follow a set of laws in order to be acceptable to God. The children he so deeply loved had been struggling – for centuries – to reach across an infinite gap. A gap so deep and so wide that only God God’s self was able to cross it – through the cross.

The radical Gospel of Jesus is that the Sabbath is over. There is no need for a sacrifice that was completed once and for all time. There is no need to meet strict rules of cleanliness and holiness because we take on Christ’s own holiness when we ask him to be Lord of our lives.

The cost of following is another thing. Salvation is the gift, discipleship is the cost, but it is in no way a hidden cost, unless you come into the relationship unwilling to accept the consequences of MAKING Christ what the word means – LORD of your life. Christ calls us to a life of service, of sacrifice, of giving, and of loving.

So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

It means that we need to live out the fullness of what it means to say that the Sabbath is truly over – we need to get rid of any vestige we may cling to of trying to somehow EARN our way to worthiness. I can say with full confidence that there is not a single one of us in this room who has gained worthiness of salvation through being a good person, through being involved in church all our lives, through memorizing passage after passage of scripture, or better yet, through memorizing all the hymns in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal (except for the third verses, of course).

It means that we rest – we rest in the assurance of pardon that we find through Christ, we rest in the knowledge that God loved us so much that God made himself human in order to be with us, and call us to God’s self.

A short while ago we shared in the baptism of Brandon Harcum. As Baptists, we do not believe that the act of baptism itself is anything other than an outward representation of what the inward self has done – died to the world, and risen in Christ – it is an echo of the resurrection of Christ himself. It is a commemoration, a signal event in the life of the believer. It marks a continuing, public commitment to follow Christ. The observance of the ordinance gives us an opportunity to reflect, to ponder, to review our own commitment made when WE followed Christ in asking him to be Lord of our lives. While the waters themselves hold no power, we do want to make that same water available to you at the conclusion of the service in these two bowls on the communion table. The invitation is to come forward and, whether with a brief prayer, or by dipping the tips of your fingers in the water and returning to your seats, you can, IF YOU WOULD LIKE, make a publicly quiet statement of your faith. I realize that this is not a very Baptist thing to do, and it’s not. But we want to recognize the need to publicly profess a faith that we sometimes practice a little too privately.

Aside from that, our invitation time is, as always, an invitation to make a decision public that you’ve already made in private, whether during this service or before; to ask Christ to be Lord of your life, to join with this family of faith on the journey to which Christ has called us, or to work at putting aside our own Sabbaths, whatever they may be.

I will be standing at the front if you would like to come share that decision with me or with the congregation.

Please stand and sing our hymn of invitation, Oh How I love Jesus.


WORDS OF DISMISSAL

Now you are freed,
Let loose
Upon and unsuspecting world
That assumed
Nothing happens here.

The music sung
The preacher has said the best he can
The clock has rounded its circuit
And now no further conformity
Restrains you.

The world waits
With nonchalant welcome,
Not knowing that
You reached for
And touched
GOD!

And now you are free,
Let loose
To break upon the earth
With a Holy surprise.