Excerpts from: Of Bunnies, Eggs and Lions
4/16/06
Reference: Mark 16:1-8

Did you ever stop to think how the "secular" customs surrounding Easter are truly bizarre? First, there is the Easter Bunny himself; a big male rabbit that carries nests of eggs. Yes, rabbits are extremely good at carrying out that "be fruitful and multiply" mandate. And yes, eggs are perfect, encapsulated symbols of new life to come. But rabbits don't lay eggs or make nests, especially male rabbits.

Sociologist Cindy Clark has researched what she calls the "trinity" of characters in children's most important ritual systems -- Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Her conclusion after interviewing thousands of children is that of these "big three" celebrations only the Easter Bunny is an entirely child-centered symbol. As such, the Easter Bunny is one of the most misunderstood and befuddling creatures that adults have ever tried to figure out.

Who among us adults doesn't get anxious about the match up of Santa Claus and the baby Jesus at Christmastime? But has anyone ever felt particularly threatened by or theologically suspicious of the Easter Bunny? I mean other than the ACLU? Adults dismiss the Easter Bunny as a harmless symbol of the new life that is abundant in springtime.

I mean, kids love the Easter Bunny! Maybe because the Easter Bunny doesn't keep lists of who has been "naughty or nice" like that Santa Claus fellow, or perhaps because he is quiet and soft and huggable and speechless, children eagerly flock to the sides of Easter bunnies at the mall. I have seen so many little guys meltdown sitting on Santa's lap-but hugging the Easter Bunny is a guaranteed "warm fuzzy."

All the strange and seemingly nonsensical traditions (at least to adults) that go along with the Easter Bunny are kept alive and reinvented each year by children. Honestly, how many households without children color eggs and hide nests around their living rooms? I found out this week that even my kids are still on the bunny trail.

But the Easter Bunny's appeal is illogical. Santa fits neatly into adult-centered systems of rewards and punishments. Be nice -- get presents. Be naughty -- get nothing. Santa Claus is an entrepreneur-he employs elves to work for him, and they craft all those gifts we receive. Santa is a successful guy.

But how different is the Easter Bunny! He comes to children without a set policy for behavior. His eggs are left everywhere -- easily available to even the smallest child or the worst "seeker." Have you ever heard the Easter Bunny speak? Santa's all Ho-ho-ho. But the Easter Bunny is all mute. He doesn't espouse any particular system for punishments and rewards, and his symbols don't seem to make any sense.

We ought to take a cue from our kids. The empty tomb on Easter morning presents Christians with a vision that has much in common with the illogical and ironical Easter Bunny.

The abandoned tomb is itself mute -- a visual testimony to the power of life over death. Yet, nothing shouts louder than the empty tomb. Like the Easter Bunny's strange basket of eggs, the very place that surely seems to be a dead end-- Jesus' tomb -- suddenly becomes the symbol of birth and new life.


So, this is where Mark leaves us at the end of his sixteenth chapter, and the first account of the Easter victory of Christ-with trembling, with astonishment, with fear.

And of course, these friends of Jesus were afraid. Death leaves us in deep pain, and death is tragic, and we all understand when someone we loved has gone.

But this...this is something else entirely. Three grieving women come to the grave to complete the cleaning of the body for its burial; they come to do what you do next when someone has died. But at the tomb, they meet a young man in a robe of white who tells them that their friend has risen from the dead and is going ahead of them to Galilee , back to the very beginning of this saga, back to where they all came from.

The other gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John, give us the rest of the story. Jesus appears to Mary at the tomb, to the disciples in the upper room, with the two on the road to Emmaus, He appeared to over 500 others. They are very welcome stories, indeed, but Mark stops short, leaving it with the women in fear and trembling. Over the years, many commentators have sought to look for an additional ending to Mark's gospel. The Easter story can't stop here. Yet, I think Mark has a real meaning and purpose for his Easter account of stopping where it does. You see, our own experiences take us to moments not unlike those two Mary's and Salome very early on the first Easter morning.

• I am talking about the moments of shock, of let down, of grief, of disappointment, a sense of the bottom dropping out of things that we all know about.
• The times when a hospital emergency room arrival leaves you numb with fear and trembling.
• The times when red and blue flashing lights wake you in regards to a tragic accident.
• The times when a note left on a kitchen table informs you that the marriage is over, and you are abandoned.
• The times when you are meeting with a doctor who is trying to tell you in even and measured tones that the prognosis is very, very bad.
• The times when you go back to your desk after a coffee break and find a pink slip inside an envelope with the terse message, "We've downsized and you are expendable."
• The times, not when we are exalted and jubilant and hopeful and surrounded by all of the Easter joy and celebration, but the times when we join with these three women. We join them in shock, in shattering moments.

Even in the ordinary, the everyday-- the humdrum, the irritations, the things that just occupy the flat landscape of our lives. In these moments, too, Easter seems so far away.

Here's the thing. If Easter was really all about bunnies and eggs, then life would really be the fearful, tormenting, paralyzing thing-not an empty tomb.

Paul the apostle said , "And if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world. But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raise to life again."

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single most important event in the history of the world. It is even more important than the cross - in this way: that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the cross would be meaningless for mankind. Jesus was perfect and would go back to be with the Father - the question was, would His death purchase eternal life with the Father for us?

The resurrection proves that Jesus was who He said He was, and that all the things He said were true.

And so, Mark the evangelist, has a purpose for starting the Easter story where our need is the deepest, where we are at our most vulnerable.

It opens a new horizon to these three ladies, as also to you and to me. For the message on this day still is-You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. He is risen, indeed!

Risen, indeed, is the truth, and death and evil and mourning and loss and sin are not the last word. The last word lies with the God who meets us in Christ at the open tomb, meets us in our disappointments, and makes us more than conquerors through Him, through the Risen One, who is for so for us and not against us.

In a year's time, some of our families have experienced profound heartbreak in losing loved ones. But, because of Resurrection, because the old order of things has changed, the cold, cold grip of death's winter has been broken. Because of the sacrifice of an innocent one, Adam's race has been redeemed. The enemy underestimated the power of sacrifice. What seemed like a cruel joke on Friday was one powerful punch line on Sunday. It was God's plan fulfilled. What seemed like the end was actually the beginning. What I love about Mark's account is that Jesus is waiting for his disciples in Galilee.

Galilee is the beginning place of the Good News of Jesus-it's as if Jesus is saying "It's your turn now. This story isn't over because now it's your story."

How are you writing it? Your story, your place in the saga of the Good News of Jesus? What do we do with these transformed lives? If you are one that believes that God has healed and touched you, released you from the cold grip of death's winter-what difference does that make in your daily living? What does that mean for us who live Easter lives? This Gospel, this Good News cannot be confined to a moment in the past, nor is it simply about hope for some far off future. This terrifyingly good news is that Christ is alive, saving people from a living death and offering life in all its fullness. And of this we are witnesses.

Mark's story of Jesus has a beginning, but it doesn't have an end. It just keeps going and going, from one life to another, touching and transforming us one by one. The risen Christ was not at the tomb but going ahead of his friends. And that's where we see him today: out ahead of us. Listen, where God's Good News is breaking in on the least of these, there is the risen Christ, beckoning to us to come and be Easter people.

Christ will come back, come back for his bride. And when we see him, we shall be made like him. But better still, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Yet until then, Marks gospel is a story that is unfinished, because it is meant to be unfinished. It is meant for you and me to take it up, to decide for ourselves how the story will end.

Frightening isn't it? We each have the opportunity, amazing and disturbing though it is, to finish the story in our own lives. Jesus Christ died and rose that he might meet you here this morning. He has come to offer you new life, Resurrection Life. What will you do with the news? Will you hear the words of the young man at the empty tomb?

"You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here...He is going ahead of you, you will see him".

How will you finish the story?

Even so, come quickly-come quickly Lord.