[The Easter Life is] A Life of Mystery (Chester UMC)

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.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

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.