Our Continuing Ending Story

Mark 16:1-8

April 12, 2009

Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.

I remember our children growing up with these paperbacks that allow young readers to choose different plots and endings. You get to choose your own adventure. It’s almost like there isn’t a definable real ending to the story.

When I was taking my homiletics class to learn how to preach, my professor once advised me that I not only had a good sermon but in fact, I had a number of good sermons and that I missed about three good stopping places in my sermon.

Some of you have heard me say before that one of the toughest challenges for a preacher is in how to end a sermon. You sit in the pews thinking that I’m going to end and then I start up again with another point. We like our endings to “tie things up,” as we sometimes say here is a fitting conclusion to say “The End.” I like to tie up all the loose ends, put a bow around it and present a nice package to you. The trouble is so many stories in the Bible are open-ended.

The prodigal son, for instance, does not end by saying, “They lived happily ever after.”  We don’t know what eventually happen to the younger son or the older brother. We don’t know what happened to the man after the Good Samaritan reached out and helped him so valiantly. These Bible stories remind us that life itself doesn’t have that many satisfactory completions and final endings.

And if you came to church last Sunday to participate in Palm Sunday by waving your palm leaves as Jesus entered Jerusalem. And you came on Thursday to experience the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. And on Friday, you came to witness the crucifixion of our Lord when our sanctuary was stripped bare of any signs of life. And now you are here after a long Holy Week, you would expect that today is the end of the story. You started your choose your own adventure paperback and now you want to come to the end of the final chapter.

But you know, we preachers don’t want you to say, “I’m glad it’s over.” We don’t want you to think that you are done with your spiritual moment for this week or this year so that you can move on to thinking about something else.

We want the sermon to continue, to be imprinted on your minds and in your hearts when you walk out of here, for the story to keep going, never to end. I love it when you tell me as you step out onto the sidewalk that you’ll be thinking about the sermon this week. So sermons are hard to end. This is why some sermons seem to just go on and on forever! It’s often hard to end a sermon!

Gospel Writers Endings

Easter Sunday ought to be the happiest of happy endings. Jesus who has suffered rejection culminating in the bloodshed on the cross is now resurrected from the dead. Jesus has triumphed over death and the grave. What he told his disciples has now come true. The doubters and his critics have been proven wrong. This would make a very good ending. We can finally say, “The End” and Jesus in heaven and his disciples on earth lived happily ever after. Let’s all stand up and sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” and claim victory. The End.

But it is curious that the Gospel writers seemed to have difficulty knowing how to end their Gospels. Easter would be the expected happy ending. But because of Easter, there is no final ending. The lesson we read today from Mark has a non-ending in which he never actually reports that the disciples saw the Risen Christ. An angel at the tomb tells the three women who have come to anoint Jesus’ body that Jesus will meet the disciples back in Galilee. He tells them to tell the people about the Risen Christ. But then Mark says they didn’t tell anybody! You notice that in our pew Bibles that later scholars added two versions of ending the Gospel of Mark in order to make it more satisfactory to us readers.

Matthew offers a little more of an ending, but when the Risen Christ appears to his disciples, he commands them to, “Go, make disciples of all nations…” In other words, The Risen Christ doesn’t say much of anything to the disciples except, “Get out of here, stop standing around looking at me, and get to work, making disciples!”

The Gospel of Luke is understood as a two-volume work, known as Luke and Acts. So Luke doesn’t really have an ending because the book of Acts is one long extended ending of the church in the Acts of the Apostles. And in the early chapters of Acts, the reports were not that glorious either because we read about the stoning death of Stephen, the first martyr of the church, followed by the beheading of James, and the book of Acts ends with Paul sitting in a jail cell in Rome awaiting his imminent execution. Not anything closed to a “happily ever after” ending.

And finally with the Gospel of John, the writer seems to have trouble ending. After Jesus’ Resurrection, the next scene is back with the disciples at work, doing what they know how to do best, doing what they did before they met Jesus—fishing. They are back to the familiar, routine day of work.

This is what people often do when they have suffered a great trauma. When you have suffered a loss of a loved one, well-meaning friends often tell you that you should, “Get back to work. Get busy,” and this will help you “get over it.” Perhaps this is what these disciples were doing. Following Jesus around was a good thing while it lasted, but eventually all good things come to an end, even the life as good as that of Jesus, so now it’s back to work. We go back to the familiar and the routine because the story of Jesus has now ended.

And to these people who were adjusting themselves to the trauma of loss and grief to accept the final ending of a great story, the Risen Christ appears. And what he says to them is this, “It’s not over. It’s just getting started. Do you love me? Then get out of here and go and feed my sheep.”

And then Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me,” as if he were speaking to Peter for the very first time. When Jesus first called his disciples, he told them to “Follow me.” Now, it is like the first time again. John wants us to know that we’re not ending, we’re starting over. It’s not easy to start over. Peter was quite happy to go back to fishing. Life is safer there hunched over the boat pulling up the nets. And yet, the Risen Christ came out to him and got him back into discipleship. The story wasn’t over. The story was just beginning.

The Central Idea

We know that every story has a central idea. Without this main point of the story, there just wouldn’t be enough of a story to tell. On this Sunday, Easter Sunday, we shout out the main point of the story. Jesus who was crucified on the cross, died and buried for three days is now alive.

The women and the disciples who went to the tomb did not expect anything like this. They were looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. In their part of the world as well as in ours, the dead stay dead in the tomb. But this is not how the story ends. An angel dressed in white showed them the place where Jesus once laid. Because they wanted to end the story the way they have been used to and in their great surprise, they couldn’t, they became alarmed. They fled the tomb, “for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” That is how Mark ends his Gospel, which as you know, is by far not an ending at all.

When the central idea of the Gospel Good News is that death has lost its sting. When we believe in our heart, in our mind, in the deepest depth of our soul that out of God’s merciful love, he has forgiven our sins by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, there’s no ending to this story. On Easter Sunday, whether it was 2000 years ago or today, as we are in his house of worship, believe that Christ is risen, there is no ending to this story. We are call as the disciples were to continue ending this good news story in what we will do in the name of Jesus Christ.

Peter had to go back into the world, but it was a new world then before. It was a world where the Risen Christ was loose and there was the ever-present possibility of surprise and newness. It was also a world full of peril and danger, in fact, even more dangerous than before. Peter knew first-hand that it wasn’t easy following Jesus before the resurrection. But in a way, it would be more perilous after the resurrection. Peter would pay for his discipleship with his life, martyred in Rome.

What Jesus was about now was larger, larger than Galilee. He was out to take back the whole world. And now Peter was part of it. The story of Jesus and Peter continued; it was really just the beginning.

New Beginnings

Let me tell you a story of a new beginning from William Willimon, the former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University in Durham, NC.

Mary and John thought they would not have children. Even though they were late into their marriage, news spread like wildfire through the congregation, Mary and John were going to have a baby!

Then in August she delivered a little boy, a beautiful child yet, even as an infant we could see that his legs were tiny, withered, out of proportion to his body. The doctor said that the baby was “malformed,” that the child would never walk. Yet we all celebrated the wonder of that baby. Of course, it was easy for us to celebrate because we didn’t have day-to-day responsibility for the care of Johnny. Nor do we know what it was like, day after day, to look into that crib, and to see into a future with a child who had been crippled since birth, a child who would never walk or run, or live the life that other children might live.

Those cares began to show on Mary and John too. When people inquired about Johnny, or when the congregation made a fuss over him when they brought him bundled up to church that winter, there was a tint of sadness in their eyes, a premonition of the life ahead for them and for their new baby. Some people spoke behind their backs of the sad “tragedy of it all.”

But on Easter Sunday, when they came to church, with the baby all bundled up in a new Easter outfit, with little Johnny dedicated that day, they left church different. When Mary discussed it later, with tears in her eyes, she said it was as if a door opened for her, and she saw the way. It was as if during that Easter dedication God Almighty passed a blessing over Johnny’s life, through the eyes of faith, not as a lifetime burden but as a new, unique, undeserved, and special blessing.

You see, in Christ’s resurrection, the life story of little Johnny was not a tragic ending but just a beginning of a promising future. This is not to say that challenges ahead won’t be daunting but on Easter, we believe it’s just the beginning.

In Christ’s resurrection, the life stories of those who were baptized last Sunday were not a happy ending capped off with flowers, a certificate and a nice reception, it’s only just the beginning of a lifetime of costly discipleship.

As you know, we have a granddaughter named, “Story.” She’ll be one-year old in a month. She is already a unique and quite different from her older sister, Sage. When I look at Story, I can see a promising future of a young lady who some day in God’s time will come to know Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. Don’t we all wish these little ones could just stay little forever? But they can’t. It’s not “The End” of the story for children to stay little for our sakes. It’s just the beginning of the story of Story’s life. It’s just the beginning of our lives on this Easter Day.

Easter Story

This is the message of Easter. It ain’t over until God Almighty says it’s over. And, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the story continues. And this sermon continues, not just here in church on Easter, but in your life for the rest of your life. God is not done with us yet. And honestly, we are not done with God yet. This isn’t the last chapter neither of our lives nor the life of this faithful church. It’s the first.

Perhaps, that’s the reason we should never give up the name “’First’ Chinese Baptist Church.” On this day, Easter Sunday, it’s the first chapter of the story of the First Chinese Baptist Church.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! The story continues.

Let us pray.

We thank you, Lord God, for a story that continues today. We thank you for the Risen Jesus. We praise you for the opportunity for a changed world and a changed life. This story, your story, is unfinished—because it is our story, and continues to be written in our lives even today. Praise and glory and honor and thanksgiving be given unto you, now and forevermore. Amen.