Death has been Swallowed

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Texts:

Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Mark 16:1-8

We have journeyed the road from Golgotha to the cross, from Lent to Easter, from death to resurrection.  Though we make this journey each year, each year we bring with us different experiences, a year’s worth of life, a year’s worth of blessings and a year’s worth of challenges.  We journey with Peter, with the other disciples, and with Mary, and with them we experience the joy of victory over death.

^“8 he will swallow up death for ever.
 Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken. 
⁹ It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

We have come with our bumps and bruises, with our scraped knees, with our false notions of piety, with our inability to make ourselves righteous, and behold our risen Lord.  Death has been swallowed up forever.  Today, we learn the answer to, “What is truth?”  The truth is that death is only a pretender victor, that sin only tells the half-truth of what it is to be human.  The truth is that we have waited, however impatiently, and that he has saved us.  The truth is that our God has been revealed in Christ on the Cross, in our Crucified Savior and risen Lord.  The truth is that Good Friday is only part of the story; the tragedy gives way to the alleluia.

Today, we join with Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome and say the first alleluia as though it were the first alleluia of creation.  It is today that God’s resounding Yes to humanity’s No has come.  Yes, you do have a savior.  Yes, you do have a Lord.  Yes, you do have a God.  Yes, you do have a king.  Just as it has been proclaimed, it has happened.  When the promises of God seemed to be a lie, they have become more true than we could have ever imagined.

Heaven cannot hold him, nor can death bind him.  Sin cannot threaten him, and evil cannot overpower him.  This is God for you.  And still, we, with Mary Magdalene, with Mary mother of James, and with Salome, still turn away in fear at the power of this God, more powerful than we had imagined, more great than we had hoped, more real than we have ever grasped.  I think this is why I love the end of Mark’s Gospel.  I love that it leaves everything hanging.  There is a tangible reality to this response to the resurrection.  It’s honest, it’s raw, and it’s emotional.

“And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” speaks to the continued miracle of God.  It continues coming, as we marvel at the wonder that the message ever got out.  That someone, 2,000 years ago, bothered to write this story down because they knew that it was the greatest Story ever told, that countless martyrs and saints have protected and guarded this word with their very lives that we might read it today, that though people have used this Word to their own ends, it does not detract from the truth of the story.  This is the story after which all stories are written: it is a tragedy; it is a comedy; it is a drama.  It is a story that, when read, insinuates itself into your life, like the first flowers of spring: once you have seen one, you cannot help but always keep looking for other signs of spring.  The first buds on the first trees make us look to each tree for new life.  The first resurrection from the dead makes us look for signs of the resurrection all around us.  “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” yet the story exploded out of them, the sentences running together, with uncontrollable laughter and tears clouding the story from understanding.

And the truth is, we can’t really understand it.  I’m not sure we are meant to.  In the end, God for us is impossible to understand.  At the depths of the ugliness of humanity, God brought beauty beyond belief.  At the depth of the depravity of humanity, God brings reconciliation through revitalization.  When the whole world had gone dark, God brought the unquenchable eternal light of salvation.

Death has been swallowed up forever.  In your baptism, your death has been swallowed up.  You, children of God, will not die but will be resurrected with Christ into new life.  This is God’s promise to you: before you know what it is to love God, God loves you.  Before you understand forgiveness of sin, God has forgiven you.  Though the stories of your lives have yet to be written, the end of the story has already been determined.  By the power of Christ’s death and resurrection, I proclaim to you the end of the story: the end of the story is that death has no power over you.  Death does not know victory and life does not know defeat.  Whatever your story is, however much of it remains to be written, this much is sure and true: the end has been determined, once for all, and the story ends not with death but with life because God is for you.  Amen, and Amen.  Thanks be to God.