Embracing the Journey: Living in God's Love

May be seated.

I know many Sundays I say I'm delighted to be here with you, and I have to say today I am really delighted to be here with you because Thursday morning, Dr. Jennifer and I were gathered in my office trying to figure out who was going to be left on our staff. Pastor Philip got sick earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Dr. Meg went home sick. Pastor Pam had a doctor's visit Thursday morning, and at that point, we thought, who knows what we're going to find out at this point?

So Dr. Jennifer was in my office with diagrams and plans for if both of us were here Sunday morning, if I was here by myself, if she was here by herself, and we realized neither one of us could do music. So Dr. Nate said, "I can take care of music if y'all will have a sermon and some prayers."

So the fact that we have the people that we do this morning, I just feel overwhelmed with the amount of staff and help we have today. Sometimes things just don't turn out the way we think or imagine they will, and sometimes that surprises us in pleasant ways. Sometimes it surprises us, and we're not sure what to do.

Have you ever been watching a movie and you feel like this story is about to draw to a close, only to still be sitting in the theater an hour later wondering when is this thing ever going to end? I read a lot of books on Kindle, and on my Kindle, I can't always tell how many pages there are left. Sometimes I will lose half an hour trying to figure out, am I ever going to finish this book, or am I just going to delete it and move on to the next one?

Or maybe you've just simply found yourself in a sanctuary one day and thought, that preacher has missed two, maybe three excellent stopping points. [Laughter]

Sometimes things just don't end the way we think they're going to end or when we think they're going to end. Sometimes the end causes us to go back to the beginning and see everything in a new way and to see that what we thought was the end is really just a point along the journey.

My favorite comedian, Nate Bargatze, has a story about a movie that I think does this beautifully. The movie is "The Sixth Sense." If you've seen it, okay, I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but the movie's 25 years old. If you haven't seen it yet, it's on you. Even if you haven't seen it, you probably know the most famous line from the movie: "I see dead people."

The storyline is this young boy who has these encounters with spirits of people who have died, and he is put in touch with this child therapist who's trying to help him make sense of what these encounters mean. They're not harming him, and the therapist is trying to help the boy understand maybe part of what's happening is he's being asked to help these spirits let go.

What we learn just before the end of the movie is the therapist is dead. He's the one the boy looks at and says, "I see dead people." In that moment, they do a recap of some key parts in the movie where you suddenly realize, oh, that's what was really going on in that scene.

But all of us, the first time we saw that movie, were just shocked when we realized this character is dead. Because particularly if you've been married more than six months, when you were watching that movie, most of us thought, you know, after the opening scene, this therapist gets shot. We see him get shot, right? But most of the movie, he has encounters with this boy and then encounters with his wife.

The wife never talks to him. Often, when the therapist comes into the room and he'll say something, she just gets up and leaves. Most of us sat there and thought, I know what this is. This is a movie about marriage and how sometimes it's hard, and sometimes even when you get shot, it's your fault. That made more sense to us than that this guy is dead.

But once we get that line in the movie, once we realize, suddenly all these other things—the encounters with the wife—we realize the wife is in mourning. She's grieving the loss of her husband. We understand that the only other person the therapist talks to for the rest of the movie is this young boy, and the boy is trying to help him.

Sometimes things don't end where we think they should. Sometimes they don't end the way we think they should. Sometimes we're called to go back and see everything in a new light.

The way Mark ends his gospel is kind of like that. We've been journeying through the gospel of Mark together since I arrived in July and talking about these journeys with Jesus as a model of what it means to be a disciple. Today, we're going to read the end of Mark's gospel, and part of what Mark helps us understand is it's really just an invitation to continue the journey.

I'm going to read from Mark chapter 16, the first eight verses:

"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. Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, 'Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?'

When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 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. 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.'

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 word of God for the people of God.

Let us pray.

God, by the same Spirit that caused these words to be written and preserved for us, open now our hearts and minds that we might hear through these words the good news that you would speak into our hearts and our lives this day. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen.

Perhaps the first way Mark's ending is surprising is hard for many of us in this room to really grasp. But these women who go to the tomb that first Easter are expecting to find a dead body. They were the women who were last to see him on the cross. They saw him taken down from the cross and placed in his grave as the Sabbath was beginning. They saw that tomb sealed with a large stone.

As soon as the Sabbath was over, they rushed out to buy spices to anoint his body for its final resting. The next morning, as the sun's rising, they go to the grave early in the morning. Even as they are headed there, they are consumed with worry over this large stone and ask, "Who will help us roll the stone away? How are we going to get to his body?"

They were afraid and consumed with thoughts that the stone was going to keep them from their teacher, their friend, their rabbi. When they get there, they are surprised to see that the stone has been rolled away. They are invited to look at the place where his dead body was but are told, "He is not here."

It's not at all what they were expecting. It is surprising news that stops them in their tracks. They thought the tomb was the final resting place, the end of the journey, but they're being told that not even that large stone could contain the power of God. That what they thought was a huge obstacle keeping them from their friend was nothing that God couldn't handle.

Whenever I hear this part of Mark's gospel, I think about how many times we in our lives get consumed with fear and worry that something is so insurmountable that it's going to keep us from God's presence, that it is somehow going to cut us off from God's love.

The story of the stone being rolled back is meant to let us all know that there is nothing now that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Sometimes we feel like things we have done in our past are such a huge barrier that they can't be overcome, or maybe things that we know God would want us to do that we haven't done with our life are like a huge wall that blocks God out.

The scene of these women going to that open tomb is a reminder, an invitation for all of us to know that that doesn't have to be the end. That doesn't have to be the stopping place. It can be the place where we are invited into a new relationship, a new understanding of God's love for us, directing us out to continue to live our lives in relationship with God.

But it's a shocking story. He's not here, for they knew he had died. The second thing they are told is he's gone ahead of you. He is in Galilee, and go and expect to encounter him there. Suddenly, we go back through the gospel of Mark and realize there has been this tension almost from the very beginning of the gospel between Jesus and those who would be his followers.

So often they want to hold Jesus in; they want to fix Jesus in certain places, and Jesus seems to always want to move out, to move his mission forward, to go and tell others of the message God has sent him to proclaim.

On his first day in ministry in Capernaum, Jesus goes to the home of Simon Peter, and he heals Simon's mother-in-law. Then Mark says he spends the rest of the evening healing and curing those who would come and gather in Simon's house. The next morning, Jesus gets up early, and he goes off to spend some time in prayer, and the disciples go searching for him.

The words Mark used in that section of scripture are almost the same way he describes these women going to the tomb searching for Jesus. When Peter and the other disciples reached Jesus, they say, "There's a crowd back in Capernaum. They want you to come back. They want you to continue doing the things you were doing yesterday. We've got a good show going on here, so let's go back and continue doing it."

And Jesus says, "Oh no, we have a mission to go to all the surrounding towns and villages." Then Mark says they go throughout the whole region of Galilee, preaching and healing those who are sick.

It helps us understand in a new way that encounter Jesus had with Peter later when Jesus had asked, "Who do people say that I am?" and Peter said, "You are the Christ." Then he starts talking about his suffering, death, and resurrection, and Peter says, "Well, that's not really the kind of Messiah we wanted."

And Jesus is saying, "No, we've got to go in ways and places sometimes that you may not feel comfortable, sometimes places you may not feel drawn to, but that's where God's mission is calling us."

And here on this first Easter, these early disciples of Jesus, these women who we learn have also been following him from the time he was in Galilee, are told he's gone out there. Nothing can hold him back. He's already out there ahead of you, and if you will go, expect to encounter him as you work in his mission in the world.

Years ago, a friend of mine was invited to preach a series of services in a church in South Carolina, and at the end of the week, on the last night after the service was over, people came to greet him and thank him and say goodbye. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed this gentleman off in the corner on the edge of the crowd, obviously wanting to talk to him but obviously not wanting to do it in the presence of others.

Gradually, my friend made his way apart from the crowd towards this gentleman, and as they approached one another, the gentleman was just enthusiastic and shared that the night before, in the middle of the service, there was something that happened, and somehow he came to understand God's love for him in a new way and had committed himself to live in God's love and to share God's love with others.

My friend knew this was all very new for this gentleman, but in the midst of the conversation, the gentleman said something that sort of caught my friend's attention. He said, "Preacher, what I just want you to know is last night I got Jesus."

In a very pastoral way, in a way that just sort of helped maybe set a direction as a true disciple of Jesus Christ, my friend said, "Maybe a better way to say that is last night Jesus got you."

The two things sound very similar; just a little word separates them. But what a world of difference it is to live as one who thinks, "I got Jesus," or one who thinks, "Jesus has me."

Sometimes the disciples of Jesus can think we've got God in a box. We've got God all figured out, and if God doesn't act the way we think God should, or God doesn't do the things we think God should, or others don't accept God the way we think they should, then it's just not right.

But those who understand that Jesus has us understand that he's still the one setting the direction. He's still the one calling us into his mission in the world. He's still the one expecting us to encounter him as we join his work in the world.

He is not here; he's gone to Galilee. Go and expect to encounter him.

Now, if you were following in your Bible or the pew Bibles as I was reading this morning, you probably noticed—or those of you who read ahead—you get your 500 extra points if you read the whole gospel. Not sure about you, David, but the rest of you, you get your 500 points.

And you've probably noticed, "Well, Pastor Max, when I read the gospel of Mark, it doesn't really end at verse 8. There's some other verses." A lot of our newer Bibles set those verses apart and say, "Well, here's another possible ending," and "here's an even longer other possible ending."

The reason it's written that way is our earliest copies of the Gospel of Mark end at verse 8. But if you really hear that, it's a little unnerving. It sort of sets us on edge.

Let me read verse 8 again: "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."

And we hear that and say, "It can't end that way." We know the other gospel stories. We have heard the Easter story in Matthew and Luke and John. We know that there's an encounter with women even before they get back to the other disciples. We know that women go back and tell the other disciples, and Peter and John have a foot race to get to the tomb first.

We know that they had to tell, but Mark just stops at that place. It seemed to bother even people in the early church, and it's later centuries where we start to get copies of Mark with those other endings. What they kind of reflect are synopses or summaries of what you would hear in Matthew and Luke and John's gospel.

But I think, as far as we know, it really probably did end at verse 8—not because Mark didn't know about the resurrection, not because Mark didn't know about stories of Mary encountering Jesus or Peter and John encountering Jesus in Galilee later on.

But I think Mark is kind of looking across the text at us even today, looking across the centuries and saying, "That's right, it can't end there. It can't. So what are you going to do about it?"

And suddenly we see that from the very first words of the Gospel, Mark is inviting us to be a part of a journey with Jesus. Mark is inviting us to accept the good news of how God's love conquers the grave and God was determined that nothing would separate us from his love.

God was inviting us into God's mission in the world to tell others that we can live in the presence of God's spirit in God's Kingdom here and now, and that the story didn't end at the tomb, but that Christ is out there loose in the world, and we are invited to join in his work and to go and tell others.

Thanks be to God for the never-ending journey. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As we sing our closing hymn today, if you are at a point where you want to make a new commitment or a commitment to that journey with Jesus or a commitment to being a part of John's Creek United Methodist Church, you're welcome to join me down front or any of our pastors. We would love to talk to you about that journey.