Easter Encounter | Resurrection Mystery By Joel Miller

Mark 16:1-8, ( ), (9-20) – three readings

In the oldest complete manuscripts we have, Mark’s Gospel ends at chapter 16, verse 8, with the women fleeing the tomb.

The vast majority of later manuscripts contain a longer ending of Mark, which appears in our Bibles, often with footnotes giving this information I’m saying now.

As some point, a shorter supplemental ending was also written.  Some ancient manuscripts contain the original ending, plus the shorter ending, plus the longer ending, which is how they appear in our Bibles.  We will hear these read now.     

Read: Mark 16:1-8, ( ), (9-20)

When I say Christ is risen! you say Christ is risen Indeed! 

Christ is risen. 

Christ is risen. 

There’s a joke I heard a while back about the difference between a lawyer and a preacher.  The difference between a lawyer and a preacher is that a lawyer spends all day looking at a stack of papers trying to condense it down to a few paragraphs, while a preacher spends all day looking at a few paragraphs trying to expand it into a stack of papers. 

It’s probably one of the very few jokes where the lawyer comes out looking pretty good. 

With all respect to attorneys and other skilled synthesizers of information, Easter invites, even requires all of us to live into the reality of the resurrection with the mind of the preacher.

Because all we have to go on in the New Testament about Easter morning is just a few paragraphs.  Or, as we’re wrapping up Mark’s gospel, it could be one paragraph.  This can feel both frustratingly inadequate to our inquiring minds, and perhaps, an enticing doorway into the mystery of the resurrection.

Gathered here in the mystery of this hour.

There are two great mysteries at the end of Mark.  And not…

CMC Scripture and Sermon 03-24-2024 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Sixth Encounter: Acompañarse on the Journey
Text: Mark 11:1-11; 14:3-9
Speaker: Bethany Davey

One year ago, I traveled with a group of fellow seminarians to Chiapas, Mexico.  Throughout our weeks in Mexico’s southernmost state, we met with leaders of  local, grassroots organizations and coalitions who understand their role and the role  of their group as one of accompaniment. We heard this Spanish word over and over  again: acompañarse. Though I fear English translations do not fully encapsulate  the concept’s significance, I understand acompañarse to mean accompany, join  with, travel alongside, be in bodied solidarity. Throughout Chiapas, we  encountered coalitions and individuals committed to accompanying migrant  travelers through the provision of the most basic human needs: food, clean water, a  safe place to rest on the journey. Chiapas’ proximity to the Guatemalan border  means that local communities accompany thousands of migrating people as they  attempt safe passage from South and Central America into Mexico and, perhaps  eventually, the United States. 

Acompañarse. 

This week’s lectionary text invites us into a migratory moment, as Jesus and his  disciples travel into Jerusalem from Jericho. They near the city—the seat of  religious and political power—and we can imagine crowded anticipation, a town  pulsing with energy. It is among this swirling of humanity that Jesus enters, riding on a colt; people cover his pathway with their cloaks and palm fronds as he makes  his way through the crowd. Some biblical scholars suggest that both the use of the  colt and the act of processing held significance for participants and their Jewish  roots. The book of Zechariah in the Hebrew Bible references a humble king, riding  on a colt; Mark’s original audience would have been familiar with this reference,  lending meaning…

CMC Service 03/17/2024 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Fifth Encounter: Good News Amidst Apocalypse
Text: Mark 13:1-8, 14-23, 28-37
Speaker: Joel Miller

Well, welcome to Apocalypse Sunday. 

This passage in Mark is sometimes called the Little Apocalypse.  That’s in relation to the big one, Revelation, the final book of our New Testament.  This apocalyptic sermon of Jesus in Mark 13, and its parallels in Matthew and Luke, is merely one chapter.

So, I guess welcome to Little Apocalypse Sunday, which sounds a little less ominous?

This is a passage that speaks of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the warring of nations, refugees fleeing violence, false prophets, a blooming fig tree, and the importance of being watchful and awake. 

It’s a passage easily misused by authors appealing to an anxious audience about the details of the end of the world, sometimes including dates, even though Jesus says “about that day or hour no one knows” – not even the angels.  Not even Jesus himself. 

Although frequently identified with the future, it’s the chapter that very likely most closely describes the current events faced by Mark’s original audience.  In 66 CE a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem expelled the Romans and their Judean appointees out of the city.  The rebellion spread to surrounding areas.  A Roman contingent came down from Syria but was turned back by the rebels who proceeded to set up their own government.  In the next several years the Romans undertook a scorched earth policy that eventually led to deaths of thousands, the toppling of the Jerusalem temple and people permanently fleeing the city in 70 CE – pretty much everything described in Mark chapter 13. 

Most scholars believe Mark was written in this very window of time, after the rebellion had begun, but perhaps before…

CMC Service 03 10 2024 from Gwen Reiser on Vimeo.

Fourth Encounter: A Good Question
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Speaker: Joel Miller

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost ten years since we did the Twelve Scriptures Project.  For the slightly more than half of you who weren’t around then – or for those who were, but forget the details – the Twelve Scriptures Project was something our denomination, Mennonite Church USA, encouraged congregations to do.  The idea was fairly simple.  Put in the form of question, it was something like: Which twelve scriptures are core to your congregation?  Out of all the teachings in the Bible, which are foundational?

The way we arrived at our twelve was to invite everyone to answer this question for themselves, kids included, leaving it slightly undefined whether the list was your personal twelve scriptures, or what you perceived as the twelve scriptures defining the congregation.  Several Sunday school sessions were used to share these lists, discuss, and compile the results, with the most common mentions becoming our collective Twelve Scriptures.

We then had a worship series covering each scripture, and a colorful artistic display that filled the front of the worship space.  That installation was then translated into a poster, which displayed the Twelve Scriptures and themes they represented.  A large version was in the foyer for many years, now refreshed and moved to the fellowship hall.  Smaller versions are still in Sunday school rooms.  A page on our website is dedicated to the Twelve Scriptures.

If you haven’t seen any of these displays, or just stopped noticing, it’s worth viewing, or viewing again.

It was a meaningful, helpful project, inspired by a meaningful, helpful question: What is the core of our faith?  If we had to boil it all down, what would it…

Third Encounter: Debts and Enemy Lines
Text: Mark 12:1-17
Speaker: Mark Rupp

There is a strange stillness in the air. A moment full of anticipation, weariness, hope, and a good bit of fear. The stars shine down across the expanse known as No-Man’s Land, the frozen ground between two trenches that bears the marks of violence momentarily paused. The smells of blood and ash linger in the air, or perhaps only in the memory. Two men in uniform approach slowly, tentatively, from either side. Hearts racing, they gain a bit of confidence as their first steps are met not with violence but with curiosity.

One of the men reaches inside his pocket. In that brief instant, the other silently braces himself to react. But the hand emerges not with a weapon but with a cigar as the first man speaks the words, “Fröhliche Weihnachten.” Merry Christmas.

This is the scene that Melissa Florer-Bixler uses to open her book, How to Have An Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace. It is one more fictionalized retelling of the Christmas Truce that happened in 1914 during WWI when a brief armistice took place between soldiers of opposing sides. If nothing else this pause in combat allowed each side to care for the wounded and tend to the dead. Many accounts of that day talk of soldiers singing carols across enemy lines. Some diaries and journals recount tales of swapping gifts, giving haircuts, and perhaps even playing soccer together in the fabled space between the trenches. 

There is enough evidence that this brief truce certainly happened, though there is no one version of the event, and–as Florer-Bixler is quick to point out–this event has been deeply mythologized in our culture, held up as the epitome of what it means to encounter one’s…