So Where Do We Go Now?

The sun has just broken through the mist early that morning. And at the tomb, in the first blush of dawn, three women hear a most unexpected announcement. “He is not here. Go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him ...”

They will see him in Galilee. Jesus could have picked anywhere and he chose Galilee.

What if you or I were told our time was short? What would you choose? Where would you go? What would you do?

That was the question we were asking around the table. Our movie group had taken up three tables at Don Cherry’s. We had just seen Michael McGowan’s One Week, a film about a young man who has been told he does not have long to live. He spends his valuable time travelling west. He stops at the significant Canadian cultural shrines: the big nickel, the Wawa goose, the world’s biggest hockey stick. If you’ve done the pilgrimage west then you probably made the stops and got the pictures. This is the Canadian bucket list, places to see before it’s too late.

And if you don’t have a list of the places you still need to see, you can buy a book with the 100 places you must see before you die.

I once stopped in to see a man who had just come through a serious operation. He said, “When I get out of here, the first thing I am going to do is fly over to Egypt and see the pyramids. It’s what I have been dreaming about my whole life. When I get mobile again, I’m not waiting any longer, that’s where I want to go.”

For Jesus, the place to go was Galilee. Why would Mark tell us that he is going back to Galilee? After all Jerusalem was the centre of the action. There were hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in the area for Passover. One sermon on the steps of the Temple and he could have stirred up an army of supporters.

Instead, Mark says, Jesus goes to Galilee. Why Galilee? It was nothing special. Ask anyone from the big cities. Most people looked down there noses at the place.

The Romans considered it a hotspot for radicals. The freedom fighters, the zealots, had their home base in the hills and caves of Galilee.

Traditional Jews disliked it because the Galileans were not strict enough. They were too wishy-washy. They called it “Galilee of the Gentiles.” Galilee lay at the crossroads of trade and travel. And the influences of other cultures and beliefs meant Galilean Jews were a little different breed.

There was nothing to like about Galilee. Unless you lived there. Then it was home. It was home to the disciples when one day Jesus arrived in their village and they began to follow him. It was here in Galilee that Jesus spent most of his time. In Mark’s gospel he only travels to Jerusalem once and that was where his ministry ended. It was in Galilee that Jesus’ ministry began and begins again.

The Easter messenger says to the women. “He is not here. You won’t find him in the cemetery. You won’t find him in the streets of Jerusalem or the Temple. He is going on before you to Galilee.”

And in what way is he going on ahead in Galilee? Is he going to be there as a flesh and blood human being, someone you can literally touch? Or is it his presence, his spirit that will continue on with the disciples?

Easter Sunday is the most important day for Christians. And there are different ways to understand the central point of resurrection.

Some Christians take these stories as historically factual and accurate in every detail. This means that if you had been there at the tomb that day in person, then you would have seen exactly what the gospels describe. In this case in Mark, you’d see a young man in a white robe.

The trouble with that approach is that we have four accounts and they all differ: Mark has one messenger at the tomb, Luke has two angels, Matthew has an angel and a number of guards, John has two angels and Jesus himself.

If we take the gospels literally, we have to do some fancy footwork to say they are all historically true. But if you get the underlying message that Jesus’ spirit continues to live, then you don’t need the dodgy footwork.

Marcus Borg describes a dialogue he had with a conservative theologian who believed that the Easter stories could only mean the resurrection of a physical body. The conservative scholar ended his defence of the literal and factual truth of Easter stories by saying, “In addition to all these historical arguments for being confident that Jesus rose physically and bodily from the dead, there is one more reason I know these stories are true - and that’s because I walk with Jesus every day.”

Borg then had his chance to express his beliefs. At the end of this he came back to the other’s closing comments and said, “I accept completely the truth of your statement that you walk with Jesus every day. Now if I were to follow you around with a camera, would there be a time during the day when I could get a picture of the two of you? Of course that’s silly. But my point is, I think your statement is really true, even though I don’t think for a minute that it is literally true.”

The Easter stories are the same. They are powerful metaphors for the experience people have of the Spirit of God in their lives.

But however we interpret these stories, the most important point is, what do these accounts mean. If for you Easter means the tomb was empty and the body was gone, fine, now what does the story mean? If you believe Jesus’ appearances could have been videotaped,fine, now what does it mean? If you see the whole thing as a parable or you are not sure what you believe about these stories, the question remains. What do the stories mean?

Often debates about the resurrection are all about whether the stories are historically accurate or not. And when we have come up with the right answer for ourselves, the discussion is over. But that’s when the discussion should begin. What does Easter mean for you?

The central Easter message in all four gospels is - Jesus lives. The disciples continue to experience Jesus after his death, although in a very different way. Now he seems to have the ability to enter locked rooms and encourage t. He is completely unpredictable. He vanishes in a moment and he promises to be with them to the end of the age. He is a figure of the present, not the past. And his love for them is utterly dependable. The presence and strength the disciples drew from before the crucifixion, continues to be experienced by them after the resurrection.

Mark captures the essence of the story when the messenger tells the three women, “You will see him.” “He is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.”

Jesus is on the loose. He is loose in Galilee. That’s what this story means for me.

Jesus is no longer safely tucked away in a cemetery. He is not left behind in some far off exotic location, like Jerusalem. For the disciples from Galilee, he is now back in their very midst, in the middle of the places the disciples live and work and play. As he is for us.

In Mark, the resurrection is not primarily a belief about life after death. It’s first of all a vindication of Jesus’ life in this world. It’s a call to discipleship. In Mark we are told to follow Jesus in the here and now. And we are reminded that he is always just a little bit out front. If we want to follow him then we’d better get moving because he’s already gone on ahead of us. If we stop to look back at how it used to be, we’ll get left behind.

The decision we make to follow this Jesus is both a choice about a personal path and a choice with social implications. By following him, we are taking his teaching and vision for our world, as the cornerstone of our lives. We are making his passion for God’s kingdom, our passion too. We are making his prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, our prayer too.

And what a powerful prayer it is. Each time we pray these words, we declare - this is the kind of people we want to become:

- a people working for God’s kingdom of justice here on earth where we live.

- a community that sees our daily bread as a gift from God to be shared.

- a faith family willing to practice forgiveness.

I love the way the story in Mark ends. It ends in the middle of a sentence. The sentence and the story are unfinished. “They said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” What an honest ending. We know they got past their fear enough to eventually say something. All the disciples’ failings do not end the story. The story goes on through us and in spite of us.

A fresh start can always be made. The risen Christ appeared to disciples in the most ordinary of places: at breakfast, one evening when they are huddled behind closed doors, on the beach while they are at work. In short it happens wherever we are.

So keep watching the road ahead, for Jesus will always be - just a little ahead of us.

May it be so for us.

with thanks to:

Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Michael McGowan, William Willomon,

Where Do We Go Now? - Easter Sermon

Posted on: 04/12/2009 14:57

So Where Do We Go Now?

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