You Don’t have to Believe Anything—Mark 16: 1-7
Easter Sunday March 31, 2024
One of the challenges of being a preacher in the United Church of Canada is you spend so much time trying to explain the unexplainable (healings, miracles, resurrection) that you only have a little time left to get to the heart of the message—how we live out this improbable faith. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? When it comes to religion, the rubber hits the road in our lives. For that, we don’t need the self-satisfaction of sophisticated explanations or for that matter the false security of biblical innerancy—the bible as a book of facts and answers. We don’t need second hand beliefs. For life’s deepest mysteries and most profound moments, explanations and facts won’t do. That’s what liberalism and fundamentalism have both gotten wrong about scripture. You see, on Easter Sunday scripture isn’t a historical accounting or an explanation of resurrection, it’s an invitation into the experience of resurrection.
One of my favourite quotes about the Christian faith comes from American Methodist Will Willimon; “Jesus didn’t come offering us information about God, Jesus came offering us a relationship with God.” Willimon is saying that faith does not depend on believing anything; it depends on accepting the offer of a relationship with God. That offer always involves surrender, surrendering what we think is important, what we feel entitled to, sometimes what we believe, so that God can do something new in our lives, for the sake of love.
Author and doctor Rachel Naomi Remen tells the story of a young orthodox Rabbi whose twelve-year-old daughter had cancer. The young Rabbi was a very observant man, so when his daughter’s final treatment fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar, he tried to re-schedule. On Yom Kippur it is forbidden for Orthodox Jews among other things to ride in cars or use electricity. The doctor said it could not be done, the timing of the treatments were critical to the recovery of the Rabbi’s daughter. Angrily the young Rabbi said that his daughter would not go. He was insistent, but finally after much badgering from the doctor, the Rabbi said he would refer the matter to a more senior Rabbi, sort of a spiritual elder. The doctor did not hear from the young Rabbi so on that morning of Yom Kippur she walked into the hospital with some trepidation, but sitting there in the waiting room were the young Rabbi, his wife, and their daughter. With much relief in her voice the doctor said, “I am surprised to see you Rabbi, what changed your mind?” The girl’s father said that he had written to the more senior Rabbi and as soon as this man received the letter, he called him right away and told the young Rabbi he was to order a taxi to come to the house on the morning of Yom Kippur. When the taxi arrived, he was to accompany his daughter to her treatment. The younger Rabbi said to the doctor that he had expressed doubts about this course of action that would involve breaking religious law. The senior Rabbi insisted that he accompany his daughter so that she would know that even the most pious and upright man in her life, her father, may ride on the holiest day of the year for the purposes of preserving her life. The senior Rabbi said that it was important that the daughter not feel separated from God by this exception to the law. Such a feeling might interfere with her healing.1
God is in the healing business, which is to say, the relationship business. Belief can only take you so far. If you want to go deeper you have to surrender, take that leap into the unknown. It’s the relationship that matters. The young rabbi, as hard as it was, in letting go of his belief and convictions for the sake of his daughter took that leap. He surrendered into a place of unknowing and he created space for God to do something new in his life and bring healing to his daughter. Beliefs are helpful when they open us to the relationship. If they don’t do that, they aren’t worth much. To paraphrase Paul, we need to be watchful that we don’t become so attached to the knowledge that puffs up, that we forsake the love that builds up. 2
Jesus surrendered himself to that Love, to the relationship, and it cost him his life, as eventually the way of Love ran up against the narrow interests and the power of the religious and political authorities of his day. But death wasn’t enough to kill the relationship. That’s the perspective of the writers of the Jesus stories, that the relationship continued. The stories aren’t about documenting facts that need to be believed or explained, but rather testimony to the ongoing presence of Jesus in their communities. Always keep in mind that the gospels, the Jesus stories, were written decades after Jesus’ time on earth. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are writing from the perspective of communities that grew and flourished after Jesus’ death. These were communities where slaves and heads of households were equals, where women were leaders, where possessions were shared, where widows and orphans were looked after, where men refused to serve in the Roman army. The resurrection of Jesus is simply the experience of the writers of the Jesus stories—Jesus lives.
“He is not here”, the divine messenger said, he is not in this tomb, you are looking in the wrong place, he is alive, look for him among the living. In John’s version of the story the risen Jesus is mistaken for a gardener by Mary Magdalene. In reflecting on this, Barbara Brown Taylor, the American preacher notes, “never get so focused on the empty tomb that you forget to speak to the gardener.”3 That’s good advice, because the truth of Easter will not be found in facts and explanations, but in relationship. Don’t look back at what happened, but ahead to where God is leading. Explanations and beliefs are at best only a memory of someone else’s experience of the relationship many times removed and faith by proxy is a dead religion.4 Don’t look for explanations, look for the relationship.
1 Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, pp. 277-278.
2 1 Corinthians 1:8.
3Escape From the Tomb, “The Christian Century,” https://www.religion-online.org/article/escape-from-the- tomb-jn-201-18/
4 Francois Gerard, Going On A Journey, 1991, Self Published, Waterloo, ON, p. 51
Let’s resist the temptation to defend or explain the resurrection. There’s not much hope in that. Hope comes in trusting the one who is leading the way—that is faith. Jesus came offering a relationship with God, not information about God. The tomb is empty, he is not there, do you believe it? It doesn’t matter. Do you trust it? The answer makes all the difference. The living God awaits. This is grace. “He has been raised, he is not here”. Let’s leave the empty tomb of our beliefs, answers and explanations and join the Holy One who has gone ahead of us. In the words of Mark’s faith story, there we will see him, and continue this improbable journey of faith. May it be so.
Rev. Joe Gaspar