Job 12:7-10

Mark 16:9-19

 

This morning’s reading from the Gospel of Mark is a strange one.

Yes, some of it sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?

The account of the disbelief of the other followers of Jesus when Mary Magdalene tells them that Jesus is alive has echoes of the Gospel of Luke when it tells us that the disciples regarded the women’s resurrection announcement as “an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

The lines about Jesus appearing to two disciples as they walk in the country recalls Luke’s story of Cleopas and another disciple encountering the risen and unrecognized Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

Jesus’ upbraiding his followers for their lack of faith—well, it reminds me of that encounter with “doubting” Thomas as the end of the Gospel of John.

And the charge to “Go into all the world” sounds a lot like a truncated version of the risen Christ’s “Great Commandment: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” that ends the Gospel of Matthew.

Vaguely familiar.

But then we also hear about the followers of Jesus speaking in new tongues, picking up snakes, and safely drinking poison. This is not the usual fare for Easter Sunday or for these Sundays after Easter in any respectable congregation. And the note in my Bible is clear that those words about snakes and poison “lack New Testament parallels.” They are outside the box.

My sense is that these verses are rarely read in worship—and especially in the polite company of mainline Protestants like us. I’ve been preaching Easter and post-Easter sermons for 33 years now and I’ve never read or preached from this text. It’s just not done—ask your friends.

We’re left wishing that Mark had just ended the whole thing the way heard the story on Easter—with the women running from the tomb and saying nothing because they were afraid. In fact, that’s how most scholars believe Mark’s gospel originally did end. Or they speculate that if it had a longer ending originally, the one we heard this morning is not it. That original ending it has been lost.

But running away in silent fear is hardly a stirring conclusion to the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So it seems that sometime in the early second century, while the early Christian movement was still small and beleaguered, other, more inspiring and seemingly more fitting conclusions were written.

There is “The Shorter Ending of Mark”—just one verse—and it doesn’t even have a number—that seeks to rehabilitate the women by adding: “And all that had been commanded them the women told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”

But that wasn’t good enough for some, so we also have “The Longer Ending of Mark” that we heard today. It is as if at some point an editor of that Gospel thought it needed a better ending and said: “Oh—and another thing…” There’s something else I need to tell you; there’s something more that you need to hear.

And maybe this longer ending of Mark is just what we need to hear as we grapple with the good news of resurrection in our time.

These words come to us today a week after “Earth Day,” as we come to the end of what some call “Earth Month,” because, really, one day just isn’t enough time to save this planet. One month really isn’t either. Since it was our spring music Sunday last week, however, we didn’t really mark “Earth Day.” But as the choir sang, I silently wondered if we can yet do enough to keep the Requiem that they offered from being a lament for the whole planet.

In this context I was struck by the words the risen Christ speaks this morning: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”

The good news of Easter is not just for those of us who call ourselves “Christian.” And when we really listen, we realize that it is not for human beings alone. It is for all creation—ocean and land, stone and sky, plants and animals. As the theologian Paul Tillich affirmed in the middle of the last century: “The Bible speaks again and again of the salvation of the world, as it speaks of the creation of the world.”

We are living in a time when we see and feel the results of our profound separation from the world. At times it seems that a war is going on. Earth suffers because of human sin. Advances in agriculture that feed more people result in dangerously polluted waterways. Fracking gives us more fuel—and earthquakes. And the abundance of fossil fuel is leading to greater and faster climate change.

Sometimes it feels as if the earth is fighting back with violent storms, bitter, unseasonal cold, and—soon to come again—baking unseasonal heat. Sometimes it seems as though the earth is crying out with us for the resurrection promise of the restoration and transformation of all things.

“Proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”

God promises new life to all creation, not just to us alone. We wait together in hope. Indeed, hope is the starting point not only for becoming the whole women and men that God desires us to be but for working toward the world as God desires it to be.

Science, economics, and politics can help us as we navigate the new world in which we live.

Scientists continue to sound the alarm. They warn us of an increase of about 9 degrees in the average temperature in this century. This will be accompanied by “feedback effects” such as an increase in methane, another greenhouse gas, released from beneath the warming tundra, which will only make matters worse.

With the help of economists we are facing the high financial cost of climate change, which will most likely make the United States and the rest of the world poorer than they would be otherwise. With the help of economists we also understand that moves to drastically reduce carbon emissions can be economically viable.

At the same time, it is readily apparent that we lack the political will to take action to effectively deal with these new realities.

Science tells us of our problem. Economics speaks to us of possibilities. Politics offers the yet unrealized hope of large-scale action.

A few years ago, Bill McKibben said: “Global warming is no longer a threat at all.” And that sounded pretty comforting and optimistic from such a well-known environmental activist. But then he continued: “Global warming is no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.”

We thought that our children and grandchildren would be the ones to deal with the effects of climate change. And they will. But we are slowly realizing that we who are the adults now hae to be the adults and address these radical changes. Climate change is our problem—now.

McKibben puts it this way: “The earth has changed in profound ways, ways that have already taken us out of the sweet spot where humans so long thrived. We’re every day less the oasis and more the desert. The world hasn’t ended, but the world as we know it has—even if we don’t quite know it yet…It’s a different place. A different planet.

We are challenged to find ways to live on this new planet—now and in the coming decades.

We are challenged to find ways to live in this new reality—now and in the coming decades.

And given our current political climate it may that a religious vision can give us the will we need to live fully in world in which climate change is already the new reality.

But this is not all. There is a “longer ending” here as well.

Another thing…

We need to hear again the message of the resurrection today—it is meant to be good news for all creation.

We recognize, do we not, that there has been within Christianity a mistaken though powerful train of thought that denied the importance of life on earth, that put heaven on our minds, and led us to ignore if not abuse the earth since it will pass away. We heard the good news as if it was for us and us alone. Looking toward another life, we polluted the air and the water in this one.

But resurrection is not about a life to come. Resurrection is now. This peculiar longer ending to the Gospel of Mark does not focus our attention on angels or afterlife or heavenly glory. Instead it tells of talking with friends, of walking in the country, or eating together—that is about how we live with each other in the day to day reality of our earthly existence.

And even when it does seem to get, well, strange, with promises of handling snakes or drinking poison and not being harmed, perhaps we can hear this in a fresh way in our current context. These words seem to speak of an end to the enmity between humans and the rest of creation. They give us a fresh vision of confronting and dealing with all that hurts and destroys and find ways to bring health and wholeness to all creation. They lead us to ask: “How do we ‘drink’ the deadly poison that we have spread over this earth so that we and all creation might recover?”

We have not been honest about the destruction and permanent devastation we are bringing to our world. Greed has let quick profit take precedence over long-term care of the environment. One prayer of confession puts it this way: “The profit and pleasures we pursue lay waste the land and pollute the seas.” We face a problem that is global in scope. To find solutions we need to see both our common predicament and our common human worth.

Our own transformation from death to life—as those who both hear and announce the good news of the resurrection—informs our efforts to bring new life and transformation out of the devastation we have brought to our planet. We might finally see the wisdom in loving our neighbors as ourselves. We might at last see the wisdom in caring for creation.

The word “religion,” you will remember, comes from a Latin word that means “to bind together again.” Religion binds us not only to those with whom we agree, not only to those with whom we share common beliefs. It creates powerful bonds that hold us together with all people as God’s creatures. And, if we will let it, our best religious impulses can create powerful bonds that hold us together as creatures of the living God with the rest of God’s good creation.

Those simple religious practices by which we express our faith—worship, prayer, generosity, hospitality, and service—are ways that we reconnect with each other and with our neighbors. They might also become practices through which we recover our connection with all creation. The good news of Easter, the joyful announcement that Christ is risen, do not set our sights on some heavenly afterlife. In faith we look toward and pray for the coming of God’s realm, in which the will of God will be done, as we pray together each week, on earth as it is in heaven. Depending on how you understand those words, this world will be so transformed by the work of God or by the followers of Christ that chaos and death will be no more. Either way, that vision carries the sense that this present world and what we do in it and to it matters.

We still have a unique calling and responsibility as stewards of God’s creation. Yes, we have failed tremendously in that responsibility.

But this earth is still in our care.

We are still called to announce god news to whole creation.