John invites a conversation about why Mark’s account of the resurrection so short. Is something missing, or did Mark do this deliberately? Is he inviting a conversation about how Jesus went ahead to where his hearers were and are?
He then uses a quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber to explore such a conversation might include.
Nadia says that “Easter is “a story about flesh and dirt and bodies and confusion…. God is interested in making me new. And new is not perfect. In the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics, and reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I admit I am wrong and every time I don’t mention it when I am right. New is every fresh start, every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never see coming, never even hope for, but ends up being the thing we needed all along. It happens to all of us. God simply keeps bending down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig ourselves through our violence, our lies, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over” (Pastrix, chapter 17.)
Here at Hori Tapu we stand on a site where God reached down in the dirtiness of our greed and war, into the graves that had literally dug , and offered life in acts of mercy, compassion, love.
So on this Easter morning, what are our stories of God reaching into our lives and loving us back to life?
The notes for this sermon can be found here