It's Your Move

Mark 16:1-8
Back when I was in junior high school, several of my friends got into Chess, momentarily sweeping me up into their enthusiasm for the game. I really tried to get into Chess, even convincing my parents and grandparents to buy a Chess set for me for my fourteenth birthday.

But Chess involves things I was never very good at...things like logic and strategy, even math. I remember that whenever I’d play against my buddies, some of whom were also jocks who played sports at which I was just as inept as I turned out to be at Chess, I always cringed when they’d move a piece on the board and say, “It’s your move.” I had no idea what to do when they said that, whether I was to make the first move of the game or I was three moves into it, just about the time when they would tell me, “Check.” “It’s your move” can be an intimidating phrase! It’s part of the reason I quit playing Chess.

For centuries now, scholars have debated about just where the Gospel of Mark ends. Some say that it comes to an abrupt and ambiguous halt at verse 8, the last verse of our Gospel lesson for today. Others say that there was another ending beyond these verses that has been lost. Some say that no, verses 9 through 20 in our Bibles today were always there. Others disagree, saying that they were added much later.

I don’t know which of those theories is true, but I do know this: It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to know that however Mark originally ended his telling of the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, he did it with the same sort of abruptness we find at the end of our Bible lesson for today.

Consider that possibility for a moment...

Since we started last November looking deeply at Mark’s telling of the Gospel story about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, we’ve noticed that Mark always recounts events in a fast-paced journalistic style. He never uses fifty words when he can use two. The only sermon of Jesus that Mark quotes is made up of nineteen words. (You won't be that lucky this morning, by the way.)

And Mark begins his gospel with a sentence fragment. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” he says. It’s as if Mark was saying that all sixteen chapters of his book are just the beginning of the Gospel story and that even that Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead was simply a part of the beginning of the Gospel—the Good News—of Jesus.

Something more than Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection needs to happen and when we come to Mark 16:8, the last verse in our lesson, it still hasn’t happened. This is what it says: “So they [the three women who went to the tomb on the first Easter] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The women had come to anoint Jesus’ body as would ordinarily have been done before His burial. But there had been no time to do that before the coming of the Sabbath when He died on Good Friday. Now, they’re so stunned and terrified by their encounter with the “young man”--an angel--and his unbelievable news that Jesus had risen from the dead, that they don’t know what to say or do.

At this moment, the moment at which our Bible lesson ends, they haven’t seen the resurrected Jesus, haven’t heard His voice, haven’t seen Him walking among them. They’re asked to believe that what He promised would happen has actually happened, that He really has risen from the dead, giving the hope of everlasting life with God to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus.

I can imagine Mark ending the beginning of his story of Jesus right here and, with a wink, telling all of us, “Now, it’s your move. Will you trust this Jesus, Who never broke a single promise He made, Who healed the sick and cast out demons and raised the dead, Who showed compassion to the prostitutes and the extortionists and the foreigners, Who loved sinners all the way to the cross, and promised new life to all who follow Him?”

That’s the question that the sparse words of Mark’s Gospel put before us today: Though like the women at the end of our Gospel lesson, we haven’t yet seen the risen Jesus, our call is to turn from sin and believe in Jesus, betting our whole lives on Him, just as He gave His whole life for us.

Recent polling shows that most Americans don’t believe in a physical resurrection. They don’t believe that Jesus rose or that those who follow Him will do the same.

Those were probably the sentiments of the women when the angel first told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. But Jesus is willing to risk our disbelief and our rejection today, even as He was when He walked the earth. Just as He did with the women at the tomb, He calls us to dare to believe in Him, to dare to trust and learn for ourselves—not because teachers, preachers, parents, or grandparents have told us so, but to know for ourselves—that Jesus is God, that He did die for us, He did rise for us, He is for us here today, and He calls us to live with Him forever.

Twenty-five years ago, two friends of Ann’s and mine were talking. One, who’d had no connection with Christ or the Church, was going through a very rough time. The other, a committed Christian, was mostly just listening, praying that, when the time was right, God would help make the right words come out. “What would you do?” asked the first friend. “I guess the first thing I would do is pray,” said the other. “Do you really believe all of that is true?” asked the first friend. “I do.” “But what if it isn’t true?” the first asked. With a shrug of the shoulders, the second one said, “What are you out if you do believe and it all turns not to be true?” Believe it or not, those words convinced that first friend—today a committed and deeply involved Christian—to take a chance on the risen Jesus. The only way to know for sure that the risen Jesus is real and there for you is to bet your life on Him, to dare to believe Him when He says that He’s there when we pray, when we worship with others, when we’re Baptized, when we receive Holy Communion, when we serve and witness in Jesus’ Name, and that He’ll be there when this life ends and we rise to live with Him forever.

Another true story, this one about a man who grew up on the streets of Northern Ireland, the son of one parent who was Roman Catholic and of another who was Protestant. He watched as people from those two branches of the Church of Jesus Christ used their religion as an excuse to kill each other during his country's troubles. He was appalled by what he saw people doing and saying in the Name of God. And yet, he found that he couldn't turn away from Jesus. He kept following Jesus and trusting Him. And just look at the world of good that Bono, the lead singer of U2, has done for the victims of AIDS and poverty in Africa because of his connection with Jesus Christ. In faith, he trusts God even if he still hasn't completely found what he's looking for. What might we accomplish as individuals or as a congregation if we moved with that kind of trust in Christ?

One of the things that Mark repeatedly emphasizes in his Gospel is how the promises Jesus makes come true. That’s underscored in our lesson today in the words of the angel who reminds the women that Jesus had already promised the disciples that after He was resurrected, He would meet them in the region close to the Sea of Galilee. “Tell Peter and the others that Jesus has gone ahead of them and will meet them there,” the angel tells the terrified women. Sure enough, the disciples would later find that to be true.

The point is that you can count on the Word of God and the Word of God in the flesh, Jesus. When the word from God is that Jesus Christ is risen, you can believe it. When the word from God is that He brings forgiveness of sin and everlasting life to all who trust in Him, you can count on it.

But you and I can never know these things by hanging back, or by refusing to repent and follow, or by daring God to prove Himself to us. It’s up to us instead to put down our dukes, to dare to believe, and to follow.

Jesus is risen and He calls us to follow Him. In Christ, God has proven that He believes enough in us to die and rise for us. Now, it’s our move. It's our turn to believe in Him, to trust that the risen Savior is willing to stand with us as we live until the end of this age and beyond.

It's our move and each day, heaven waits for our response.