Interstices

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
April 16, 2006
Easter Sunday

Interstices
Mark 16:1-8
Acts 10:34-43

The Easter story cannot end this way:
the women fleeing from the tomb in terror,
saying nothing to anyone.
How can we celebrate Easter with the words,
“for they were afraid”?
There has got to be more.
Mark can’t just put down his pen and say,
“That’s it. The end.”

Matthew tells us the women ran from the tomb in fear,
but he also says they ran with joy;
and then only a little way down the road
they literally ran into the risen Lord himself.
They grabbed hold of him,
as he said to them,“Do not be afraid.”
(Matthew 28:8ff)

Luke gives us not one, but two appearances of Jesus
following the Resurrection.
The first was late in the afternoon
on that first Easter Sunday,
as two disciples walked on the road to Emmaus.
The second was a little later
when he appeared to all the disciples.

John provides us with the most picturesque story,
the one that is the favorite on Easter:
Mary Magdalene found the tomb empty
in the early morning hours on that Sunday.
She ran back to tell Peter and John,
who then raced to be first to see the emptiness.
The men did not know what to make of the tomb,
and left Mary alone in the garden,
where she saw a man she first thought was the gardener,
but who of course was the risen Lord.
She ran back to tell all the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord.”

Matthew, Luke, and John all give us Easter,
but not Mark.
He just drops us, leaves us;
The story is over.
He tells us nothing more about the disciples,
He tells us nothing about anyone seeing the risen Christ.
There is no road to Emmaus,
no Doubting Thomas,
No, “and remember I am with you always,
to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
Nothing,
Nothing,
Just, “… they were afraid”, and then “the end.”

Later editors found this so unsatisfying
that they appended two different endings to Mark’s gospel.
One is called the “Shorter Ending of Mark.”
It is a continuation of the final verse:
“And all that had been commanded them
they 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.”

Now there’s an ending we can live with:
the women went back and told the disciples,
and the disciples believed.
Most important, the resurrected Christ appeared --
appeared to his disciples, instructed them,
and then sent them out into the world
with the gospel, the good news.
That ending gives us Easter!

But even that appended ending still left many unhappy,
so a later editor tacked on 12 verses that we refer to as
“The Longer Ending of Mark.”
This ending matched Luke’s
and again gave some closure to the gospel.

The problem with both the Shorter
and the Longer endings, though,
is that neither of them is considered to have been
part of Mark’s original gospel.
So we are back to Mark’s ending and what to do with it.
We are back to the women fleeing in terror, afraid,
not saying a word to anyone.

Ah, but Mark does give us something.
You heard it, you may even be thinking about it:
The young man dressed in a white robe, sitting in the tomb,
the one who said to the women,
“Do not be alarmed;
you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth,
who was crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here.
…he is going ahead of you to Galilee;
there you will see him,
just as he told you.”
(16:6ff)
“He has been raised;
He is not here;
he is going ahead of you;
you will see him,
just as he told you.”

But the women did not understand.
In their fear, their faith had evaporated,
dried up like a puddle under the hot Judean sun.
For them, as well as the rest of the disciples,
there was no good news;
There was no Easter.

Mark leaves us in an interstice.
(in-ter-sti-see, accent on the second syllable)
Interstice: the word is most easily defined as a gap,
a place between,
a space between things or parts.

Mark leaves us in an interstice
between the crucifixion and the resurrection,
between Good Friday and Easter,
between despair and hope,
between death and life.

Mark leave us there, perhaps intentionally,
perhaps with a sentence that he did not write,
but had in his mind:
“You decide. You decide how the story ends.”

Mark leaves us in the space, as one minister once put it, between,
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”
and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)
(from Fleming Rutledge, the Seven Last Words on the Cross,77);
between consuming fear,
and convicted faith.

In Mark’s version of the story,
we have to conclude that all of Jesus’ followers
had the same phrase from Psalm 22 on their lips,
the phrase that Mark records as Jesus’ final words:
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”
What else could they think?
What else could they say?
Their Lord was dead and all they had was an empty tomb.

But while the women and the disciples may have been stuck
in the interstice of fear and fleeing faith,
the Psalmist was not.
The Psalmist may have begun Psalm 22 with those words,
but his faith pulled him through his interstice,
pulled him through the space of abandonment and hopelessness
to faith in the Lord,
from “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”
to: “I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
His faith pulled him to
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Those words, the words that Luke records
as the final words Jesus uttered from the cross
are from Psalm 31.
In that Psalm, the Psalmist again feels alone,
bereft, without hope,
standing in the interstice of fear,
facing what he perceives to be certain doom.
But then he turns to faith and leaps from the interstice
with as simple and profound a phrase as we ever imagine:
“Into your hand I commit my spirit.” (Psalm 31:5)
The Psalmist is no longer in the interstice,
but has embraced faith in God completely.

The women, the disciples, all of Jesus’ followers
were stuck in interstice of fear when Jesus was arrested,
and they were still there on that Sunday morning,
even with an empty tomb,
for they had forgotten not only what the angel had told them,
but they had forgotten what Jesus himself had told them
“The Son of Man will be handed over…
[and he will be killed]…
and after three days he will rise again.”
(Mark 10:34)
They had forgotten what he had told them at the Last Supper,
“But after I am raised up,
I will go before you to Galilee”
(Mark 14:28)

Even when Jesus appeared,
they were still not sure what to make of it all.
The disciples made their leap from interstice to “Easter people”
only after Pentecost, only after they were graced with courage
by the Holy Spirit.

In Peter’s bold statement that we heard in our first lesson
we learn for the first time that Peter
is no longer in the interstice of fear,
the interstice between death and life,
the interstice he was in when he denied Jesus.
He has bridged the gap, embraced faith completely,
so completely that he would eventually be killed for his belief.
“Father, into your hand I commit my spirit.”

This is not a sentence that is limited
to that moment when we breathe our last.
This is a sentence we should offer up each morning
as we begin each day anew:
committing ourselves afresh to God as his children,
and to our Resurrected Lord as his faithful disciples.
In this simple sentence we can leave worry behind,
fear, anxiety, all those things that preoccupy us
that keep us stuck so firmly in the interstice
between death and life,
between flesh and spirit.

But oh, that requires so much faith,
such trust – absolute and complete.
it requires the faith of our Lord in the garden,
“Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,
yet not what I want, but what you want.” (Matthew 26:39)

And we are so headstrong;
so stubborn;
we are a “stiff-necked people”
in the words that God used to describe us.
We are all in the interstices,
all in the gap between flesh and spirit.

This church as a community of faith is in the interstices now
as we go through a time of transition.
There has been some anxiety the past few weeks,
“we’ve got to do something, got to get going,
Got to get to work to find an Interim pastor
Got to get to work find a new pastor.
Last summer and fall, I walked with the Session
of a neighboring church as the Moderator of their Session
as they went through this process.
I was appointed by Presbytery as part of the procedure
every church follows when there is a change in the pastorate.
The Presbytery will guide our church and support it
every step along the way in the weeks and months ahead.
There is nothing to worry about;
the process has started and Presbytery will guide this church
and walk with it throughout the transition.
Worry and anxiety is a sign that you are standing in the interstice.
For don’t you know:
God has already selected the person
who will be called to this church as Interim Pastor.
And God has already selected the person
who will be called to this church as the next installed pastor.

The hard work this congregation and its leadership will have to do
is the hard work we all do each day: the work of discernment,
the work of listening, the work of trusting in the Lord,
the work of stepping out of the interstice of anxiety and worry
the hard work of saying,
“Into your hands I commit my spirit”
"Into your hands we commit this our church."

Peter Gomes, the gifted preacher and teacher
once said, “Easter is confrontational;
The resurrection is God’s way of getting our attention.
It is God’s way of making us listen up.” (Sermons, 73)
Gomes is telling us that the Resurrection is God’s way
of pulling us out of the interstices that we are all in;
pulling us out of that place between death and life
between flesh and spirit,
Pulling us out through the fulfillment of God’s promise to us
that we need not be afraid of anything:
life, death, the grave, the future – nothing,
for our Resurrected Lord is with us always
always, even unto the end of the age.
Gomes reminds us, “the only message of Easter is this;
Jesus Christ is risen from the dead…
He is out there, ahead of us,
and our job is to spread the good news that he lives.”
(Sermons 74)

On this glorious Easter Sunday,
let us do just that: spread the good news that he lives.
But even before we do that,
let’s first say to God, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Let the promise given us through the Resurrection
pull us out of our interstices.
For our Lord is risen!
Yes, our Lord is risen!
He is risen indeed.
AMEN