Our music and our physical space today lift up a tree that once was dead. This cross is superbly alive and gloriously fruitful and it and we claim new and resurrected life today. We claim that the life and passion - all that the Christ came to kindle on earth - of Jesus is here, alive today. Martin Smith says, in Nativities and Passions, that the "cross kills our deadness and sterility, not our life. What we risk by drawing near to the cross is not dying. We risk coming alive."

We risk coming alive in ways we don't expect. Peter, in our first lesson from Acts, came alive in his acceptance of all others. "Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality," he says. That is a remarkable statement and a coming alive from someone who thought he was part of the truly and only chosen people. Paul, in our second lesson, came alive to that which he sought to destroy. He began as a fundamentalist seeking the death of infidels. And in today's gospel, women coming to the tomb, expecting dead things to remain dead and finding instead a terrifying threshold and an empty, hollowed out place.

Mark's gospel, in this its original ending, has no resurrection appearances although some were added later by those who couldn't believe that this was what Mark intended - an abrupt and overwhelming terror at crossing a threshold that is open-ended into new life.

Breaking open the word on Easter Day is always a challenge; to speak about the resurrection is to talk about something "larger than anything we can fit into our consciousness," says my presiding bishop, Frank Griswold. If I am to give you a truth today that can be spoken it is that Christianity is not for sissies, not for cowards. This faith of ours is not for the faint of spirit or the faint of heart, or the faint of mind or strength. Our growth in our faith in God is a continual process, a series of deaths and resurrections, of stones being moved, of strange words and directions to follow, and ultimately, hiddenness and mystery. It requires courage to keep at it.

If we are a part of this cosmic drama, a part of the path and pattern of Jesus, then we must deal with today's disturbing gospel ending. "So they went our and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." The Greek ending is more blunt, "They were terrified, you see." The hard truth is that this abruptness, this difficult note of suspense and fear, and probably disobedience, is not what we expect. This is where Mark ends so it is no surprise that in the face of what God has done in and through Jesus we come to the edge of our knowledge.

Many of us have spent the last few days, the Triduum of Holy Week, looking over our shoulders at the past: our traditions, our texts, proclamations from our history of faith. We heard words from children and adults, words of faith in glorious music and in softness. We took our place in the faith history of the centuries. Many of you (150) were here for the Maundy Thursday Passover meal and Eucharist. Fewer came to the liturgies of Good Friday; some chose the ancient pattern of moving from darkness to light in the Easter Vigil. The majority of us choose today as our principal joy, the fullest beauty, the most familiar hymns, our best offerings. We have not come expecting discomfort and uncertainty. Certainly who would choose fear and trembling for Easter.

I have come to love Mark's troublesome ending with frightened women, boulders moved, and a gaping hole. I've even come to love the strange young man with a message I am working to distill. Some of you have come to Easter Day with gaping holes in your own lives. Some of you are frightened and trembling in the face of what you did not expect - to be in a place where no one really loves you, to be given a terrible diagnosis that will certainly and painfully result in your death. We will all die, some sooner than others. Some of you have come dragging the crosses of false expectations, terrible woundings, betrayals of trust, abandonments. Some of you do not expect to risk coming alive.

I remember clearly the year my daughters found a small egg dropped from a nest which they tried to hatch with the help of some tissues and a lamp. They hoped it would produce a winged thing and new life. But, sadly, it only produced a bad smell, and terrible disappointment. I am not sure I was adequate in explaining it all.

I think the Church has often failed people by moving too fast away from the reality of pain and suffering, bad smells and false expectations. We have been in a rush to resurrection and we have often said that it is an event and not a process. We even rush past the death of Jesus - he's dead, no, he isn't. Anyone who has stood at a grave side knows that death is very real and grief is not momentary. I believe that there are many deaths, and many risings, and that our challenge in fear and trembling is to practice resurrection. And for that we will always need God's help

We may be less sure these days about God, about what faith looks like for us for we are coming up against the limits of our rational and knowledge-based faith..We cannot take for granted that we know what is needed, that we know the whole truth. I was emailed the Gospel of Judas yesterday from Boston - 27 pages of Coptic text. Jurislov Pelikan of Yale has a masterful body of work, some 30 volumes of creeds of the church; we are familiar with only 2 of them.On my shelf at home is a book I bought in Ottawa entitled The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene. I am still working on the resurrection of Jesus!

So in this faith there are places where I am at home and there are places where I am left as bewildered as the women at the tomb. I know that this Markan gospel ending is a threshold place; the future of it is open-ended and sometimes I don't like that. I am afraid that it requires too much of me. This threshold place is beyond our knowing. It is a place of possibility and great wonder. It is the place of mystery, the place of the wondrous mystery of God. It is in the emptiness, the hollowed - out place meant for burial that is open, opened by God for the filling, for discovering that in the hollow place is Love.

Death is not the end of us, says Bruce Chilton in his book Jesus the Rabbi but it is the end of who we think we are. Death was not the end of Jesus. "He remains a measure of how much we dare to see and feel the divine in our lives...Jesus invites us to meet him in that dangerous and terrifying place where we know our weakness and fragility, where we are willing to have the new life of God blossom in us." Chilton goes on to say that Jesus never claimed that he was unique. His "Abba" was the Abba of all. And his work - the meals, the signs, the healings were not for himself alone or for demonstrating his personal power or gaining adulation. His work was undertaken to open for us the gate to God, to invite us across a threshold where we might enter the kingdom, the realm, the reign of God, the new place of fullness and new life.

So much energy has been spent keeping Jesus entombed, rolling back the stone so that he might be fixed, stationary, tamed and dead. And the landscape of our faith is littered with stones too, some from throwing at others, some discarded because they will no longer hit the target. But Jesus is freed, alive beyond our best explanations. He is freed to be among us in all the common places of meal and lakeside, in gardens and among the children. He is freed to be transformed by God. And so are we.

Tell me about a time when you rose from the dead. Tell me a story when you crossed a threshold not knowing anything at all. Tell me you are practicing resurrection.

And so am I.

Amen+

The Rev. Linda Fisher Privitera