The Sounds of Silence

I wonder what it was really like at the tomb that Easter morning. I wonder what it was really like during the days and weeks following Jesus’ death. That’s when, we’re told, Jesus appeared numerous times to his followers. Mark, the earliest gospel, leaves lots of room for speculation, because he doesn’t even try to paint a word picture of what it was like to see the Risen Lord. The women are simply told that Jesus has been raised. Period. Full stop. End of gospel. Likewise, the even earlier account of Paul simply says that Jesus was raised and that he appeared to his followers. Paul doesn’t describe how he appeared or what he looked like or anything like that.

So there’s lots of room for speculation. Indeed, several authors who came after Mark did speculate on what it was really like to see the Risen Lord, and they tacked their speculations on to the end of Mark’s gospel. If you turn to page 55 in the New Testament in your pew Bibles, you’ll see that there’s a shorter ending of Mark, and a longer ending of Mark, tacked on after Mark 16:8. These several endings in which the Risen Lord does appear have the feel of being penned after the fact by an embarrassed church which isn’t content to simply embrace the unseen mystery of the Resurrection.

Maybe it was unseen. Maybe it wasn’t heard. Maybe if there’d been a camera and a microphone planted outside the tomb all night on Saturday night and through the wee hours of Sunday morning, they wouldn’t have picked up a thing. Because maybe the Resurrection is something which no eye has seen nor ear heard. Maybe the Resurrection is something which can only be seen with the eyes of faith and the inner ear of our hearts.

Novelist Erin Hunter says that when cats sense danger in the woods, it’s “like an echo on the edge of hearing.” That’s kind of the way that I experience the Risen Christ in my life: like an echo on the edge of hearing.

It brings to mind the way in which the prophet Elijah hears the voice of God. What he hears is “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12).

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again.
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping.
And the vision that was planted
in my brain still remains
within the sounds of silence.

Perhaps there’s more truth in the poetry of Paul Simon than in some of the more fantastic pictures of the Risen Christ. Sometimes in the silence we can hear more clearly the truth that thousands of words brandished by some of the most gifted preachers have tried in vain to convey. Sometimes in the silence of prayer we can sense something like an echo on the edge of hearing. It whispers, “Leave behind that empty tomb.” It silently points toward Galilee. It quietly says, “Follow me.”

It’s a scary thing to follow such a voice. No detailed directions. No assurance of what you’re going to find when you leave the empty tomb behind. Just the promise of life. New life. Abundant life.

No wonder the women were scared. I mean, I’m afraid to leave the church on a pastoral call without my Pearly’s. Here they were being invited into a whole new way of living without even the sketchiest of maps. Just some young man saying, “Go to Galilee.” Some young man saying, “Go that place where you’re afraid to go.” And maybe that most quiet of whispers from somewhere way up ahead of them saying again, “Follow me.”

There was a cartoon in the paper the other day in which a couple was walking along the beach, collecting shells. Just off shore there were two shell fish, watching them. And the one shell fish said to the other, “There they go again, desecrating our ancient burial ground.” Which raises the question as to whether an empty shell is a sacrament of death, or a thing of beauty which can bring new life to someone’s home? And if your life feels like an empty shell, filled only with death, maybe what you’re feeling in fact is the gift-wrapping of an empty tomb. The thing to do is to turn that shell over and see the beautiful pearl lining on the inside. The thing to do is to open up that empty tomb, tear off the wrapping paper, and find the gift of new life that lies inside.

But like the women at the tomb, we’re afraid. In their fear, maybe they were tempted to linger there at the empty tomb. In our fear, maybe we’re tempted to turn tail and go back home; back to what is known and familiar.

But if Christ is risen, what have we to fear? If the Risen Christ goes before us, there is nothing which can ultimately harm us, in Galilee or anywhere else. Mary’s failure to recognize the risen Jesus in John’s gospel suggests that it’s hard to see with any clarity what resurrection – what new life – will look like. It’s hard to hear with anything like the precision of a well-trained musician what new life will sound like. Sometimes, like the first readers of Mark’s gospel, we have to simply step over the threshold from death to resurrection and trust that new life is there, somewhere, unseen. Roman Catholic scholar Joann Heinritz suggests that to stand at the empty tomb is to stand on that threshold. It’s the space betwixt and between: between yesterday and tomorrow; between death and new life. Yes, like Mary and the others we too may be frightened, because we’re caught between our old comfort zone and any possible new way of being. But Heinritz says that it is exactly at that very scary place where all transformation occurs.

Christians are people of hope. We are people who follow Jesus. If the Risen Christ is going before us into unknown, unseen, unheard of territory, then that’s exactly where we need to go as well. Sometimes you just have to step over that threshold into the unseen silence, and trust that all will be well. Amen.

Text: Mark 16:8
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
Easter Sunrise Service
12 April 2009