SERMON Corpus Delicti

Easter Day (B): Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-18

There is something very unsettling about what we just heard. There are two resurrection windows in ths sanctuary, both newly restored. One above in the clerestory. The other right here. They are quite different. Think about what we just heard.

The clerestory window shows an angel talking to two women (or two and one-half women if you count the woman lurking outside). That's not the resurrection account we just heard from Mark's gospel. Mark has three women, not two (or two and one-half). But it's not only the third woman (or one-half woman) missing from the account in Mark. There would be no angel in any window of Mark's story. There would be only a young man dressed in white. This clerestory window depicts Matthew's or (if the one-half woman represents a throng of women) Luke's account of the empty tomb, not Mark's. Mark's window is missing the angel.

But if you think the clerestory window is different, take a look at the resurrection window by the baptismal font. This is John's empty tomb account. It is cited (but not printed) on the third page of the Celebrate insert of your bulletin. Read it sometime to get a flavor of how very different John's account is. Mary Magdalene alone discovers the empty tomb. She runs back and tells the disciples. She returns with Peter and the beloved disciple. And then this window happens. Mary sees Jesus. There's a body. She knows.

And it's seeing Jesus -- or not seeing Jesus -- that makes Mark's gospel so different. Different from John. Different from Matthew. Different from Luke. Even different from Paul -- who we hear telling an earlier generation of Corinthian Christians about 500 plus post-resurrection appearances. Mark's gospel ends with what we hear this morning. A promise of a future appearance but no present delivery. With the women fleeing, seized by terror and amazement.

And it's that that makes us uneasy as well. We, too, want a body. Something real. Dead or alive. Not only as individuals but as a society.

Look at our eight year hunt for Osama Bin Ladin. After 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan looking for him. In 2001, he was rumored to have died from complications from kidney failure. That, of course, proved to be untrue in 2004 when Bin Laden commented on the U.S. Presidential election. Rumors of his death have abounded since then -- all proven to be false. This pass week in a speech Sentor Bill Nelson of Flordia predicted “Within a year, we will have bin Laden.” By contrast, just three weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Gates likened the search to the FBI’s 17-year hunt for convicted Unabomber Theheodore Kaczynski. The bottom line is that we want this man, dead or alive. Just as we once wanted the Saddam Hussein and the Unabomber. Remember the relief -- and amazement -- when they were found?

This need for the physical, the actual is so ingrained that it is part of our legal system. We call it corpus delicti -- a requirement that there be a dead body for there to be a conviction for murder. Do you ever wonder why, despite mounting circumstantial evidence, Drew Peterson, the former Bolingbrook policeman, isn't arrested for the likely murder of his fourth wife Staci? It is because of corpus delicti. Our legal system requires that the body be found. This need for a body is playing out in scores of suspicious cases of missing persons. The authorities need bodies.

But it is not only our legal system that needs bodies. We need bodies. We need proof. We, too, operate under principles of corpus delicti. And there is nothing more unsettling than being assured that something has happened that is totally unexpected and counter-intuitive as well. That's what happened to the two Marys and Salome this morning.

The New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright assures us that

first century Jews were not expecting people to rise from the dead (in this sense) as isolated individuals, on a one-off basis, here and there. . . Resurrection was something that would happen to all dead Jews, and perhaps all dead humans. It would happen on a great future occasion when the True God (who after all was the creator of the world) finally brought history round its last great corner, into the day that was about to dawn. . . . (Wright 1992, 62)

Not only was resurrection not something that happened to individuals in the present tense, but it is something that had been claimed of no other first century leader. Ever. It is not only unexpected but counter-intuitive as well.

Mark's young man knows that the appearances that Paul and the other gospel writers report will take place. He wrote long after them. Mark's Jesus tells the women to tell the disciples. Unlike the women in the other gospels, Mark's Marys and Salome tell no one what they had been told. Unlike those other women, they are not met by the risen Jesus. Their fear and inaction are not at all surprising.

What is surprising is that Mark ends his gospel here. It seems so unnecessary. Something had happened that no one expected. As N.T. Wright explains:

A Jewish revolutionary whose leader had been executed [-- and Peter and the other disciples were considered revolutionaries whose leader had been executed --] and who managed to escape arrest himself, had two options: give up the revolution, or find another leader. We have evidence of people doing both. Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option. [Wright adds:]

                      Unless of course, he was. (Wright 1992, 63)

By the time Mark writes his gospel there is a church, a growing community of faith, based on a nonexistent option. On a reality that was unexpected and counter-intuitive. But had in every sense really happened.

So it seems not only unnecessary but cruel to underscore the fear, terror, and inaction of the women. And absurd to end what Mark calls "the good news of Jesus Christ" on such a stark note.

And it is until we realize that the reaction of the two Marys and Salome is our reaction as well. We, too, need bodies. Corpus delicti. We, too, are terrified of ambiguity. Of the unexpected. The counter-intuitive. Their reaction rings true. Mark's empty tomb tradition probably has it right.

But what is important is that, by the time Mark writes this gospel, he knows that these women -- the women who were terrified -- became leaders in the church, the new community of faith. One of Mark's Marys is Mary Magdalene. There is an icon of Mary Magdalene on the back page of your bulletin. In the East she is known as "Equal to the Apostles." About this icon we learn:

The Eastern tradition tells us that after the Ascension [Mary Magdalene] journeyed to Rome where she was admitted to the court of Tiberius Caesar because of her high social standing. After describing how poorly Pilate had administered justice at Jesus' trial, she told Caesar that Jesus had risen from the dead. To help explain His resurrection she picked up an egg from the dinner table. Caesar responded that a human being could no more rise from the dead than the egg in her hand turn red. The egg turned red immediately . . . .

And how could this be? Mary Magdalene proclaiming the resurrection? Mary Magdalene who was too afraid tell anyone?

It can be because the body that was not in the tomb and the resurrected Lord whom Mary may have or may not have seen, lives through and with the community of faith -- a community Paul calls the Body of Christ. As it is for us, faith was God's gift of grace to Mary. And it was by living out that faith -- by doing, by confronting Caesar in Mary Magdalene's case -- that she and the other Mary and Salome overcame their paralyzing fear. And, in overcoming their fear they became the body of Christ in and for the world.

Like them we, too, have a body. Wicker Park Lutheran Church is called to be the Body of Christ here in this community. And is. In all that it does. Corpus delicti. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

April 12, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago