I refuse to start out with Christmas jokes or with Ground Hog Day jokes…just because it is April 1st!
But I figure, at this time of the morning – “Bunny jokes” are fair game:
What do you call a group of bunnies marching backwards?
A receding hareline.
How can you tell which rabbits are the oldest in a group?
Just look for the grey hares.
How are rabbits like calculators?
They both multiply really quickly.
And lastly,
What do you call the Easter Bunny with fleas?
Bugs Bunny, of course!
No groans, but no applause either…Hmmmm
I just wanted to make sure we were all awake!
Mark’s gospel is different. I want you to get that. I am “fond of saying” that John’s Gospel is different from the Synoptics of Mark, Matthew and Luke.
But Mark is also different.
You have to note that for Mark it is all about the “Empty Tomb.” The empty Tomb speaks “volumes.”
There is no post resurrection chatter.
Jesus appears to no one.
There is no grabbing his feet or touching him.
He does not walk down the road with two disciples.
He does not eat food, walk through locked doors or make breakfast.
He does not engage in some last minute teaching or instruction.
He does not ascend immediately into heaven.
He simply is gone.
He has resurrected.
He is not present as he himself had promised!
The tomb is empty and it is enough! It has to be, because that is all that there is…
Contemporaries of Jesus believed that the tomb was the “ante-chamber” to the realm of the dead.
An antechamber (also known as an anteroom) is a smaller room or vestibule serving as an entryway into a larger one.
The word is formed of the Latin ante camera, meaning “room before”. In some cases, an antechamber provides a space for a host to prepare or conduct “private business” away from a larger party or group of people.
The body in the tomb would have been evidence – that the deceased took the journey into that realm.
But the lack of a body pointed clearly to the living.
The Tomb was empty and Jesus was alive. (period)
Jesus lived, in spite of having been put to death.
The empty tomb proved to the women that the Lord was truly alive.
They were overwhelmed by that information.
You have to understand that it was nothing that they expected.
They expected that they would go to the tomb out of devotion and perform a final act of kindness.
They expected that somehow the three of them, the three women would have to attempt to roll the huge stone back and away from the entrance. They were unsure as to how they would accomplish that feat.
They did not expect to find a young man dressed in white inside the tomb. They expected to find Jesus laying there on a shelf, wrapped in his burial linen.
They did not expect to receive a message to give to others…
They were afraid. They were astonished. What did this mean? What are these strange words? They were paralyzed by their feelings.
Jesus was not there. He had risen!
God had raised him from the dead!
Easter celebrates THAT EVENT in human history. Its power did not stop at the empty tomb.
This one single event changed the shape of humanity forever. It actually was so huge that it divided time in two…before and after…
The news of “this day,” of this event was so good, so grand, so explosive that we cannot ignore its implications for life now and for the time after death. Easter celebrated the unexpected, the amazing…the “I’ didn’t see that coming!”
Thank you, God! For all of your continued blessings…
So, as we begin, so now we end…
How do you know when you’re eating traditional rabbit stew? Hello – It obviously has hares in it!
Amen.