11/05/2021
Signs of the Times
Mark 16:1-8; James 2:14-24
Terry Bascom (11.07.21)
Mark's gospel tell us that at daybreak on the day after the Sabbath the two Marys and Salome were up and on their way to the tomb. “Who,” they wondered as they walked, “will roll that stone away for us that we might attend His body?” But when they arrived they saw the stone was already removed.
Why was it moved? Was the tomb open because Jesus had walked out the door, restored to physical life? In some sense He was physically restored because His body was no longer lying there. And as Luke reports, He appeared to His disciples and invited them to handle Him, and he ate with them (Lk. 24:39).
Yet, in some sense He was not physical as we understand our own bodies, because He could materialize and dematerialize (Lk. 24:36). It's that ability that caused doubt in His followers – as well as fear and amazement. I imagine it was the same kind of shock that they experienced when He came walking across the storm-tossed waves that time on the Sea of Galilee. They were frightened then, too, and wondered if they were seeing a true, living being.
So maybe the tombstone was rolled aside so that Jesus could walk out. Or, perhaps it was rolled aside so that His absence would not be hidden. “See with your own eyes,” the angel said, “that He is no longer here. He has arisen and has gone ahead of you and the disciples to Galilee as He said He would. Tell them what you have seen, and instruct them to go to Galilee, also, where Jesus waits for them and will show Himself to them.”
And so the women rushed out of the tomb – trembling and amazed, Mark says, and stayed silent. Matthew says they ran with fear and great joy to deliver the news to Jesus' followers. Either way, the core of the message here is that these women – the same women who witnessed the crucifixion – discovered the empty tomb. And it frightened them.
What I wonder is: why did that frighten them? There are several things that I can say in answer to my own question, but what I want to focus on is this: among all the things that they could have found frightening in their discovery of the empty tomb was the dawning realization that if Jesus really rose from the dead everything had changed. Everything those women believed – everything they knew about reality and their world – was thrown into chaos. Because: If a man can rise from the dead like that, then what is life? What is death? What is real and what is imaginary?
If the Gospel is true, then my understanding of life, my experience of life, is a lie. Or, at the least, my current understanding of what life is and how the world actually works is inadequate. If Jesus walked out of His tomb, the real world is not what I have thought it is, and I must either remake my understanding of reality, or I must dismiss the story of Jesus' resurrection.
Why do you think so many people dismiss the Story? Because it cannot be true and their worldview remain intact. One or the other has to go. Most contemporary people declare that the bible is an inadequate explanation for the world. A few of us try to straddle the gap; we try to hold onto both the bible's claims and the world as it knows itself. But to do that we have to ignore the problems inherent in affirming both. And when we are forced to look at the conflict, most of the time we compromise the bible's assertions so we can affirm the world's claims.
This is, for example, where we come into conflict with the question of creation and Darwinian evolution: are we created by some Divine intelligence, or are we the result of a hundred billion years of coincidences and accidents?
It is also where we find ourselves struggling over the questions of abortion and euthanasia: to whom does a human life belong? To God or to ourselves? Today we also have ask: to ourselves, or to our communities, health professionals, and governments?
I'm not going to plunge down those rabbit holes. Rather, I want to stick with the first observation: that Mary, Mary, and Salome fled the tomb amazed and afraid. They had stared into the mouth of death and found it empty. And it unnerved them.
Their fear, I think, came from the same thing that amazed them. It scrambled their minds to be told that the Jesus they had known, tended to, and watched suffer and die, whose side had been pierced, and whose body had been carefully lifted off the cross, lifeless, and wrapped in linen and laid in Joseph's tomb, had somehow miraculously returned to life! That was more than amazing, it was stupefying! And terrifying! It made their bodies tremble and their minds go numb from awe.
Of course it scared them – because it meant everything would forevermore be different. The old world was over, some new world was breaking out, where the mouth of the tomb, the open maw of Death, is not the last word. Something strange and not yet understood had been born with Jesus' rebirth, and it would take some time to wrap their heads around what had happened in that obscure garden in that obscure corner of the world. But right then, at the beginning, the radical shift that shattered their mental constructs of reality caused amazement and fear.
Well, something like that, but darker, has happened to me. I want to tell you about my week. The only thing it has in common with those women at Jesus' empty tomb is this: that facing what has happened can cause mind-stopping fear with the realization that everything has changed and nothing will ever be the same now that it has happened. I want to tell you about it and then tell you what is the one saving grace.
This past week I did more shopping than I've done in a long time, and I made these mental observations as I went from place to place over a couple days:
Tractor Supply is completely redesigning the Rutland store; they're moving everything. They've greatly expanded their clothing area and have greatly reduced their selection of stoves and similar robust steel items. Also, the racks and shelving are more spread out in the redesigned areas, which means they cannot carry as many items;
The Market Basket in Rutland and the Shaws in Ludlow have removed some of the display islands in their produce sections, and spread out the remaining to make the spaces appear more full than they are. In the case of Market Basket, the real estate between produce islands is now so "luxurious" it made me think of those very high end boutiques – the ones with fashionable clothing where every item is displayed as if it and its 6 identical sister outfits is the jewel of the collection;
At the West Lebanon Wal-Mart an entire row of shelving was simply empty. That's in Wal-Mart!
The Panera Bread restaurant in Rutland was closed on Monday, with a sign in the door explaining they had a staffing shortage. In that regard, every store I stopped at had a Help Wanted poster at the entrance. (Maybe Wal-Mart's empty shelving is partially related to that.)
I picked up a half sheet of 3/4" exterior grade plywood at the Ludlow LaValley's: it cost me $50. That's the first time the lumber sticker shock has hit me personally; until now it's not been shockingly high.
For about three months I've been checking everywhere for more canning jars and, especially, lids. I've scored jars once or twice at chain hardware stores, but not lids. Wal-Mart has had no lids and at most just pint or half pint small-mouth jars in the Rutland and West Lebanon stores – but this week the West Lebanon store had the opposite: several dozen boxes of large mouth Ball lids. No jars, and no bands, just lids.
It took my going into a half dozen clothing stores to find jeans in my size. I finally managed to find 1 pair in each of 2 stores.
I found just six 15 oz cans and eight 29 oz cans of pumpkin at the Rutland Hannaford's; that was their entire supply. Normally this is the time of year to stock up if, like me, you want to make lots of pumpkin pie for the holiday season and the occasional pie throughout the year.
My point is that this week I encountered shortage after shortage after shortage. And the fact that two grocery stores and the Tractor Supply have rearranged their stores to spread out their reduced inventories tells me that they think the problem is not temporary; they must think it's long term. I was particularly struck by the grocery stores because (as Craig can tell us) the profit margin on food is not large, and wasted real estate begins to call into question a store's long term viability.
I think that we all know what's happening. Our supply chains are frayed and starting to fail. It began with the Covid lockdowns, which took workers off the roads and out of the manufacturing and processing plants – not just here, but across the whole world. As that shock to the system worked its way through the supply chains, it has magnified. Now we find car lots thin on new cars because crucial computer chips cannot be made because rare earth minerals are not being mined. It's taken awhile for us to run low on new cars because so many were in the pipeline, but now the pipe is about empty.
We saw in March and April and May of 2019 photos of hogs being butchered and piled up on farms because there were no truckers to haul animals to slaughter houses, and no workers to butcher them if they got there. Because hogs have to be moved on to the next stage of their life cycle every three months, those hogs had to be culled to make way for the next batch of baby hogs that had to move into their empty pens. And so on, across the whole range of fresh, canned, and processed foods that used to fill our store shelves, and jeans, and heavy duty leaf springs – the shortage of which is idling some big rig trucks that might otherwise help move the backlog of goods filling up dockyards and waiting at sea for a berth. Those ships are paying thousands of dollars a day to sit there idle, which is straining the finances of their parent companies, leading to increasing bankruptcies and looming bankruptcies.
There are a lot of other things going wrong, too. Just about everywhere I look I see trouble. In reality, those problems were developing before Covid hit, but it was all coming along more slowly, which was allowing time for the world's economy and the world's people to make adjustments. But Covid's lockdown super-charged the problem, and it isn't fixed. In fact it can't be fixed.
Once these supply chains break down, they are hard to bring back online. That's because, for example, Company A might make a component used by Company B to build a machine used by Company C to make a widget that many companies use, including Company A. And because Company A can't supply the base component needed by Company B to keep Company C's equipment running, Company C can't produce the widget Company A needs to keep producing the components only it manufactures. It's a circular breakdown; and that kind of thing isn't easily fixed.
What it means is that our world has broken. We haven't really experienced it yet, although we know it down deep. We all have seen signs, but we want to believe the soothing words of our various governments that it's all temporary and will right itself soon. I don't think it will. I don't think we will see the range of supplies and the level of comfort we're enjoying today for much longer. We have reached and surpassed the peak of our prosperity – at least for the foreseeable future.
Over an extended period of time we will rebuild our economies, probably more locally and less globally. But even the United States is going to have a difficult, slow time of it because we have to recreate basic manufacturing facilities that we shipped overseas. And we can't do that as long as we continue to charge more to our nation's credit card than we have even a prayer of ever paying off. We have an economic crash coming, along the lines of Nixon taking us off the gold standard in 1971 that led to the stagflation of the mid-70s and the inflation era of the 80s. But it will likely be deeper and last longer.
What I am saying is that the world we have known is over. A new world has been born and is beginning to replace the old. We all have inklings of it, none of us want to admit it to ourselves, let alone to others. We prefer to hope against hope that our government can magically keep the old party going. We prefer to keep our eyes wide shut and our ears deaf to the sounds of approaching calamity.
But I think we have to do better than that. We Christians especially have to keep our eyes wide open, because we know how the world changes in unexpected ways. After all, Jesus walked out of that tomb. And the only reason the disciples were not expecting it is because they didn't pay attention to the earlier evidence: to Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm; to Jesus raising Jairus' daughter from death and calling Lazarus out of his tomb; to Jesus healing the demoniac, casting out the demons, stopping the woman's flow of blood and healing the man's withered hand.
The signs were there, just as the signs are before us; it's just that they didn't want to see the new world's birth pangs just as we don't want to recognize the tremors of change facing us, already manifesting before our eyes. And for the same reason: it's frightening to contemplate the end of the reality we know, especially when we can't grasp, let alone manage, the change or what's coming.
Periods of instability unsettle human beings, and so we try to keep things as they have always been even when they're clearly being swept away. It doesn't matter if the change is for the good, as Jesus' resurrection surely was, we still act as if it didn't happen – two thousand years after! And it doesn't matter if the change is for the worse, as the changes facing us today are, we still want to continue acting as if it's not happening no matter how obvious the evidence.
Two weeks ago I talked about Joseph of Arimathea, the secret follower of Jesus who kept his discipleship private because he had so much to lose if he was perceived to be at odds with the rulers and influential people of his day. It was not until Jesus died that Joseph reached that place within himself where he preferred to honor his secret Lord over whatever the world might choose to say about him or do to him.
“In that moment when he 'took courage' [I said] Joseph's life was rightly ordered, and he finally came to do what was righteous according to the Spirit of God in him. It will be just like that for each of us [I said] when the Holy Spirit has finally and fully taken us over and lifted us away from our earthly concerns so that we might concern ourselves with the things of heaven, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God" (Col. 3:1. See "Joseph.").
I believe that life is going to get harder and harder over the coming months and years. Most likely, our world is going to get more and more bizarre and difficult; more and more dangerous and even deathly. And most people are not facing the facts.
You and I are not immune to the fear and shock and confusion that stares anyone in the face who dares to look at what's happening. But we are also different than our neighbors; different because we belong to Jesus Christ, and we know that He is here with us, in the midst of the craziness that's beginning to sweep the globe.
The craziness is going to sweep right into Plymouth and Tyson and Ludlow. We don't know how, yet, and we don't know when, but it is coming and the question we have to ask ourselves is: What must Christ's body do right here, in that day? How can we – each and together – get as prepared as we can be to help our neighbors and communities as we slip further into chaos?
Somebody has to be the light. Somebody has to be ready to hold out the candle of faith and the torch of hope in the gathering gloom of fear and the midnight of desperation that is already marching over the horizon. That “somebody” is Christ's body. You and me.
The difference in us is that we know that Jesus walked out of the tomb, alive. And because we know that, we know that death and fear and anger are not the final word. Rather, the last Word is the promise of eternal life in Jesus. We know that He is king of all the earth and therefore that whatever shadows that old nemesis, Death, throws over the earth that turns daylight dark, Christ will again walk out of the tomb and restore all of creation to the Light and to Life.
We can, and we must, live into that promise so that our neighbors don't lose hope and fall into despair. We must not run from the tomb that looms in front of us, filled with fear, and remain silent; rather we remember, now, that this yawning tomb we are facing is also the tomb that could not hold Jesus. He lives! And because He lives God still reigns on earth as in heaven. And so we must run in joy to spread the word that Death is defeated in Christ, and in Christ there is Life and Hope when we reach out to receive it from His outstretched hands.
And we must heed the word of James: “What is the gain, sisters and brothers, if someone says she has faith but does not show it in works? Can that kind of faith save her? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, stay warm and be filled,' but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what possible good is that? Understand: faith by itself, if it does not manifest in works, is dead.
“But someone among you will say to me that you have your faith and I have my works. Well, show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. Look: you believe that there is one God, and that is good, you do well. But even the demons know that – and they tremble. But don't you know, foolish man, that faith without works [such as the demons have] is dead?
“Wasn't Abraham our father justified by his works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Can you see from that example that Abraham's faith was working in tandem with his works, and by his works his faith was made perfect? And so the scripture was fulfilled that said, 'Abraham believed God [all the way] and that was accounted to him as righteousness,' and he was called the friend of God. Understand, then, that a person is justified by what she does, not simply by her professions of faith” (2:14-24).
So, then: we have a choice to make. Each of us. Our choice will be decided, and broadcast, not by what we say but by what we do. In fact, I believe that the bible teaches throughout that we are what we do – not what we say, not what we think, not what we believe, and not by what we intend to do, but by what we actually do: there is our hope revealed and our faith perfected.
We can choose to run from the tomb in fear, and in fear keep our silence. Or, we can choose to face the dark and not give in to fear. We can choose to faithfully walk where many fear to go, and to do the good that many are afraid to do. But we cannot do that of ourselves, or by our own strength; we can only face the open tomb, the hungry mouth of Death, by the power of the Holy Spirit in us – when we give Him the lead and allow Him to teach us how to act as Christ's body of mercy and hospitality even when our flesh quails in fear. This, I believe, is our high calling and divine command.
May Christ drive each of us to deep, private, sincere prayer so that He might strengthen us, one-by-one and altogether, to His purpose, now, in His world.
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Image: Empty Tomb, by Jesus Mafa
