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Breathe Normally                        Mark 16: 1-8                   Easter 2009

In years of frequent business travel, I'm sure I've listened to more than a thousand flight attendants giving the same safety speech before takeoff. I've often thought the message should go something like this: "In the case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling above you. When you have stopped screaming, please place the mask over your mouth and nose and do your best to breathe normally."

Of course, that is not what the flight attendants say. But I find myself thinking, when I hear their directive to "breathe normally," that in any situation that would cause a sudden loss of cabin pressure, there would be absolutely nothing normal going on - breathing included.

Just Breathe Normally is the title of a memoir by Peggy Shumaker, a poet, author and Professor at the University of Alaska. It begins with a near-fatal biking accident - she and her husband are struck by an out-of-control four-wheeler driven by a teenager - and ends, after nearly two years of surgery, therapy, progress and setbacks, with another bike ride.

Shumaker writes, in this touching memoir, about the process of healing and forgiveness, as well as about her unstable and abusive childhood, the complex interaction of generations of her largely dysfunctional family, and, most of all, about the mystery of what it means to be alive. About the harsh truth that death can come at any moment. About what it means to just breathe normally.

"Ever notice that when you get that advice, 'Just breathe normally,' you can never do it," she writes. ". . .When before surgery you're counting backwards from one hundred. . . when the dog they said doesn't bite clearly intends to. . .when they slide you tight into the MRI tube. . . when you stand to give your speech. . .when you get the news you've been waiting for, when you get the news you've been dreading, when you stand up before God and everybody to pledge your love to your mate. . ."

At all of these times, "just breathe normally," is what we're told to do. What we know we should do. And the last thing we are able to do.

I imagine that the first Easter Morning was one of those times for Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, the three women who, very early on the first day of the week - two days after Jesus was crucified - went to the tomb, spices in hand, to anoint his body.

Mark tells his readers what happened at the tomb, that morning, in five short verses. The stone has been rolled away, the body is nowhere to be found, a young man in white - presumably an angel - is seated inside on the right and, not surprisingly, the women are alarmed.

Now, there's a surprise. Of course the women are alarmed. Who wouldn't be alarmed?

The Easter message they receive from the man in white, though, is calm and brief: "Do not be afraid," he says. Or, to put it a little differently, "Just breathe normally." "The one you are looking for is not here. He has been raised. Go; tell his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee, just as he told them he would."

Who did the angel think he was kidding?

When Jesus was alive, he head made it possible for his followers, including these three women, to imagine the Kingdom of God - a world in which children had enough to eat, sick people got well, and old people did not have to worry about who would care for them once they could no longer care for themselves.

When Jesus spoke, they could imagine a world in where people with nothing in the middle of nowhere could find themselves at a picnic for five thousand, with twelve baskets to spare.

When Jesus was alive, it had even been possible to imagine a world with no Romans in it - no soldiers patrolling the streets in their metal breastplates and pointy helmets, barking their orders, demanding their taxes.

But now Jesus was dead - and so was their hope, or so they thought.

When they got to the tomb, that morning, it was not just with the intent of anointing and mourning their friend. They came to mourn their dreams. To bury the future he had helped them imagine.

And to top off their sorrow, their loss and their despondency, the body is missing. Yet in the face of all this, Mark tells us, the angel simply tells them to calm down. To breathe normally.

Naturally, they ignore his advice, flee and tell no one.

And that's the end of the story. The earliest manuscripts we have of Mark's Gospel end right there. He records no appearance of the risen Christ. Mark closes with "and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." In the original Greek, he actually breaks off in the middle of a sentence!

So we, the readers, are left to try to make sense of it all. Mark's abrupt ending forces us to decide what's next.

The story goes on, to be sure. Jesus' story goes on, and so does ours. The trick is deciding how to play it out. Will we tell others or won't we? Will we go to Galilee or won't we?

That is where the Lord Jesus has gone, just as he said he would. Not to the physical city of Galilee but to all the real places on earth where we bring up our children, earn our livings, pay our taxes and cast our votes. That is where God is raising the dead.

And if we want meet the risen Lord, then that is where we will need to go as well.

Along with Christians all over the world, we celebrate the high point of the Christian story today. The day when everything is supposed to come together. Resurrection Day.

For many of the folks sitting in churches this Easter Sunday morning, resurrection is simple. It is something that happens after you're dead.

That may be true, but if that's all it is - if today is simply a day that we thank God for something that is going to happen to us when we die, we are missing the point.

Mark's Gospel, with its abrupt ending, reminds us that while resurrection may be about eternal life, it is mostly about power. About God's power.

God brought the crucified Jesus back to life not just so he could appear to his depressed disciples, convince most of them that he had been raised from the dead and allow them to touch the scars in his nail-pierced hands. God brought him back to life not just so he could drift off into heaven for the rest of eternity. The other Gospel writers all choose to end their stories with accounts like that.

Mark's ending is different. The young man in white, who the women meet at the tomb, does not tell them that Jesus is going ahead of them to heaven; he tells them that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee.

Hope, therefore, is not dead. It is alive on earth. That is what the women are supposed to go tell the disciples and Peter. And that is what we are commissioned to tell the world.

God brought Jesus back to life to demonstrate that the system that killed him could not prevail. To signal that God's justice wins out - not just in heaven, but here on earth as well.

Even when everything seems lost, we can breathe normally, because we know that God is in charge. That, above all, is the message of this Resurrection Day.

I mentioned earlier that Peggy Shumaker's memoir ends, as it begins, with a bike ride. Peggy and her husband, in order to choose life over death, decide to air up their tires, strap on their helmets and go for their first post-wreck ride on All Saints' Day - on "El Día de los Muertos," the Day of the Dead.

She ends her memoir with this sentence: "I look both ways, outside, inside. We push off, wobbly, into the rest of our lives."

Don't we all? Don't we all, indeed?

One of the things I like best about Resurrection Day is the music. I particularly like the fact that there are so many great songs to sing.

Many of them have a common theme that can be summed up with a single word: Hallelujah! It's a word we don't use, or sing, during Lent, but we make up for it today.

Earlier, we all sang, "Sing Hallelujah, Praise the Lord," and in a minute or two we're all going to sing, "Jesus Christ is Ris'n Today, Hallelujah!"

If you're like me, you will probably spend the rest of the day humming one of those great songs. And while I don't mean to spoil our Hallelujah Easter mood, I want to add another song to our collective memory bank.

It's not an Easter song, and we're not going to sing it. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that it is a song that Rolling Stone magazine includes in its list of twenty most annoying songs of all time. Right along with "Macarena" and "Who let the Dogs Out."

Yes, friends, I want to close my Easter sermon, this morning, with the memorable refrain from a song titled "Tubthumping," by a British rock group named Chumbawamba.

While it is clearly not an Easter song, I call your attention to it today because this refrain nicely sums up the message that Easter conveys to all of us who, like Mary and the other women who came to the tomb on that first morning after Jesus' crucifixion - to all of us who are alarmed, sometimes short on hope, and often frightened about the future.

I repeat it for you now, and recommend that you repeat it to yourself, whenever those hopeless feelings creep in and cause you to think about fleeing the scene and telling no one.

When that happens, breathe normally, and repeat to yourself, over and over again:

I Get Knocked Down
But I Get Up Again
You're Never Going To Keep Me Down

                                                                             AMEN

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