Life is ...?

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 1:1-5 Mark 16:1-8

When I was a child I was a big fan of “Life” – the board game, not the real thing…. (Well, I was a big fan of the real thing too, but I’m thinking of the game by Hasbro.) Anyway, I liked the game a lot, and my brothers and I used to play it almost as much as Monopoly. We certainly played it almost every time I went to visit my older cousins because it doesn’t really matter how old you are, you just spin a wheel and move a piece to play. For those of you who don’t know the game or haven’t seen it in a while, let me explain a little.

According to one website, the “rules are simple, whoever has the most money at the end wins,” but it is a little more complicated than that. The game is played on a board with a twisting, forking path that leads all around a spinner wheel – the wheel of life – at the center. You start with a car, spin the wheel, and move the number of spaces that come up. Then you follow the directions on the space where you landed. Along the way, you go to college … or not, you pick a career, you get married (everyone has to do that), you may or may not have children, you pay taxes (of course), and you end up in retiring – either at the Country Estates retirement home, Millionaire Acres, or in the Poor House.

Despite the obvious capitalist overtones, Life is a fun game that does teach you a little bit about how the choices you make can change the way your life goes. The one thing that has always made me wonder, though, is that there is no death in the game of Life. There are no spaces that talk about accidents or severe illness. Everyone ends the game in more or less comfortable retirement.

I’ve never asked anyone about this glaring omission – certainly not anyone who has a hand in the game’s design, but I suspect the reason is quite simple. Parents probably would not buy it for their children if death was such a big part of the game. It’s too morbid, too scary, … too real for a board game that can be played by ages 6 and up, and in the end, it is all about the money.

While I understand that thinking – and I even follow the same thinking with my boys, there is really no way to keep the truth from children. They know that things die – that people die, and they need to understand that because death is an inevitable part of life. It can be scary, but we all face it eventually. It’s just the nature of things, … or is it? Christ’s empty tomb would say otherwise.


I had an interesting conversation about death with one of my professors at seminary … (count on fingers vaguely) ... a while ago now. We were studying baptismal theology, and we somehow ended up talking about death. The link was Orthodox theology – and by that I mean the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church where they understand “Original Sin” a bit differently than we do.

Original sin is the same thing for them as it is for us. It is the first decision by Adam and Eve to disobey God’s instructions and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The big difference is that while we have a vague sense that it’s linked to sex somehow, they do not believe that. In their theology, original sin is linked to death and there they are in agreement with Paul who says that “the wages of sin is death.” The original sin got us all kicked out of the Garden with its Tree of Life. So, if there had been no sin there would be no death, and we and all the people who have ever been born would all still be living in the Garden.

And that is where I get stuck. Trained as I am in Biology and Environmental Studies, I have trouble with the idea that life can exist on this planet just as it does but without death. Imagine it, if you even can, all the billions of people who have ever lived crowded all together with the animals and plants. Even just the ants would probably cover the entire surface of the planet not to mention the dinosaurs….

It boggles the mind, and my comment during class was that if there was no death, then there couldn’t be any new birth either. There just isn’t space. To which my professor replied, “We’ll never know what God intended. Maybe the “Garden” was big enough to hold us all.”
“But things don’t work that way,” I complained. “No planet could be big enough.”

“But God is.”
God is ….

God is big enough to hold all creation and to love every living thing no matter how big … no matter how small. God’s love is big enough.

That’s a mind-boggling thought, too. And, it’s more than a little scary because it makes it absolutely clear that God’s power is beyond our assumptions and understanding. So far beyond that death and life have no power to limit God. So far that raising someone from the dead is just the beginning.

That’s the power that Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother-of-James, and Salome faced when they arrived at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Until then they had known Jesus as a powerful healer, a teacher, a friend, … and a man. But when they stepped into the cave, they came face to face with a different reality. There was no body – no man shrouded with cloth and smelling of the beginnings of decay. There was no death there and no life … not the way they knew it. There was only something unknown and unknowable – an angel and a power beyond life and death.

Is it any wonder that they left in fear? … that they didn’t tell anyone what they had seen? I don’t think so. I’m not sure I would have stayed even as long as they did, and I pretty sure that I wouldn’t have gone around telling anyone such an unbelievable story … at least not right away.

And that bring up an interesting point. Where are the stories of Jesus’ appearances? … of the blessing of the disciples? Where is the happy ending? Why did Mark end the story here when there is so much more to tell?
Some scholars say that this is a literary device that Mark used to keep the focus on the suffering service of Christ rather than on a final, glorious triumph over death or to remind us that the resurrection was special – that it was “not just another event in the sequence of events that we catalogue as history.” And that may be true, but I think there’s more to it as well.

Leaving the story unfinished invites us all into the tomb. For a few moments we stand there with the women … facing the unknown, trembling with fear. We hear the words of the angel, and all of us run back into the comfort of the light and warmth of the real world where people who die stay dead … except … they don’t. What is going on?! What happens now?!


We know the rest of the story. We know that this wasn’t the end. The disciples saw Jesus again, several times. Jesus blessed them with the Holy Spirit and sent them out to the world. They continued the story with their lives. Lives that followed the path set forth by Christ… lives of service and selflessness… of hope and courage that came from knowing that life was more than marriage and children and college and retirement at Millionaire Acres and death. Jesus’ resurrection showed them that life didn’t end with death. It was bigger than death. It went on.

And even now, even here outside the garden, Christ is whispering the same good news in our ears. Life is more than just years of getting stuff and doing things. Life is bigger than that … more than that, and even if we must experience death (unless the end days come in time), it is not the end of the story.

Christ is the light of world, and if we follow that light, we find … life. “Come into the tomb,” Christ whispers. “Come in and see the truth. Come in … and then … go out, and Life - life in all its servant fullness … in all its selfless joy … in the brightness of its eternal hop – Life in the wondrous love of God will be yours … forever.

Hallelujah! AMEN.