Good News Goes Viral

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Mark 16:1-8

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!  Do we believe it?  How does this good news of Easter change our lives for the better, and how do we share this possibility of transformation, that Christ’s life becomes ours, with others?!  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we make the good news of Jesus viral.  Not too long ago, I came across a viral social media post that spoke pretty well to me – a new 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method to save money, time, and stress grocery shopping.  “Wow!” I said to myself, “This is going to be life-changing. I am tired of grocery shopping, I’m tired of feeling like I’m cooking the same five meals all the time, this is going to be great.”  Alright, so giving it a few tries, yes the 6,5,4,3,2,1 grocery shopping method is interesting and maybe a little less stressful but I still have to cook and go grocery shopping.  It wasn’t as life-changing as I thought.
To be honest, at least these videos on how to try to make everyday life a little easier are better than most of what we see going viral today.  Most of what we share, repost and consume seems to be bad news that feeds on our anger, fear, distrust and division.  Our media understands that bad news sells.  Good news is hard to find, much less get so excited about that we HAVE to share it!
Our Easter gospel this morning from Mark meets us in the middle of our fear and confusion.  Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome come to Jesus’ tomb, and their first reaction is to assume the worst: the stone is rolled away, Jesus’ body is not there, they are alarmed, Mark tells us.  And even after the young man dressed in white tells them that it’s good news that Jesus is raised and they need not be alarmed, “terror and amazement seized them,” and they say nothing to anyone because they are afraid.  It seems that these women, and let’s lump the disciples in there with them, are not so unlike us. They’ve been conditioned to expect bad news.  Their first reaction to the best news of all time, that resurrection is real, that life conquers death, that the love of God in Christ is more powerful than all the evil forces in the world – is to doubt and run away without telling anyone about it.  Why do we let our fears get the best of us and assume the worst?  And why do we keep good news, especially the BEST news, to ourselves?  You know, the average Christian still today invites someone to church once every sixteen years.  Maybe we wonder if Jesus’ resurrection actually makes a difference for our lives.  Can we trust that this good news is for real?
Some of you know that I turn forty this year.  For some of you, it probably sounds great to be that young again, for others – you just wait, my friends and one day before you know it you will be confronting middle age and wondering where the time went! I was in college when social media was invented, when you needed a .edu email to be on Facebook and Amazon just sold books. I think my Facebook account is like 18 years old at this point! Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok were just a dream, much less ChatGPT.  The world has changed in forty years.  The world changed a lot in the forty years before me!  In forty years from now, the world will continue to change.  How have our lives been changed, no matter how old we are, by the transformative good news of Easter?!  How do we keep the positive good news of Christ living in us front and center, for us and for others and welcome this proactive change rather than react to the changes all around us?
When I think about the good news of Christ’s resurrection going viral that first Easter, I am still learning how we can share this news in positive ways using the technology of social media today.  It’s a tool; our face-to-face personal relationships are still a tool, too, that hasn’t changed.  I’ve learned there is only so much you can do to make something go viral.  It pretty much happens by chance, most of the time.  The women who keep silent for a little while as they leave the empty tomb cannot prevent God’s good news of Christ’s resurrection from spreading.  If we are silent even the stones will cry out, Jesus promises us.  The Holy Spirit will keep us moving forward in faith!  Thank goodness, of course, this passage we read from Mark’s gospel is not the end of the Easter story!  Of course, these women do shortly after tell the others to go to Galilee to see the risen Christ, and they do.  God moves the women from fear to faith.  In our second reading for today, Paul tells us that Jesus appears to Peter, then to the rest of the disciples, then to over five hundred men and women and the good news of Easter goes viral!  As it should!  As it STILL should!  The power of Christ’s resurrection cannot be stopped! 
A core message of Easter is that God in Christ through his conquering death on the cross moves us from fear to faith.  The Holy Spirit gives us courage to see possibility and new life when we allow ourselves to truly see and trust that the empty tomb means that Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Death does not have the last word. Fear cannot keep us silent forever.  And even as we are living in the middle of our lives with daily uncertainty and anxieties, we are God’s Easter people with the hope of eternal life, thanks be to God.  Even if what we share doesn’t go viral on our social media accounts, if we make a difference in one person’s life for the sake of the gospel, that is enough!
I came across a thoughtful post that made me think about the big picture in my middle life crisis here; it said something like, “I think differently now that I know most of my life is behind me, not in front of me.”  Especially as we get older or go through experiences that put us face to face with the reality of death, we do think differently:  each day that we have here on Earth is a gift from God.  Life is a gift!  We think differently about our life and our death because of Easter.  Knowing that we have life after death secured for us by our faith in Christ’s own death and resurrection makes us think differently than the rest of the world who looks at things as they are and says cynically, in a defeatist way – this is it.  When we are tempted to be silent or paralyzed by our fears, we can ask ourselves if whatever it is is more powerful than Christ, and the answer is always, always “no.”  Love wins, Life wins. Christ has triumphed, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!  Go and tell that good news!  Amen.