A Fragile, Vital Link - Mark 16.1-8

            We’re telling the Easter story today from Mark’s gospel.  It’s fascinating, and not a little baffling, to lay the Easter accounts in the four gospels alongside one another, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and compare.  To say the least, they aren’t the same. At all.  And it gets confusing.  But think of it as if you’d sent four climbers up a mountain, independently, having each one keep a journal of the trip, and then afterwards you compared their notes.  Certainly, you’d have had an easier time with a single account, or if the four had simply copied off one another.  But you wouldn’t have learned anywhere near as much about the mountain.  In the gospels we have four accounts, reflecting eyewitness testimony from different sets of eyes.  And, in fact, each gospel writer is eyeing a different audience.  Today we get the good news of Easter from Mark’s angle.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. ² Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb ³ and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

⁴ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. ⁵ As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

⁶ “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. ⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

⁸ Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

            Two Marys and Salome brought burial spices.  It looks like they were a delegation from the larger company of women that had lingered at the cross till Jesus’ body was taken down.  They’d followed Joseph of Arimathea as he took the body and prepared it for burial in his own tomb.  But by then the day was turning towards evening, and as the Jews reckoned time that meant the Sabbath was beginning.  And Jews didn’t work on the Sabbath, even to prepare a body.  So the deed was of necessity done in haste.  The women watched, and resolved to come back after the Sabbath, to re-do it, and do it right.  What we would have called Saturday evening, after sundown ended the Sabbath, they bought spices for embalming – that with the intention of getting to the tomb at first light, for a task that time and heat would only make more unpleasant.

² Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb ³ and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

Oops.  In fact, that was no small consideration.  Stones used to seal tombs weren’t intended to be removable, and a stone for a rich man’s tomb would have been huge.  But whatever they’d been thinking - or if they just weren’t thinking – it turned out not to matter.  The obstacle was no more.

⁴ But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. ⁵ As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

⁶ “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. ⁷ But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

There, told in four short verses, is arguably the greatest single event of all history: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  A deed that, according to the apostle Paul, would spread life to the human race the way Adam’s sin spread death.  As such, you might have expected the young man dressed in white to dwell at least a little longer on the remarkable fact that Jesus was alive.  And you might wonder what Galilee has to do with anything, that it should figure so prominently.  But the fact is, the angel isn’t giving news, so much as marching orders.  Or better, he’s giving news for the sake of marching orders.  See, he’s not here – now go.  Tell his disciples.

There was urgency – certainly lots to do and not much time to do it.  But more than that, there was desperate need to get the disciples back on track.  Because when you think of it, they were pretty much what Jesus had to show for three years of ministry.  He hadn’t built a building, he hadn’t written a word for posterity.  He’s taught and trained these guys.  And now they’re in disarray.

So what about Galilee?  In Galilee they’d become a band – a unit - on a mountain there (read about it in ch. 13).  After spending a whole night in prayer, Jesus called to himself his followers - the loose assemblage of people more or less committed to him – and from among them he chose The Twelve – the apostles.  And they became an organism, a body.  They had a number – there weren’t ten disciples this week and fourteen the next, depending on who all showed up - they were The Twelve.  They had division of labor, they had a spokesman, and most important, they had a mission.  But that mission was abandoned, when they all ran off at Jesus’ arrest in the garden of Gethsemane.  Turn back a page, to chapter 14, the very last thing they did as a group: (v.50) “Then everyone deserted him and fled.”  So much for The Twelve.  So, Jesus’ first priority is restoration, in Galilee.

Go, the angel says, tell his disciples and Peter.  Which is curious phrasing.  Peter is a disciple – or was?  There’s a putdown you’ve possibly heard (let’s pick on Texas) speaking of “the whole inhabitable world – and Texas.”  Disrespect intended.  It’s hard to know just what to read between the lines here.  But one thing’s spelled out in the lines, in black and white, the enormous fact that Peter’s included.  Go tell Peter to meet Jesus in Galilee.  In other words, he’s still wanted.  Jesus hadn’t given up on him.  Which may have come as a surprise to Peter.  Because Jesus had told them, reading back in chapter 8:

³⁸ If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

It wasn’t a little thing to deny Jesus.  In the High Priest’s courtyard, they’d asked Peter about his association with Jesus.  “He swore to them, ‘I don’t know this man you’re talking about.”  Peter could very well have figured that, as far as Jesus was concerned, his goose was cooked.

But Jesus was raised from the dead, and with the living Savior, there’s hope of a second chance, and new beginnings.  Paul told the Corinthians, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.”  Only Christ has been raised.  And the Hebrews author says, “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”  He lives in order to intercede, he intercedes, in order to forgive and restore.  It says in First John, “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.”  Peter sinned, but Jesus lives, and speaks to the Father in our defense.  We sin, and our living Savior is still interceding.  And if he didn’t dump Peter, he won’t dump you and me.  Good news, for those of us who mess up.

I got a salvage registration for my VW bug, after it got rear-ended.  In fixing it up, the issue was raised – you need to keep it original? All genuine parts?  Well, maybe not.  Restoration wasn’t the issue.  The question for me was – will it work?  Jesus restores, in order to re-commission.  He repairs us to get us working again.  Paul says, we’re created in Christ Jesus for good works.  Hence the bit about Galilee.  There Jesus would tell his disciples, Go into all the world, and make everybody my disciples.  God had said to Abraham, I will bless all peoples through you.  And in Galilee, Jesus would be repeating that commission: Go do it: go carry God’s blessing to all peoples, to the ends of the earth.

But between the resurrection of Jesus and the re-commissioning of his team to evangelize the world there was a fragile, vital link: a group of very frightened women.  The angel told them, go tell his disciples. 

⁸ Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

That might seem like a strange place to stop reading.  In fact though, it appears that that’s where Mark stopped writing.  What follows is really a summary of post Easter events, in a style very unlike Mark’s.  It’s Scripture, but it really doesn’t conclude Mark’s eyewitness account.  Read on in the parallel accounts and you find how the women met Jesus, and searched out the disciples and told them.  But our text interrupts the story at just the crucial moment – at a moment of decision.  The women have big news, bigger than which could scarcely be imagined: Jesus is alive! His promises are true! Granted, they haven’t seen him with their own eyes, but they do have reliable testimony.  They have evidence.  The angel made a point of showing it to them.  Check out the tomb.  See? Now go!  They have news and they a commission.  Go, tell.

That ought to have a familiar ring.  Because we have essentially the same news – and it hasn’t gotten any less important.  Paul says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  Then he asks, how can they believe, if they don’t hear.  And how can they hear, if no one tells them.

If someone knew all that, and had been told Go tell, what could keep him from telling?  Mark says, they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.  What did they have to be afraid of – that could silence them even momentarily?  (We may be able to find ourselves standing with them.)  Certainly the encounter with the angel had been frightening, but that was over now.  It was terrifying for a moment, but now it’s an exciting story.  What fear could silence them – and keep them from blurting out what was the best news any human being has ever carried? 

One thing: the news may have been good, it wouldn’t have seemed very probable.  They certainly ran the risk of being scorned or laughed at.  And if that was their fear, it was justified.  Read in Luke’s parallel account, when the women finally told the disciples, “they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”  And maybe the more so, because there was so much about what they’d seen and heard that they couldn’t begin to explain.  They’d make proper fools of themselves.  But you’d have to add, God is willing to take that risk, when he sends us with his message.  When Jesus sent his disciples out preaching, he didn’t let them think for a moment that everybody would listen.  But some would, and they’d be saved.  Paul says, We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, Yes, we might look silly.  But we’re sent anyway.

What other fear could have silenced them?  Consider: Jesus had been killed, and his closest associates were cowering behind locked doors.  It may not have been safe, to go talking about the resurrection of Jesus.  Maybe they were a little safer for being women.  But not necessarily.  When Saul of Tarsus was persecuting Christians he made no such distinctions.  But here too, Jesus never said it would be otherwise.  He never said it would be safe.  “Behold, - he said - I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.”  He sent them out, and continues to send his people out, some to scary places.

We had a witness retreat here at Immanuel – it’s been some years ago now.  A point our teacher sought to make loud and clear.  Where Jesus says, You will be my witnesses, it wasn’t you, the Twelve, or you the early church, but, you there in the blue.  You in the 3^rd row.  You who have the good news.  You are my witnesses.  In fact, we stand squarely with the women in our text.  We have good news, that everybody needs, but not everybody wants.  And we may have fear.  I do, for one.  And we have Jesus telling us what the angel told the women: Go tell.

One other thing – and it was a point wonderfully brought home at the retreat – like the disciples that first heard Jesus’ Great Commission, we’re a body, an organism.  The Holy Spirit has made us into a team.  In witness as in a lot of things, we’re not intended to be an assemblage of Lone Rangers engaging in individual combat, every man for himself.  We’re here to help one another, encourage one another.  And complement one another: as someone has said it, if you’re not going to fish, then cut bait.  But one way or another, get with the program.

What do you do with the fact that Jesus Christ the Son of God died for sinful men and women and  rose from the dead?  First, believe it.  Identify with those sinful people for whom Christ died and believe in him and his sacrifice, and you will be saved, from eternal death.  Then, do what you’d do if you found a really good coffee shop, or soup recipe.  Share the good news.

Let’s pray that the Spirit will work in us what it takes to conquer the fear that silences us, and that he’d work in us a spirit of teamwork, to work together to spread the good news.