The Resurrection of Our Lord

 Curate Tapani Simojoki
12 April 2009

Mark 16:1-8

"When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

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In the name of † Jesus.

Amen.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia!  Praise the Lord!

Christ is risen from the grave and by His death and resurrection He has vanquished death for ever. Following centuries-old Christian tradition, the artist of one of our stained-glass images portrays Christ on Easter morning as emerging from a tomb with the victor’s banner in His left hand, with His right hand raised in blessing. Trampling on death, holding aloft the sign of His triumph and sharing the blessing of eternal life to all who look to Him. The war between righteousness and sin, between life and death, has been decided, with righteousness and life the undisputed winners and sin and death the eternal losers.

What joy!  What unequivocally good news!

It seems strange, then, that it seems that joy is almost entirely absent from our Gospel text. It’s even stranger if it is true, as many scholars think, that this Gospel reading is the original ending of Mark’s Gospel.

Having given us fifteen chapters of “the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”, Mark leaves us with this:

“And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

The end.

Where is the “Easter triumph, Easter joy”?  Where are the Alleluias?  Why aren’t we being told what happened next, of Mary’s encounter with the Risen Lord, of His appearances to the disciples of which Paul writes in our Epistle. St. John writes, “Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” Luke writes a whole second volume about the disciples taking the good news of the resurrection across the known world. Mark leaves us with three women, trembling and silenced by fear. “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” What was he thinking?

And yet, in the fear, even in the silence, there is a great comfort and a genuine message of joy for us in Mark’s Gospel on this Easter morning.

When the women came to the tomb, they too must have thought that the battles was over. Only in their minds it was death that had been victorious. Their Jesus was dead — lying lifeless in a tomb. All that remained for them to do was to pay their last respects, by anointing His body. The rest of life loomed ahead of them, a life with no Jesus and none of the hope He had given them. Somehow they would have to piece their lives back together without Him. With Jesus’ words still echoing in their ears, they had lost faith in their power. This was the Jesus who had said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” What good was a promise like that when He Himself was now dead?

Into this gloom, the message of Easter broke in by the word of the angel in the tomb: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here.”

All the disappointments, all the despair, swept away with these simple words. “He has risen; He is not here.” Now go and tell the others.

But how did the women react?  What did they do?  “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

How could they? !  Hadn’t they just heard the best news of their lives, that Jesus had risen and was no longer dead?  And that from the mouth of an angel?

There are at least two explanations for the women’s behaviour. The first is that they had just had gone through the most unsettling of experiences. Already upset by their grief, they had just been addressed by an angel whose message was as startling as his appearance. This was the emotional rollercoaster to end all rollercoasters!  It’s only natural that they were literally dumbfounded.

But they were more than shaken and astonished. They were afraid. What they had seen and heard had not filled them with joy or comfort but with fear. We know this, because the Gospel of John tells us that Mary went outside the tomb and wept, thinking that Jesus’ body must have been stolen. She did not believe the words of the angel. It wasn’t until she encountered Jesus, that He spoke to her, that she finally believed the words the angel had spoken. And until she did believe, the fact of Jesus’ resurrection was of no benefit to her. To her, Jesus remained dead.

And this same emptiness, this despair and unbelief still has its hold over innumerable lives. How many people live their lives as if Jesus were still dead in the tomb!  That Jesus did rise from the dead is a historical reality, as much a fact as the existence of the sun. But without faith in its power, Jesus remains dead to these people, and His resurrection is of no benefit to them. On the cross, the sins of the whole world were paid for, and in the resurrection eternal life was prepared for the whole world. But unless you receive it in faith, the gift remains wrapped up and unused.

And it may seem that for people of our time the message of the resurrection of Christ is harder to believe, less credible, than ever before. In an age defined by science and materialism, any claims of the supernatural are thrown straight into the dust heap of unscientific superstition. So much so that even some in the church have given up their faith in the resurrection, trying to salvage Christianity in the modern world by stripping it clean of such embarrassing claims.

But this is not the way forward. Moreover, the offence of the resurrection is no modern problem. Ancient people knew just as well as we do that once you’re dead, you’re dead, and the dead don’t come back to life. The whole point is that the women at the tomb did not believe the angel, and a little later the disciples in Jerusalem, did not believe the women. And without faith in the resurrection, Christ remains dead in the tomb, and our sins remain on our own shoulders. Take away the resurrection and you take away the entire Christian faith. As the bishop of Durham put it, if Christ was not raised, we may as well stop wasting time and go home.

How can we convince a sceptical world that Jesus is indeed risen?  How do we get past the fear and the trembling—and the silence?  Mark does not tell us. He doesn’t need to tell us, because he knows that we already know how the story is going to end: the fear does not last long, and the silence is soon broken, and the message of the resurrection will begin its irresistible spread to every corner of the earth. Not by the power of someone’s skills of persuasion, not by irresistible proof—but by the reality of the risen Lord.

When we encounter the risen Jesus, unbelief has no room. Like the cold mist is burnt away by the morning sun, our doubts and our fears are burnt away by the Sun of Righteousness. In the forty days from that first Easter morning, He called Mary by name, He invited Thomas to touch His hands and His feet, He broke bread with the disciples at Emmaus, He spoke with the apostles. In just the same way, He has called you by name, He invites you to hold His body and blood in your hands, He breaks bread with you, He speaks to you. He doesn’t merely ask you to consider arguments and evidence, or to take someone else’s word for it: in His word and in the sacraments, He comes to you in person, to dispel unbelief and to plant a living faith, so that like Thomas you can but cry out, “My Lord and my God! ” and like Mary fall at His feet and worship Him. He rose on that Easter morning once for all, but He rises to new life in you day after day through repentance and faith. Again and again, He continues to share His victory over death with everyone who will receive Him as the one who died and rose for him, for her.

Now, for many people this is a strange way for God to spread the kingdom of Christ. After all, Jesus could have burst through the rock and displayed Himself to the whole world in all His glory. He could have given philosophically and scientifically watertight evidence to convince all the wise men and women of the world. At least He may have chosen plausible and convincing messengers to spread the news. He could have done all this.

Instead, He chose three ordinary women, three tearful, gibbering wrecks, to tell the world the greatest news since creation. As women in that society, their word had no weight. As tearful, fearful, gibbering wrecks, they lacked the courage even to believe let alone speak. Yet, the news spread—precisely because its power was not in the status and ability of the messengers but in the Risen Lord and His resurrection. Far from diminishing the power of the Easter message, it highlights and amplifies it. It is not who you are in yourself that qualifies you to hear and speak the message of the resurrection. It is not the learning or eloquence of preachers that creates faith in the risen Christ. No, the power and glory all belong to the Resurrected One. As long as you are capable, as long as you are plausible and sufficient, there is no room for another master. But once that Old Adam is crucified together with self-sufficiency, Christ can break in, to raise from the dead the new man, the new woman, to live in Him forever, and to be a living witness to the world the truth of Paul’s words:

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”

May we, like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, be filled daily with the joy of the resurrection that dispels all our fears and replaces our silence with Alleluias.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Amen.

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