An Easter Meditation
Mark 16:1-8
It was the worst of days; it was the best of days. It was a day of darkness; it was a day of light. It was a day of anguish; it was a day of fear. It was a day of doubt; it was a day of great faith. It would be a day that ranks as the most influential day in history dwarfing all rivals. The course of history and eternity would be forever changed.
It was the worst of days for a group of terrified disciples. The previous week had gone from the soaring heights of the triumphal entry of Jesus of Nazareth into the city of Jerusalem. The crowds cheered and shouted Hosanna. After years of political oppression, it looked like a new day was dawning in Israel. But the confusion of joy melted into plain confusion as Jesus did not live up to their expectations of a deliverer of Israel. Jesus did not help the disciples with His apocalyptic and gloomy talk. Then as Gethsemane, they see their comrade Judas come as a betrayer. They arrest Jesus. Peter whose back was against the wall and feared sharing Jesus’ fate denies Jesus. The disciples scatter and hide. Only John, Jesus’ mother, and a few women dared come to see Jesus crucified. Their greatest hopes were dashed. They could not even gather the courage to ask for the body of Jesus in order to bury Him. This task fell to two others. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus dared petition Pilate for Jesus’ body. They were willing to take the risk of shaming and even possible arrest as co-conspirators of Jesus. Nicodemus who was to afraid of his reputation to be seen with Jesus during the day had changed. He publicly shares with Joseph in taking a dead body off a tree of cursing. They publicly became unclean in front of all the Jews and Romans. They were shamed, but they were not ashamed of Jesus. They took the task of wrapping the body of Jesus and adding myrrh and aloes to the body and placed the body in Joseph’s own rock carved tomb and sealed the door with a great stone.
The women were guilt-ridden because they felt that they had failed to show the proper respect for the body of their beloved master. They knew they had to risk going out and finishing the task. The seem to have known where the body was buried. It was buried in haste, as the sundown of the Sabbath was coming. So they had to wait until the evening after the Sabbath. They went to the merchants and purchased the spices and waited for the early morning to go out to the tomb. The men remained behind the locked doors of their refuge, and the women went forth under the gloom of the pre-dawn morning. We don’t know how many women there were, but Luke indicates four. Mark seems to record three including Mary Magdalene. They went sadly to the tomb to do the work of anointing the body of Jesus.
It was on the way to do this that they realized that there was a problem. The tomb was large and expensive, so the rock which rolled over the mouth of the tomb was huge. It was far too heavy for the women to roll it away. This detail is one of those things easily overlooked in their confusion. So they asked each other how they could get the stone removed. To their astonishment, they noticed that the stone had already been removed from the mouth of the tomb. How convenient. Maybe some of the men had gone out under cover of darkness to remove it for them. But this was not the case. The other possibility is that grave robbers had come and rolled it away. At any rate, the women went into the tomb and were shocked. Instead of finding the body of Jesus, they saw what they thought was a young man sitting to the right on one of the ledges upon which bodies of family members might be laid. Naturally, they were frightened out of their wits, especially as this youth was in brilliant white garments. Also they could see the shelf on which Jesus was laid was empty. The body of Jesus was gone. Then, according to Mark, the man tod them to stop being terrified. The word Jesus is put forward for emphasis in the next sentence. It literally translated: “Jesus you are seeking of Nazareth who has been crucified has risen.” Translated into better English: “JESUS of Nazareth, who was crucified, has risen! He is not here! See where they had laid Him.”
This I am sure added great confusion to their great fear. Perhaps this accounts for some of the jumbled up accounts in the gospel of what had happened. The accounts of what happened all agree on the empty tomb. They all agree that women were the first to see that the tomb was empty. A message was given to them to go and tell Peter and the disciples. John seems to indicate that Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb later and saw Jesus. At any rate, there is excitement and confusion in the accounts, exactly what one would expect under these circumstances.
We have resurrection accounts and post resurrection accounts in the four gospels as well as in I Corinthians 15. Some of them are in Jerusalem, some in Galilee, and others in unnamed locations. Mark seems to agree with Matthew about Jesus meeting the disciples in Galilee. But how does one reconcile these accounts. Others more skilled than myself have shown the harmony in these accounts, and I would defer to them. However, there is something important at work here. These accounts are written testimonies of the resurrection. There are rules concerning the validity of testimony. In the Law of Moses, it says that there needed to be two or three witnesses to a particular event to make that testimony valid. No one was to be put to death, for example, based upon the testimony of a single witness.so here there are five written testimonies, as well as numerous occasions that the resurrected Jesus appeared to people.
We must also look at another important aspect of eyewitness testimony. That is if several witnesses are called to testify in a case, and their testimony is identical, the testimony is not valid. In fact it would be seen as rehearsed. When one witnesses something they are entirely prepared to witness, there are certain details that person notices. A second witness might see the same event from a different angel and see different detail. Valid testimony is that which agrees on the central fact, even though their perspective might be different as far as details. Someone witnessing an accident might see two cars collide without noticing the fact that one of them had run a red light. Another witness from another angle might have seen that detail. When taken together, the testimony must agree on essentials and the difference of details proves that there were several eyewitness to the even. In this case, the central facts are the empty tomb, women saw him, and He showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs. So the testimony of Scripture is exactly what one expects, which show it to be valid.
Mark indicates that the women were dazed and afraid and did not tell anyone what they had seen. Some thinks Mark ends here as a couple of early manuscripts do not contain verses 9-20, and a few have a shorter ending. But it seems to abrupt to think that Mark leaves the reader in suspense to determine in the message of the angel was true, that one had to search within one’s self for the answer whether they believe that Jesus rose. But the testimony of verses 9-20 is also strong and appears in the vast majority of manuscripts, including early ones. The earliest of the church fathers such as Justin Martyr quote from it. There is an abrupt shift in verse 9, but it is far less abrupt than ending the gospel at verse 8. But let critics say what they say. I hold verses 9-20 to be genuine resurrection accounts. The word got out, and the women did indeed tell Peter and the others, as the witness of the the other three gospels as abundantly clear. They disciples as well as the women were slow to believe what had happened. We do not expect someone to rise from the dead. The confusion was natural. The men believed the women were hysterical. Peter and John finally went out to look for themselves. There were some of the disciples in Galilee which Matthew records, doubted. Doubt is so hard to overcome.
Even Thomas doubted, and he gets a bad nickname for it. But the other 10 disciples were just as doubtful when Jesus cane in through the wall and invited them to touch him and eat with Him. The Emmaus disciples doubted, and were unaware that they were walking with Jesus Himself.
We have not seen or hrard or touched or seen the wounds of Jesus. Yet we are called to believe the good news. Jesus is risen! The disciples were so sure that they boldly preached Jesus at the risk of their own lives. We have their testimony. We also have the testimony of the Holy Spirit, by which we are born again. We see changed lives, and we see the change in our own lives. We are brought from the dark to the light, from despair to hope, from death to life, and from sadness to joy. I can only pray today that God will give us a glimpse of the risen Christ in our hearts, and that we would feel the joy of the Holy Spirit. Let us again be transformed, even as the men and women who witnessed the living Jesus on that day were forever changed. Let us with joy sing the great songs of out faith. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Christ the Lord is risen today! Hallelujah!
