Text: Mark 16:1-8
Beloved
in Christ, how are we supposed to react to Easter? Over the centuries we have
developed a script as to what to do: we place lilies in our churches and in our
homes; we might put on new clothes; and we devour eggs and chocolate. These are
all customs developed by Christians over the centuries to show their great joy
in the Lord’s resurrection. Lilies are one of the earliest flowers to break
through the winter landscape as a harbinger of spring. So too our Lord has
broken through the landscape of a humanity pockmarked by death and heralded our
own resurrection on the Last Day. New clothes remind us that we have been
clothed with the righteousness of God and the joy of Christ’s resurrection. The
eggs and the chocolate proclaim that the season of Lenten penance is over and
the joy of Easter has begun.
Those
customs are fine in and of themselves. But the first Easter wasn’t like that.
The women who went to Christ’s tomb weren’t wearing new Easter bonnets while
nibbling on chocolate eggs. They were going to deal with a grave
matter—literally. They were going to arrange further our Lord’s body. They had
hastily placed His corpse in the tomb since the Sabbath was about to begin that
Friday evening. They had wrapped Him in a shroud and put a minimum amount of
spices on Him. Now they were going to go back and do a proper job. They knew
that His body would soon decay, and they couldn’t stop that. But they could put
spices all around it so that it would stink less when they came back in a year
or so to put His bones in a box called an ossuary. It was a dreary task.
But
Easter surprised them. We are told, “Trembling and astonishment…seized
them.” And I pray that you too will be surprised by Easter. Sure, you
may know the Easter story, but may its message take hold of you as it did the
women at the tomb.
I
suppose we shouldn’t be surprised to hear Mark write in his gospel, “Trembling
and astonishment had seized them.” It may be some of the last words
that Mark wrote, but he had been saying something like that all along in his
gospel. As we have been reading the gospel of Mark, we have seen again and
again how Christ acted with great power, as He cast out demons, taught the
perplexed, and healed the sick. But there is also a corollary: wherever Jesus
went, people marveled at Him. The demons trembled at His presence; the people
in the synagogues were astonished at His teaching with authority; and the sick
and helpless were utterly amazed at what He had done. All along Christ had been
bringing God’s kingdom in great power, which had made people tremble and be astonished.
Why should His resurrection from the dead be any different?
Now
you may ask, though: Why should people tremble at the thought of Christ’s
resurrection? The answer is clear enough: Every time people in the Bible
encountered God, they trembled and were afraid. Even when God or one of His
angels was bringing a piece of good news, everyone’s first reaction was one of
fear. Why? We are sinful human beings and so we are naturally afraid of God.
Adam and Eve were not afraid of God at first, when they lived pleasantly in the
Garden of Eden. But when they had broken His commandment, they cowered in fear
ever thereafter. They knew that judgment rightly followed sin.
The
women who went to the tomb were also rightly afraid. They thought of how
righteous our Lord had been. Indeed, He was the one human being in all of
history who never committed a sin. Now if such a righteous person could be
grabbed off the street, unjustly tried and condemned, and then led off to
execution, what could happen to a person like you and me who could not claim
such innocence? And if God had stepped back and let this all happen to a person
without the slightest fault, what sort of justice should we expect from God?
They were afraid before they had even approached the tomb. The smallest of
things, no matter how benign, would have only sent them over the edge.
And
then they discovered that God wasn’t doing a small deed. He was dealing with
life and death. He was turning everything upside down and inside out. He had
condemned His innocent Son so that we guilty ones could be exonerated. He had
brought the Prince of Life into the bowels of death and up to the gates of hell
so that we who had been marked by death might know life. This is all more than
we can take in. And if we have any sensibility at all, it does strike a bit of
fear into us.
But
it should also astonish us. Now at last we see what sort of a God we have and
what sort of a Savior. If we were looking earlier in the Gospel of Mark, we
would have seen a wonderful teacher well worth studying. We would have seen a
person who brought healing to a sick world. We would have seen someone who
spoke truth even to the powers that be. All of those things are good. But we
have seen other people do similar things. We have seen wise people offer us
their learned insights. We have some physicians heal horrible diseases. We have
seen people challenge injustices in the world. All of those things are
admirable, but not necessarily astonishing. What is really astonishing is that
someone was willing to go into the depths of death and hell in order to redeem
us from them—and that this someone was none other than true God.
As
we see Christ risen from the dead, we learn that He did not die as one more
martyr to a cause or one more victim of a cruel world. Instead we see someone
who wanted to transform the world deeper than we ever could. He came to do more
than make us wiser or healthier. He came to restore us as creations of God,
holy and righteous before Him. He came to bring us back into fellowship with
Himself. He came to put an end to the death sentence that has stood over
humanity for millennia. By rising from the dead He guaranteed that we will all
rise from the dead on the Last Day and that all who believe in Him will have
eternal life. There have been many great men and women over the centuries, but
nobody else has done such an astounding feat.
Even
more astonishing is how deeply God loves us. That is now apparent, as never
before, now that Christ has been raised from the dead. Now God’s whole plan has
been laid out in front of us. It is as clear as day. We see how His great love
for us moved Him to send His Son to become one of us. And the Son of God loved
us so much that He became like one of us. He was carried in His mother’s womb
as each of us were. He was born as we were. He grew up like one of us, complete
with skinned knees and all the other childhood frustrations. And though He had
an amazing career, He chose to be like us in one more way: He chose to die,
even as we do. But more than merely die like one of us, He took on all our
deaths. He faced the loneliness and pain that we fear will mark our own deaths.
He did all this because He loved us.
But
then He rose from the dead—not just for His sake, but for our own as well. You
see, He wanted this to be a shared experience. This was not just going to be
His private little victory, but the victory for all of humanity over death. Just
as He became like us in every respect even to the point of death, so He will
make us like Him in rising from the dead. It may take some time before we
experience this. Already the church has been waiting for two millennia. But one
day our Lord will return in glory and raise our bodies to be like His glorious
body. Why? Because He loves us. A lifetime with Him is too short a time, He
thinks. He wants to spend eternity with us.
In
fact, what God will do in and through us because of Easter is no less
astonishing. The cowardly disciples would become pillars of the faith. A
persecutor of the church would be made into an apostle. A small band of
hopeless people would become a mighty church that would spread into all
continents and embrace billions of people. People who had given themselves to
every vice or who despised God or didn’t even believe in Him would be changed
as they lived lives of faith in Him, now revering Him and walking in His
commandments and trusting fully in His promises.
Yes,
Easter remains astonishing to this very day. Let us not be so overwhelmed with
all the conventions of chocolate and Easter bonnets and the like that we
overlook just what an amazing day it is. Let us with trembling and astonishment
join the saints over the last twenty centuries as we contemplate exactly what
God has done in raising Christ from the dead. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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