SCRIPTURE: Mark 16:1-8
TEXT: 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. THEME: The story of Jesus’ resurrection is evidenced in the story of our lives. INTRODUCTION There have been times when I have been accused of ending a sermon abruptly. “I was just settling into the sermon when you ended it.” they say. While I was thinking, “I have said all that I need to say on the matter.” Mark would agree with me as he seems to have ended his account of the resurrection of Jesus abruptly without proof; without an eye witness seeing the resurrected Jesus, without doubt being satiated by touching the nail holes and without an Emmaus meal with disciples, where scales fall from our mind and all of the facts of Jesus’ traumatic death are ordered, giving sense of knowing. Emmaus is like Brigadon, everybody has heard of it but nobody knows where it is. A literary device to convey truth. The resurrection is bit like that. We don’t have empirical proof but we are certain about it. SCRIPTURE Why didn’t the women ignore for the Sabbath before they went to the tomb? Jesus didn’t wait for the Sabbath to be over to heal, Jesus didn’t resist tearing off the heads of grain to eat as a snack along the way on the Sabbath. Without Jesus, have they already snapped back to the way things were before him? If they had disobeyed the Sabbath rules (as we were not made so the Sabbath had observers but the Sabbath was made for our good - to give us time with God and foster relationships) they could have been at the tomb earlier, when the stone was rolled away and Jesus folded the cloths and walked out of the tomb. When the Spirit moves, we don’t always get all of the details, but we just know we need to move. The women go to the tomb and as they go, they are wondering about the obstacle to Jesus’ body, the stone rolled in front of the entrance. They don’t have a plan but when they get there they will figure it out. Come to find out, the Tomb was already opened. Was the young man in the tomb the stone roller? He is the only witness to the resurrection event. I wouldn’t have let him get away without spending more time with him. It puts all believers in the same predicament. We have to contend with what someone else has told us, without our seeing for ourselves that Jesus is not here, he is risen. But this is a pivotal event. For all the other spectacular events; the healing of Jairus’ daughter, the healing of the leper, the healing of the deaf mute and after the transfiguration event, we are mandated not to tell, until the Son of Man is risen from the grave. Sometimes I am silent because I don’ know if I understand exactly what I am supposed to share. I don’t want to say the wrong thing or misrepresent something. Sometimes I have to look over my notes again, play the video over again, check in with the other witnesses before I go and tell. Then lastly, when did Jesus say that he would meet them in Galilee. The other way to read this is to follow Jesus who is ahead of you. “Go” away from this place of death and of endings, and return to life and a new beginning.——-“Follow me” to Galilee where the new beginning was shown; of feeding the hungry, driving out the demons that torment people, preaching words of hope to the broken-hearted, healing those in distress, and breaking down the barrier walls that separate people takes place. Nobody produced the missing body of Jesus to counter the resurrection claim. APPLICATION Jesus’ resurrection is present in the way he is be present for all of us; shock and amazement and a paradigm shift with no physical evidence. I have to admit that I am afraid to share my faith. I want to think that just living my life as best as I understand who God and Jesus is should be enough, but I have come to realize that my life needs a narration. I do turn a conversation towards the theological when given the opportunity. I am not an arguer, I do like to share what I am thinking about to see how others receive this revelation. I am putting together my systematics. I have changed some of my presupposition for new ones. I am still discovering and allowing my theology to evolve. In reality, we don’t have to know everything to believe. All we need is a little bit and that will start us on a journey of faith. We don’t even need evidence. The unexplainable, a feeling, being surprised from the ordinary can launch us in God’s direction. We do have invisible stones in our way that block us. Why were they obeying the Sabbath rules. Following the sabbath rule, they missed seeing Jesus, the Sabbath was the other stone in their way for something else they could be doing for Jesus. CONCLUSION Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Now that is an epic bad ending. Mark’s “go and tell and they do not” is sort of a bad ending, but we couldn’t be having this discussion if that is exactly what they did. They did get to a time when they began to say, “Remember that day we went up to prepare Jesus body? This is what happened when we got there.” or “This is what we didn’t see. And This is what we saw and heard.” and “Remember that road trip we had planned to Galilee right after that but we didn’t go. Instead, we sat around the kitchen table and remembered things; like the guy who couldn’t walk and could, or the person who couldn’t see and did. Or the person corrupted by sin and wasn’t. The change in personality for the better, the hand made whole, the catch phrases of loving our neighbor, and surprise at who my neighbors is? And forgiveness. Being stewards of the things we have. We exchanged a few more stories across the table, baked a few loaves of bread and sang a few hymns with a few glasses of wine before we were done. Then we decided to live as if we were going to live and not die. Freed from laws that need to be fulfilled by us, but living in consideration of others. We do the work to reconcile relationship instead of hold grudges and we don’t know everything and are always willing to learn more things. Then, we go and tell people, by the way, this is what I think about Jesus, the church, and what it means to live my life with faith in Jesus, who is here, but not his body, he is risen. We all get to write our alternate ending to Christ’s epic story.
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