He Has Risen!

Mark 16:1:

“When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, 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[’s] 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.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

And just a brief prayer:

Father, what we know not teach us; what we have not give us; what we are not make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.

Well, it goes without saying, I think, that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is at the very core of the Christian faith. It’s not an addendum. It’s not extraneous in any way. And whenever people discover that Jesus is alive, then their lives have to reckon with that. Saul of Tarsus, as a religious Jew, was totally convinced that Jesus was dead, that the gospel story was a fraud, and that the people who were the followers of Jesus deserved nothing better than to be either imprisoned or killed. And then, dramatically, one day he was literally floored to discover that he was wrong and that Jesus was alive. As a result, he became a preacher of the good news that he had previously rejected. And he became just wonderful at providing a very brief statement of the essentials of Christian faith.

On one occasion, as he writes to the Corinthian church, he puts it in this way: “I delivered to you what was of primary and of first importance.”[1] And then this is what he says: that “Christ died for our sins … he was buried … he was raised,” and “he appeared.”[2] And as he goes on through that particular part of his letter, he is very straightforward about how essential the resurrection is. This is how he puts it to these people, who are basing their lives on the fact that Jesus is alive. He says this: “If Christ did not rise, your faith is futile—your faith’s a complete waste of time—and your sins have never been forgiven.”[3] If Jesus is not alive, then that story about him dying as a Savior for sin is absolutely wrong, and it is therefore irrelevant. Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter; it’s not Christianity at all.

So, what I’d like to do is to examine this this morning very, very simply, to take the approach of the three R’s. And the three R’s this morning are, first of all, to look at the record, then to say something concerning its relevance, and then, finally, something regarding our response to it.

The Record

So first of all, then, to look at the record. Now, there are a number of records, aren’t there? A number of places throughout the New Testament where the story of the resurrection of Jesus is recorded for us. And we’re looking expressly at what Mark tells us here, and the reason for that is because we’ve been studying Mark as a congregation for the last few years. And many are desperately keen for it to end, and so they’re very excited this morning not just about the resurrection but about the end of these studies in Mark. I, for one, am somewhat disappointed to have to bid him farewell.

We could easily have gone to Matthew or to Luke or to John, and when we do—and when you do, because I would imagine you’d want to check this out—you will discover that it is, in many ways, in the Gospels the way you would expect it to be if you read of an incident in the newspaper, and you read a number of newspapers, and you found that there would be variations on secondary issues but that the essential facts would be identified and articulated in every newspaper. And that’s exactly what we find: each Gospel has its own variations, but the core facts are common in each record. And I want us just to look at the core facts as they’re given us here by Mark.

Christianity without the resurrection of Christ is not simply Christianity without its final chapter; it’s not Christianity at all.

You’ll notice that Mark is telling us that these women had made a purchase. They had purchased spices, and the reason they did so is because they had a plan. Their plan was to go to the tomb. It’s very important for us to recognize that they had not bought flowers in order to go and rejoice in the reality of the resurrection, but they had purchased spices instead so that they could make sure that they could anoint the body of Jesus.

There was absolutely no doubt about the fact that Jesus was dead. In 15:40, Mark tells us that the women—who stayed true, as women often do, when the men had bailed out—that these women were present to see Jesus die. “Looking on from a distance,” they were able to identify that. They were also present following along to see where Jesus had been buried. And it was on account of that that early in the morning, they were now able to come and do what they hoped to do.

They’re not coming to the tomb for Easter Sunday. They’re coming to the tomb to pay their last respects. They’re going to the graveyard because in the graveyard, there are dead people. And in one of the Gospels, the angelic announcer says to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”[4] And their answer, of course, would have been, “We’re not here to find the living. We’re here to look for the dead among the dead. Jesus is dead. We all know that. Why do you think we’ve brought these spices with us?”

But you know, when you think about the spices—especially those of us who were present on Good Friday—they’re a little late, aren’t they? After all, the immediacy of decay of a body, combined with the fact that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had already purchased seventy-five pounds, we’re told, of myrrh and aloe and will have made at least an attempt to embalm the body of Jesus[5]—why in the world would it be of relevance that they would show up now?

Well, don’t let’s be too hard on the ladies. We should be hard on the men; they never even showed up at all! The fact that they may have shown up late and to do something that was largely immaterial is an indication of their love. It’s an indication of their devotion. It’s an indication of the fact that when you get caught up with something, when you get caught up with someone, it may cause you to do things that you never anticipated doing. If you doubt my word, take Andrew Lloyd Webber’s word: “Love, love changes everything, … How [we] live and how [we] die.”[6] Love does dramatic things to people. And these ladies are here on account of their love.

So overwhelmed are they by the prospect that they don’t pay attention to the one big problem they’re going to have. And it’s only as they’re making their way towards the tomb that they said to one another, “We’ve got a major problem, because there’s that big stone that they rolled over there, and clearly, we’re not going to be able to remove it.” Well, they didn’t need to worry about that, because you will see that—in verse 5, is it?—they get there, and they discover that “the stone” has “been rolled back.” Actually, verse 4: “And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large.”

Now, some people are tempted to read these Gospel records and say, “You know, this is just legend. This is legend. This sort of stuff was invented a few hundred years after Jesus had died. These people were committed to an ideology, they were committed to a philosophy, and so they decided to put together, to invent, essentially, a religion. And these women are there at the very heart of it.”

But in actual fact, what we discover is that the way this is recorded, it doesn’t read like a legend at all. And the way in which there are variations between all the Gospels make us feel, make us think, make us deduce, that actually, what we’re dealing with are eyewitness reports—and especially when we recognize the fact that in first-century Palestine, it wasn’t possible for a woman to give testimony in a court of law. So if you were going to invent something, you wouldn’t use as your primary witnesses women, because women would not be regarded as legitimate witnesses at the time.

So when you look at this and you read about the stone being rolled away, you read about the presence of the angelic visitor, don’t stumble over it immediately. If you read all of Mark’s Gospel, which we’ve been doing, you become familiar with the fact that the supernatural breaks into the routine all the time.

So, for example, there were many people getting baptized at the period of time recorded at the beginning of Mark. John the Baptist was baptizing people. Jesus was baptized. In one sense, it was routine. But in that routine event, there is a supernatural dimension to it. And Mark tells us that as Jesus was baptized, he saw the heavens torn open, and a voice from heaven, the voice of the Father, said, “This is my beloved Son.”[7] Now, that was important for Mark to put in there, because he began his Gospel saying, “This is the good news about Jesus, the Son of God.”[8] That was his opening gambit. He is now baptized, and the affirmation of heaven is “Yes, this is my Son.” Those of us who were present last Sunday saw that it was a supernatural event when, at the death of Jesus, the curtain in the temple, maybe eighty-five feet in height, was torn from top to bottom. There’s no physical explanation for that. There is no human explanation for that. And so it ought to be no surprise that when the women come to the tomb, we discover that the same God who has torn the heavens open to say “This is my Son,” the same God who has torn the curtain in order to say “And you may enter my presence,” is the same God who has torn the bars away from the tomb so that these women may be able to make their entry.

For those of you who are wondering, let me just say this: authentic Christianity—authentic Christianity—is not a tame and a harmless ethic. Authentic Christianity is not a series of platitudes pronounced by faithful souls. Authentic Christianity is certainly not a list of rules and regulations whereby we might find it possible to make ourselves acceptable to God. No, authentic Christianity is full of difficult parts. It is full of that which makes us say, “Wait a minute.” It is full of that which demands an explanation which cannot be given on a normal, natural human plane. And a Christianity without the difficult parts isn’t even Christianity.

So don’t be overwhelmed, don’t be unsettled, by the fact that there is a man sitting in there, “a young man,” an angelic man, and described as an angel in the other Gospel records.[9] Mark is describing an angelic visit in human terminology: “a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.” And when they saw him, they said, “Oh, hey, Christ is risen!” And he said, “He’s risen indeed!” No, he didn’t. No, he didn’t. They didn’t. No: And when they saw him, “they were alarmed.” And he said, “Christ is risen.” No, he didn’t! He said, “Do not be alarmed. You’re seeking Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. Now,” he says, “he has risen. He’s not here. And if you look over there, you’ll see the place where he was laid.”

Now, when you combine this with the other Gospel records that tell us that the graveclothes of Jesus were left intact[10]—so that his departure from the shroud was not, if you like, a natural departure. He didn’t leave the graveclothes the way some of the teenagers have left their bedroom this morning: in absolute disarray, waiting for a return visit. No, the pristine nature of the graveclothes was such as to cause people to say, “That’s not normal.” “That’s not normal.” Of course it wasn’t normal! “That’s not natural.” Of course it wasn’t natural! You expect the creator of the universe to do something other than this when he triumphs over sin and death?

So, their alarm gives way to an assignment. They are to go out and tell the disciples—and Peter gets a special mention, because, of course, Peter had made a royal hash of things: “Go [and] tell [them] that [Jesus] is going before you to Galilee. [And] there you will see him, just as he told you.” That takes you back to 14:28, where Jesus has told them, “This is what is going to happen to me, but I will meet you again in Galilee.”[11] And so out they go. Verse 8 tells us, “And they went out”—this is the end of the record from Mark—“and [they] fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone.” They were absolutely dumbstruck. Presumably, as they made their way through the narrow Jerusalem streets, they just weren’t even talking to each other—a silence that was clearly temporary. If it hadn’t been temporary, then Mark would have no story to tell.

Authentic Christianity is full of difficulty. A Christianity without the difficult parts isn’t even Christianity.

Well, we’ll leave the record there. You can consider it on your own. I’m not going to spend time trolling through the usual arguments about “Oh yeah, but there’s a reason why people say that he wasn’t there. That was because the disciples stole him, or the Jewish people stole him, or because he had been only fainting, and then he resuscitated, and then he went out,” and so on. Nobody really buys any of that stuff anymore. And furthermore, most people are not really asking this morning, “Is this true?”—although that is a vital question—but they’re asking, “Is it relevant?” Is it relevant?

Its Relevance

That’s our second R. The record you can consider. The relevance: think with me for a moment. After all, some would legitimately say, “This happened a long time ago. This is over two thousand years since this happened. Why all the song and dance by Christians? Isn’t this just like a visit to the Cleveland Museum, where you find all these things that are wonderfully interesting, but they really have no impact on your life on a day-to-day basis?” My wife and I were there on Tuesday—quite remarkable, beautiful things to see. But we weren’t able to bring any of them home with us, and even if we did, I don’t know what we would have done with them. Isn’t that what this is? Sort of interesting if you’re a religious sort, but just irrelevant?

No, it isn’t! Think about it. Here’s the one eventuality that all of us face: death—the one event over which we have absolutely no control, the one thing that is absolutely guaranteed. From the minute we breathe, there is an absolute guarantee one day we will stop breathing. That is a paralyzing fear to many. It is a lurking thought to most. And every one of us ought to be saying, “Has anybody ever actually conquered death? And if they did, have they made a way for me to conquer it?” And we open up the pages of the Bible, and here is the very heart of the Christian story: that Jesus Christ has conquered death. Death exists because of our sin, because of our rebellion against God. That is why the good has become bad. Jesus has entered into time in order that our brokenness and our messed-upness might find all the necessary repair in him. And that because he is resurrected he will one day return, therefore, we ought not to feel that history is just trundling along to nowhere. No, I suggest to you that it is wonderfully relevant—relevant not only to the issue of dying but certainly to the issue of living.

It’s years now since Lily Tomlin was on Broadway with the one-woman stage play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Some of you will perhaps remember it. Some of it you wouldn’t want to see or read, but in the main, it made a very straightforward statement. And at one point, one of the characters, who is a bag lady who is moving around the New York streets, pushing a grocery cart full of her life’s possessions, she begins to reflect on all the things that are a basis of anxiety in her life. And then, in the midst of things like “I worry about who came up with the color scheme for Howard Johnson’s, and I worry about why my stockings won’t stay up, and I worry that if peanut oil came from peanuts, where does baby oil come from?” and she’s going through a whole series of anxieties, and then she stops and she says, “I worry about my place in the cosmic scheme of things.” And then she pauses, and she says, “I worry that there is no cosmic scheme of things.”[12] In other words, “I worry about the idea that I am just adrift on the sea of life with no explanation for my origin, no real purpose for my life, and nothing to prepare me for my death.” In contrast, you read the Bible, and it says that Jesus, who once lived and died, is now alive to meet the deepest longings of the human heart.

Many of us have been stymied, if we’re still in unbelief, because we’re looking for rock-solid proofs. “I read the Bible, and I couldn’t find any proofs.” You’re not going to find proofs. If you could prove God, it wouldn’t be God you proved. If we could frame God and contain God, it wouldn’t be God. No, what we have in the Bible are signs. What we have in our humanity are signs, so that the beauty of a morning stirs a longing within us that cannot be fully encapsulated by the most beautiful thing that we’ve ever imagined. The transcendent nature of a sunset stirs within us a longing for something. The joy of human relationships that we so easily mess up and feel bad about create within us a longing for an ultimate relationship. And so it goes on: the longing for justice in our world, so that the children in the playground, you hear them saying, “That’s not fair.” Where did fairness come from? Because within them they recognize that there is right and there is wrong. And the longing in our world today for things to be put right. Those are all signposts.

Have you stopped at the signposts? Because it helps me when I ask myself the question, “Do I matter?” “Do I matter?” “Well,” you say, “I matter to my wife, my children. I matter to a few folks.” No, we all understand that. But do I really matter? Does it matter? Is there any meaning? What’s the point of all this stuff?

Solomon, who was a really brainy guy and wrote Proverbs—at one point in Proverbs he gives an exhortation to the reader. He says, “Go to the ant.” “Go to the ant”—not “the aunt” as in “aunt and uncle,” but “the ant,” a-n-t, ant. “Go to the ant.” “Go to the ant, … [and] consider [its] ways, and be wise.”[13] So yesterday I said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to Google ants. I will Google ants. I’ll see what I can find out about ants”—which I did. And I found out that there are people who are completely fascinated by ants, and there is an amazing fascination amongst the fascinated with what is referred to as the ant “death spiral.” Now, only those of you who are up there with me will be aware of this. The rest of you are just going to have to take it at face value and head for your phones, but leave them alone right now. Don’t start Googling right now.

But what these PhD geniuses have discovered is that there is a particular kind of army ant that leads all of its other ants around in its wake. He sets off, and the ants begin to follow it. He leads them in a circle, and these create what are referred to as “circular ant mills”—not ant hills. One of the largest that has been discovered measured twelve hundred feet in circumference, and some PhD candidate discovered that this circular mill had a two-and-a-half-hour circuit time per ant. So you can imagine this soul. His wife says, “So, what have you been doing today?” “Well, I’ve been measuring how long it took Johnny the ant to get from the start all the way around to the end.” “Oh,” said his wife, “that’s remarkable. Why don’t you get a real job?” But what they discovered is this actually persisted for two entire days with ever increasing numbers of dead bodies resulting from starvation and from exhaustion.

So “go to the ant, … and be wise.” If you’re going to follow somebody, you better make sure they know where they’re going. If you’re going to follow somebody because you think they’re going to take you to food, they better not be lying. If you’re going to follow somebody, you better determine what the destination is, for surely we wouldn’t want just to hook in behind the guy in front of us and go to nowhere.

Now, you don’t have to go to the New York subway. Just consider your lives. Consider eight o’clock tomorrow morning on 480 West, 77 North, the tributary roads of 43 or 91, and all the people following along. They got up to go out to work, to get money, to buy food, to go home, to get up, to go to work, to get money, to buy food, to go home.

Nineteen sixty-five: “Ballad of a Thin Man,” remember? Bob Dylan. Do you remember the refrain that runs all the way through it?

Something is happening here,
But you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mister Jones?[14]

“Something[’s] happening here.” And something is happening here. And Jesus gives meaning to all of these things.

You see, the answer to the question “Do I matter?” is found in the love of God for us. The answer is “Sure, you matter! He made you. He made you, and he made you for a relationship with him.” “Is there any purpose in what I’m doing?” Sure there is! Listen to what Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, [even] though he die[s], yet [he will] live.” What a claim that is! “And [whoever] lives and believes in me will never die.”[15]

In other words, the reality of physical death will be experienced by all, but all who have been placed into Christ and who are raised with Christ, for them death will be like falling asleep this afternoon after a nice Sunday lunch and waking up and saying, “Whoa! The sun’s come out.” Because Jesus has made of death a narrow, sunlit strip between the goodbyes of yesterday and the hellos of tomorrow. And my friends, I don’t know anyone else who has. Do you? “Well,” people say, “that’s just too much for me to swallow. You know, I’ll take my chances. And frankly, if there’s nothing that can be done about it, we might as well get out now, while the going’s good.”

And that’s exactly what many clever people have done, isn’t it? Those of you who take the Wall Street will have seen, as I saw, this amazing piece under the heading “The Escape Artist,” the story of Mike Kelley—wonderful contemporary artist, very influential, born in Wayne, Michigan, 1954; punched out just a few months ago. And in the dying embers of his day—which nobody knew were the dying embers of his day, although he had resolved certain things—this is what he said: “I’ve given my whole life to being an artist, every ounce, so that there’s nothing left.” But he told his friend, “Now I need something else, but I’m emptied out.”[16] “Now I need something else, but I’m emptied out.” We are by nature emptied out, so we go for what helps us—significance, cash, sex, whatever—just to try and make us through that getting up, going to work, coming home, getting up.

The answer to the question ‘Do I matter?’ is found in the love of God for us.

Well, I could say more about its relevance, but I don’t want to become irrelevant. So let me come to my final point.

The Response

Response. Response. Every so often we are invited to somewhere. It’s always very nice to be invited. Sometimes it says, “Regrets only.” I’m not sure how that really works. You don’t have to reply. It’s kind of good—leaves you with an out. “Regrets only.” So that means I don’t have to talk to anyone? Well, you do if you’re not going. Okay, I have to think about that too long. I prefer “RSVP.” Répondez s’il vous plait, right? In other words, this is not an option. You have to get back to the person who sent you the note. That’s why they put “RSVP.” Might have said, “No gifts,” which is good; as a Scotsman, I like “No gifts.” I’m always looking for “No gifts.” That’s nice. But RSVP? “You phone her. I’m not phoning her.” You phone, write, whatever it is. You’ve got to get back to the person.

Now, here’s the thing: God did not go to the extent of extending this invitation for us just to walk out the door and say… His invitation is clear: “Come to me.” His requirements are clear: “Repent and believe.” His warning is clear: “If you do not believe, you will die in your sins.” And then, at the bottom of the card that he sends, it says “RSVP.” What’s your response?

The Gospel writers provide us with all this information not so that we could have a biography, not so that we could have a history—although it is both historical and biographical—but in order that we might understand that it’s good news. And they present the signs, or the evidence, in order that we might believe, so that in believing we might discover life in his name. That’s the whole program. The Gospels are there; the signs are presented. John puts it clearly: There were many others things that Jesus did that haven’t been written down; there aren’t enough books for them. But these were written down as signs in order “that you [might] believe that Jesus is the Christ, … and that by believing you [might] have life in his name.”[17]

“Well,” you say, “I believe.” Well then, that’s good. But do you believe in a kind of sitting-down way, or do you believe more in a standing-up way? And you say, “What are you talking about?” Well, you know… Or let me change the metaphor. Change the metaphor. I mean, you can believe that the menu in your favorite restaurant is fantastic. You can know it off by heart. You can tell everybody about it: “Oh, you ought to go to Luigi’s. Unbelievable. Ravioli—whew!” And someone says, “Did you ever eat it?’ Said, “No, I never ate it. No. No, no. Just, I like to read the menus. You know. It makes me feel good. I feel better just believing it.” “You never ate it?” “No.”

So how about the Jesus thing? “Well, I believe it.” Yeah, but… I’ll come back to the sitting down. I’m going to end sitting down. So here we are. I can’t move the chairs. They won’t let me move the chairs, so I have to sit here. So… It doesn’t work as well without the chair, but this is how we have to use. So, here I am. If I can stand here… If I can stand here, it’s reasonable to believe that I can sit there. And I believe that entirely. I believe that if I sit there, I can sit right on that very spot. I will not fall over. It will hold me up. I believe it. Completely believe it. You’re all going, “Yeah, but, okay, you going to sit down, or are you just going to stand there?” Okay, then I sit down. I was right.

Have you ever believed in Jesus in a sitting-down way?

When I was a boy in Sunday school, they told me that faith was this: “Forsaking All, I Trust Him.” “Forsaking All, I Trust Him.”

We’re going to sing a song now as our closing song. It could become for some this morning a sitting-down moment, even though you’re going to sing it standing up. Because some of you have taken a long time considering the record, have actually concluded that it is phenomenally relevant, but the RSVP is still out there, awaiting your response. How kind and gracious of God to give us more and more time to accept the gift that he has provided in the person of his risen Son!

Father, help us to read the record, to consider its relevance, and to respond accordingly, so that we might become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Grant that our closing song may become for us, many of us, a testimony of our faith. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] 1 Corinthians 15:3 (paraphrased).

[2] 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 (ESV).

[3] 1 Corinthians 15:17 (paraphrased).

[4] Luke 24:5 (ESV).

[5] See John 19:39.

[6] Charles Hart and Don Black, “Love Changes Everything” (1989).

[7] Mark 9:7 (ESV).

[8] Mark 1:1 (paraphrased).

[9] See Matthew 28:2; John 20:12.

[10] See John 20:6–7.

[11] Mark 14:28 (paraphrased).

[12] Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 25–26. Paraphrased.

[13] Proverbs 6:6 (ESV).

[14] Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man” (1965).

[15] John 11:25–26 (ESV).

[16] Kelly Crow, “The Escape Artist,” Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324678604578340322829104276.

[17] John 20:31 (ESV).