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Mark 16:1-8

Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA

Easter Sunday, 12 April 2009

What do you do with good news so unexpected it seems incredible? How can you celebrate what you can't believe is true?

The Gospel of Mark is an interesting piece of literature. We call it a gospel, but it is more than we generally mean by that word. Mark gives us an account of Jesus' life and ministry. He gives us a summary of Jesus' actions and teaching over the course of his ministry. As Peter's interpreter in the Greek-speaking world over the course of several years, Mark had access to Peter's memories and sermons about Jesus and his interaction with the disciples. He faithfully recorded much of Peter's discourse about Jesus. He did more than that, however.

Mark was not simply a conduit for Peter's memories or for other sources of information about Jesus. Mark had his own message to transmit. He was not making things up, but he had his own sermon to preach, his own message to convey to the generation following Peter.

This gospel is often referred to as full of action. Over and over, we read something to the effect of, "and then Jesus…", "and then Jesus said…", "after this Jesus went" to such and such a place. Jesus seemed always to be on the move. This movement, however, is always with a purpose. It is rarely a question of destination for Jesus, but a question of purpose.

According to Mark, Jesus was consumed with the concept of teaching his disciples. He did that in two ways. He spoke to them, answered their questions and the questions of the crowds, Pharisees, or other opposition to him. Then he would take the disciples to experience the reality of which he had been teaching them. They did not understand the question of greatness in the kingdom. They needed to see one who had a clearer perspective on what was important, even though he was blind. They did not understand about the issue of all people being acceptable in God's grace, so he went out of his way to be found by an unclean foreigner who needed grace.

Teaching was primary in Jesus' actions as well as words. The disciples, however, just never seemed to get it. Well, at first it was the crowds who did not understand. The disciples did better, but they were always falling short of grasping what Jesus was trying to teach them. Jesus would have to go back and start over on the same lesson, over and over again.

We would think that after three years of living with Jesus the disciples would have had a clue. After all, they had spent three years day in and day out listening to Jesus teach and walking with him as he ministered to those around him. They had seen him speak the gospel. They had seen him live the very same gospel. They should have understood, we think. Mark keeps reminding us, however, that the privileged Twelve seem to have been the densest disciples Jesus could have picked.

These rough and rowdy fishermen were not only uncouth and ill-prepared for life, they seem to have had a very difficult time grasping Jesus' words and making sense of them. To be honest, they were struggling between the fact of Jesus' words and the messages of their religious tradition in which they had been immersed since childhood. Three years seems like a good span of time to spend with Jesus. They had spent much longer at their mothers' knees and in the synagogues of their youth.

They had a lot to overcome. They were doing better than the fickle crowds, anyway. They tried to listen and make sense of Jesus' words. They also got bogged down with crowd control, keeping the needy at bay, and trying to get Jesus off to them. Sometimes those concerns just outweighed the message Jesus was trying to communicate.

So goes the story from Mark's perspective. Jesus tried, but the disciples were just losers. The crowds were miserably unprepared to understand Jesus. The disciples did, at least, finally figure out that Jesus was indeed Messiah. They just could not get past their pre-conceived notions of what that meant. Jesus spoke of his impending death. He talked of how he must lay down his life in order that we might live. He talked of a seed that must die, be placed in the ground, but then after death had the power to be transformed into new life.

They didn't get it. They struggled against Jesus on this point. They tried to dissuade him. He told them of his impending betrayal. He did not speak only of Judas Iscariot, however. He spoke of a much broader betrayal than that. And so it was.

The crowds were the first to turn their backs on Jesus. It was a mob who came to arrest him in the garden while he prayed. Judas was the next with his kiss of betrayal. Then the nine other disciples ran away from him at the coming of the guard. One followed a ways further, only to run away as the guards tried to nab him. Peter went further.

Ah, our hero! Peter, of all the disciples, went so far as to follow Jesus to the high priest's home. He sat there in the shadows warming his hands at the fire with some of the guards. That was the same fire in whose light he denied even knowing Jesus. That denial was not just once, but three times. Then Peter bowed his head in shame and ran away.

There was still hope, however, for there were still a handful of women tagging along. From a distance, they followed Jesus with the procession from the high priest's home to Pilate's courtyard, to Calvary. There they watched Jesus die amid their tears. As Jesus' body was taken down from the cross, they followed still, tracking him to the tomb where he was hastily buried alone.

These were the women who returned to the tomb that Easter morning. They came in despair, in fear, in dejection. The last of the faithful, they stuck it out with Jesus to the end, coming now to make a more decent task of preparing his body for the burial performed earlier in such haste at the encroaching of the Sabbath.

The crowds had followed him, hailed him, and then yelled, "Crucify him!" The disciples had followed, listened, argued, and then abandoned him in his last hours. The women were the ones to stick it out to the very end. They were the ones who heard the glorious news we so celebrate today. They were the truly faithful ones in the whole story, the ones who were there all along. But when they heard the news of Jesus' resurrection, came face to face with an empty tomb, and heard angels announcing Jesus as risen, they, too fled in fear.

Who is left? That is Mark's question, isn't it? Of those who followed him, all of the failed from the first to the last. So what will we do with Jesus? What will we do with the message that Jesus lives and offers life to one and all? Will we take up the message or betray Jesus in our own failure and fear?

—©2009 Christopher B. Harbin

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