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. -Mark 16:8 ESV
What a strange text we have this morning! Here the Marys and Salome had gone to the tomb, mourning for a dead Lord, and expecting to complete the sad task of embalming Him. Instead, they found the stone at the tomb’s entrance rolled away, and an angel sitting next to it- with the incredible news that the One they mourned was alive!
“Go!” the angel said. “Tell His disciples. Tell Peter. He is not here. He is risen!” So did they go and do as they had been told? No. They didn't tell anybody. It's not that they were overcome with joy that Jesus wasn’t dead anymore.
Our text tells us that they didn't do what the angel told them to do because they were afraid.
Now, it's a very human thing to be afraid. We live in a universe over which we have far less control than we tell ourselves we have. Have you ever looked through a telescope? Astronomy is one of my hobbies, and I go stargazing as often as I can. Before you've looked at many of the wonders out there in the Big Empty, something will really sink in that you already know intellectually: that the universe is a lot bigger than you are and that there is very little that you can do about most of it.
An asteroid could come hurtling toward us at literally any moment entirely unseen, blindside us, and slam into the earth with enough force to raise a cloud that would doom all life on the planet. A nearby star could go nova, and flood us with lethal radiation. In the southern summer sky, in the teapot of Sagittarius, is the center of our galaxy, where there resides a gigantic black hole. I once attended a lecture by Stephen Hawking in which he said that he's fairly confident that someday we're all going to go down that particular drain if we don't blow ourselves up first.
None of us is guaranteed the next five minutes. A heart attack or stroke could end the life of any one of us before I finish the next sentence. If I finish the next sentence!
Climate change. Serial killers. Maniacs at the head of governments which have nuclear weapons. We live in an uncertain and frightening world in which the roof could cave in on us, either literally or figuratively, at any moment. Yes, we can certainly identify with those women. All of us know what it's like to be afraid.
And then, there was that angel business. Most of us usually think of angels as fluttery, effeminate critters like the ones we see on Christmas cards. People who read the Bible much usually don't make that mistake. Pastor Hans Fiene has a wonderful, if brief, video on YouTube in which he displays the probable reaction of any one of us who encountered a real angel. It consists of a man, eyes wide open in sheer terror, screaming for thirty seconds at the top of his lungs! No wonder the Marys and Martha were afraid! Over and over in the Bible, the first thing an angel has to do when he encounters a human being is to tell him or her not to be afraid!
But I don't think even the angel was what those women were truly afraid of. No, I think they probably were even more afraid of what the angel told them. He told them that Jesus- Whom they had loved so deeply and had known so well; Whom they had seen scourged within an inch of His life and then watched die an agonizing death on the cross, Whom they had buried with their own hands- was alive! It was simply too good to be true. The news was too joyful to be believed. Any of us who have ever lost a loved one can understand all too well why they would be terrified to believe what the angel told them. He had told them that they hadn't lost Jesus after all! And if they believed the angel, and what he told them wasn't true, it would be like losing Him a second time.
How very much like them we are! We gather here this Easter morning to celebrate the most joyful of all possible news. Christ has risen- and because He has risen, all of those things in this dangerous universe which we might, with reason, be afraid of are no longer threats. If Christ has conquered even death, then the movements of heavenly bodies and the affairs of nations and the condition of our own inner plumbing are under His control, too. If Christ has conquered death, then whatever might happen tomorrow, God will have the situation well in hand. If Christ has conquered death, then He has conquered sin, as well- and atoned for all those things of which our consciences might be afraid, and taken away His Father’s anger at them. If Christ has conquered death, then the loved ones we have buried and who have died in Him are not lost to us forever after all, any more than Jesus was lost to the Marys, and to Salome.
If Christ has conquered death, then we don’t even have to be afraid to die.
It’s all a great deal to take in, isn’t it- even for those of us who live two thousand years later, and are here this morning because we profess faith in the news the angel gave those women on the first Easter morning? When we leave this building, we will once again find ourselves living in a world of uncertainty, of threatening possibilities that are largely beyond our control. We will still miss the loved ones with whom we have celebrated previous Easters. We will still look forward to a future in which there seem to be very few guarantees and a great many things that can go wrong.
It's not just that we don't know what tomorrow may hold. We do not know what we may have to face before nightfall. We do not even know whether we will be alive to see this day end. And what if it isn’t true? Do we dare to believe the message the angel brought to the women at the Empty Tomb and risk disappointment? After all, we haven’t seen the angel. We haven’t seen the Empty Tomb. Dare we take the risk? Isn’t the news we’re here this morning because we have heard just a little too good to be true? No. Isn’t it a lot too good to be true?
Yes, the fear of those women is very understandable. It finds an echo in our own fear. More and more people these days are so afraid that they decide that believing the angel is a risk they dare not take.
But nevertheless, in the very midst of the fear and the unbelief that is the condition in which fallen human beings like us live our lives, the voice of the angel rings down through the centuries. Endorsed by the testimony of God’s Holy Spirit, echoes around all around the world this morning, not least in our own bereaved and fearful and doubting hearts. It sounds like a trumpet blast in defiance of every doubt and every fear, and says to each of us this morning what it said to the Marys and to Salome on that Sunday morning long ago: “Do not be afraid! He is risen!”
Saint Paul hit the nail on the head when he said that if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. If Christ is not raised, then we who believe the angel’s message are indeed of all people the most miserable. If Christ is not raised, then we are building our lives and all our hopes upon a lie- and that is the cruelest of all of the cruelties this frightening and arbitrary world inflicts upon us. Make no mistake: we run a risk in believing the angel, the very same risk the Marys and Salome ran.
The night before last we gathered, some of us, in this very church to hear a story whose ring of truth is unmistakable. We heard how the only one in the sad and sorry history of our race Who deserved none of the cruelties this world can inflict on those who live in it nevertheless became their victim. The cross rings true for all of us because we can see it and feel it. We, too, know about the cruelty and unfairness of this world we live in. We, too, have suffered, and suffer still. The cross rings true because each of us also bears his or her cross, and must someday die just as Jesus died.
The cross is a reality none of us can deny, as much as we might like to. In our moments of doubt and despair, we’re tempted to believe that it has the final word- that guilt and suffering and death and disappointment are finally all there is. We can choose to believe that, and not believe the angel. More and more people are making that choice these days. We can believe that those we have loved and lost to death are lost to us forever. We can believe that the sorrow and suffering of this sick and sorry world are all there is. We can believe that the greatest acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, the music of Bach and Mozart, the words of Lincoln and Tolstoy, and the paintings of Michelangelo and Van Gogh are all finally meaningless, no more significant in the last analysis than the idle twiddling of one's thumbs, the buzzings of a fly, the ravings of a madman or the stain on our jacket when we accidentally brush against a freshly painted wall. We can believe that our entire lives and all of human existence are nothing but a very bad joke, whose punchline is the grave.
We can believe that.
Or we can believe the angel. And if the angel is right, then we never have to be afraid again.
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