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, telling them that He 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? Nope. 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 it was because they were afraid.
Understandable! We all know about fear. We live in a universe over which we have far less control than we'd like to think. 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 out at the Big Empty much, it hits you like a truck that it's pretty big, and you're pretty small, and there's not much that you can do about what happens out there!
An asteroid could blindside us at any moment, and kill us all. 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 lives a big, hungry black hole. I once heard a lecture by Stephen Hawking in which he said that he was fairly confident that someday we'd all be going to go down that particular drain if we didn't blow ourselves up first.
None of us is promised the next five minutes. A heart attack or stroke could kill any of us before I finish the next sentence. If I finish the next sentence!
Climate change. Serial killers. Maniacs at the head of governments that have nuclear weapons. Terrorists. Outbreaks of disease. Sheer, seemingly random chance. We live in a 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. Over and over in the Bible, the first thing an angel has to do when he appears to someone is to tell him or her not to be afraid!
But I don't think even the angel was what had scared those women. I think they were probably more afraid of what the angel told them. He had said 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 again! That they had Him back!
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 the angel. If they believed the angel, and what he told them wasn't true, it would be like losing Him a second time.
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 of which we might, with good cause, be afraid can no longer truly hurt us. If Christ has conquered even death, then surely He can handle a stray asteroid and thwart the plans of evil men and keep tabs on the workings of our inner plumbing. If Christ has conquered death, then surely He can handle whatever tomorrow might bring. If Christ has conquered death, then He has conquered sin, as well- and atoned for all the ugly things of which our consciences are afraid, including the ones we dare not admit to otherwise. If Christ has conquered death, then the loved ones we have buried who have died in Him are not lost to us forever after all, any more than Jesus was lost to the Marys or 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? We are here this morning because we profess faith in the news the angel told the Marys and Salome. But when we leave this building, we will once again find ourselves living in a world of uncertainty and threatening possibilities that are beyond our control. We will still miss the loved ones with whom we have celebrated previous Easters. We will still face a future full of dangers and threats, many beyond our control.
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 words the angel brought to the women at the Empty Tomb? 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 fear. More and more people these days are so afraid that they decide that believing the angel is a risk they dare not take.
Yet the voice of the angel rings down through the centuries, and one thing must be admitted: for some reason, after two thousand years people still gather one Sunday morning a year to hear those words themselves one more time. Endorsed by the testimony of God’s Holy Spirit, they echo all around the world this morning, not least in our hearts. They sound like a trumpet blast in defiance of every doubt and every fear, and say to each of us this morning what the angel said to the Marys and 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 those who believe the angel’s message are 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 thing of all. 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 Human Being in history Who deserved none of the cruelties this world can inflict 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 Shakespeare, and the paintings of Michelangelo and Van Gogh are all finally meaningless, no more than the buzzing 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 existence is 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.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto eternal life. Amen.
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