Mark 16:1-8: Dead or Alive: what do you believe?

Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale Corps on March 23, 2008 (Resurrection Sunday), the Swift Current corps of The Salvation Army on April 08, 2012, and 614 Warehouse Mission in Toronto on April 01, 2018 by Captain Michael Ramsay

To view the 2012 version click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2012/04/mark-161-8-dead-or-alive-what-do-you.html

Christ has Risen (He has Risen Indeed).

So this is it. This is the most important day in the Christian calendar. This is the day we celebrate the risen Christ. This is exciting indeed. This is how Jesus defeated sin and death by dying and rising again on the third day. Today is the celebration. Today is exciting. Do you know what these are? (My daughters’ medals) They are medals, right? These are medals that my daughters were awarded this year in soccer and skating.[1]

Rebecca did a really good job her first year in skating. Sarah-Grace’s soccer team was in two tournaments this year. In the first one her team won bronze. In the second one her team won silver: they played really well and we were all so proud. You should have heard some of the dads cheering. It was a lot of fun; we celebrated. Everyone is looking forward to the next tournament when we can go for gold.

This is what Easter (Resurrection Day) is all about.[2] It is all about celebrating the victory of Jesus through the death and resurrection and more than that: it appears, in Mark Chapter 16, that they were celebrating an unexpected victory[3] – a come from behind win if you will. Look at 16:1, “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.”

Luke 23:56 tells us that they prepared these spices before the Sabbath[4] began but waited until after to anoint the body; so what is the purpose of anointing the body? Some have suggested that it has to do with an embalming practice of sorts but, of course, the Jewish people never practiced embalming;[5] however, it does still have to do with a burial rite of the first century Palestinians. The women went there to see a dead man. They don’t believe he’s alive.

Listen to their conversation en route too. On the way to the grave, on the way to the tomb what are they talking about? What’s on their minds? Are they discussing the possibility of the resurrection? Are they wondering if…maybe…could he have risen from the dead? No. The text doesn’t even accord them enough faith to doubt here. What it records that they are concerned with here is the rock in front of tomb. Who’ll roll it away they wonder? Right? Look at Verse 3; it says that the women asked each other, “Who’ll roll away the stone?” They think they are going to see a dead man sealed in a tomb. They don’t know he’s alive. They don’t believe.

Now this is somewhat disappointing, isn’t it? As we have been reading through Mark together these last few weeks in preparation for this celebration of the resurrection, Mark has revealed to his readers on a number of occasions that Jesus repeatedly told his followers that indeed he is going to be raised from the dead (8:31, 9:9, 9:31,10:34,15:29). And as it says in 9:10 and 31 that the disciples anyway heard exactly what he was teaching but they just did not understand and what they should have understood, they just did not believe.[6] After all, how can someone raise from the dead?

Now then the women are heading to the tomb like many of us head to either a graveside or a memorial service in our day and age. They head out to pay their last respects to a man – to a man that they had so much respect for, so much love for, so much hope for, for a man that they had faith in but now as they walk the road to the tomb, they do so, perfume in hand, worrying about the stone and who will move it from the grave. They do not believe that he has risen. They do not believe.

Do we ever get to a point where we do not believe any longer? Do we ever get to the point where we, by our actions, head out to bury Jesus? The world had told us through Time Magazine that ‘God is dead.’[7] John Lennon relieved himself on nuns[8] and the rock group Oasis still not too many years ago now, announced to the world, like Lennon before them, that they were even more popular than Jesus.

We have a system of government in this country where we assume that 50%+1 of the population says is correct at least 50%+1 of time and we are told that is good enough system to put our faith in and we, in this country, have an economic system that says that you deserve more liberties as you gain more money. Many assume that these are the only things that we can believe in: popular opinion and money. But if Christ has raised then this is not true…If Christ has raised from the dead then it is Jesus who we should believe in.

The world also tells us that we have to ‘look out for number one’ and make sure that we are happy before we can even give consideration to our neighbour. ‘We are the master of our own destiny’; ‘we have to first be true to ourselves’; and then ‘we can only rely on ourselves’: this thinking, this make believe, this trap, is based on the assumption, the lie that Jesus is not alive and God is not looking out for us. It is based on the fallacy that he is not involved in our world; these belief systems are based on the false assumption that Jesus Christ is dead. This trap that we have to rely on ourselves, this trap of trusting ourselves rather than God, this trap of disbelief in the power of the resurrected Christ, this trap is very dangerous.

Do we ever fall into this trap? Do we ever act as if we don’t believe he’s alive? How do we do here today at recognising that God, Jesus is actually alive and that it is he who we should be serving rather than ourselves? How do we make our daily decisions: do we base them on our finances and our own fleeting whims or do we base them on what God tells us? Do we ignore Him as if God is dead or do we serve a lord who is alive?

Do we make our decisions through praying and reading the Bible? When we are planning for retirement and have to move money here or there, do we pray about how or if we should invest? Do we look in the scriptures? What about for those of us in school? How do we decide what classes to take or what school to attend? Do we pray and fast? Do we believe that Jesus will help us? Do we act as though we believe he is alive or do we ignore him as if he were never raised from the dead?

What about us parents and grandparents? How do we decide to raise our children? Do we consult the Bible when making real every day decisions? Do we pray with our children when they have a serious issue on their mind? Do we help them in this way; do we believe in Jesus – or do we leave our family to their own devices and our decisions to our passing whims and fancies?

In our everyday real, tangible Monday to Friday and Saturday and Sunday lives, do we expect that Jesus is alive and he is there for us? Do we believe that he is real and that he wants and will give us what is best for us or do we, by relying on our own devices, act as though he is still dead and sealed in the tomb?

In our Sunday morning church gatherings, when we come here, are we expectantly seeking the risen Lord or are we doing nothing more than visiting the tomb to remember a dead Messiah, hoping that somehow through the service someone will roll away the stone so we can anoint his lifeless, powerless body with songs and sermons? Is Jesus dead or alive? Is he risen and active? Is he alive? What do we really believe?

I remember once when I was in my early to mid-twenties. I had a contract at Defence Research. It was an exciting, yet a stressful time. I had some very skilled people working with me and the work sometimes was very precise and there was a lot that my staff could do and this was good because I personally couldn’t be there every day (I had other contracts to tend to as well) but, even though they could be trusted, there were inevitably aspects of the job that they could and should not do. There were aspects of the job that took my personal attention.

Our contract at Defence Research involved the physical relocation of the lab from the west coast of Canada to the east coast. It was very important that everything that was packed up was to be documented properly. There were things that the scientists were working on that, trust me, you just didn’t want to get loose or mixed up in the trip across the country; so we set up a detailed procedure of inventorying everything and after each box was packed I had to personally clear it before it was put on the truck; so I told them never to load the truck when I wasn’t there. Repeatedly, I told them how important it was never to load the truck when I wasn’t there and it was posted on the doors of the warehouse that they must never load the truck when I wasn’t there.

Well one Thursday, when I wasn’t there, the truck arrives. Now some of my staff are quite eager workers still at this point and want to get everything done as soon as possible. They think that they know everything that needs to be done. I had told them not to load the truck when I wasn’t there - but…

I come into work the next day and the warehouse is empty[9] and there is the truck locked up, apparently ready to go and not a single inventory sheet was even sitting on my desk. I was so upset not only because that truck was not supposed to be loaded when I wasn’t there but also because they didn’t keep proper records so that whatever is in the truck and whatever is in every box in the truck now needs to be taken out and re-sorted and inventoried. I am upset. I start to raise my voice as I demand that Troy, the only one of my staff that I can find, I yell and demand that Troy that he open the truck and start taking everything out of there. He opens the truck.

Troy opens the truck: it is empty – except for the rest of my staff who are in there laughing at me because I fell for their rouse. They had played a joke on me; I fell for it.

I was upset because, even though the truck was supposed to be empty, even though we all knew it was supposed to be empty, and we were all told repeatedly that it was supposed to be empty, I didn’t think it would be. . I didn’t believe what I should have believed. I looked around the warehouse at the way things seemed and I didn’t believe that the truck would be empty like it was supposed to be.

This is the same as the empty tomb today in our story and indeed in our world today, isn’t it? The women are undoubtedly upset as they are going out to the tomb where – even though Jesus said he would rise again on the third day, even though Jesus said in effect that the tomb should be empty – the ladies are upset because they expect that the tomb, like I expected that the truck, they expect that the tomb will not be empty.

But, halleluiah, they’re wrong and instead of Jesus’ body in the tomb, and instead of my laughing friends in the back of the empty truck, there is a totally different messenger, who in Luke’s account (Lk 24:5) asks the question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” He has risen.

Now, of course, there is this beautiful irony that Mark ends off with in his story here. As recorded in verse 7, the angel says to the people, “… go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘… you will see him, just as he told you.’” Here they are supposed to tell about this miracle. And in verse 8 it records that the women say nothing to anyone because they are afraid. Do you notice irony? In almost every story we’ve read in Mark so far the people are told not to tell anyone – and what do they do? Tell everyone. Here the people are instructed to tell people and what do they do? Tell no one. Go figure. (Good thing he had multiple post-resurrection appearances!) We all can now believe!

Today – on this Easter Sunday – on Resurrection Day, today, we have a choice to make. We have a very real choice to make. It is this: we can believe that the tomb is empty or not. This changes everything. We can believe that the tomb is empty or that it is not. Is Jesus dead or alive, what do we believe?

As Jesus is alive, if we realise that the tomb is empty and if we recognise that He is our Lord and Jesus is God then whatever difficulties we may have we can bring to him. He will work them out for His good and His Kingdom because He has conquered sin and death so there is no problem that we could have that is too big for him. But if we don’t recognise that Jesus is alive then we are forced to rely on just our own strength and our own passing fancy. So today let’s look in that empty tomb of history and notice that indeed this tomb is empty and today and from now on let’s not come here to eulogize and bury Jesus but to praise Him and serve our risen Lord. He’s alive.

Christ has Risen (He has Risen Indeed)

Let us pray…
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[1] Actually, as Rebecca pointed out in the Nipawin service, I accidentally only grabbed two of Sarah-Grace’s medals.
[2] And, like the next tournament, He’s coming again…though we know not when!
[3] REVD M. Percy, Ripon College, Oxford – in ‘Seeing isn’t believing’ in EXT: Vol. 119, No. 5, p. 238-239 compares the event to looking at an ultrasound image. Sure some people can interpret them. Yes, we believe the doctors but can we make heads or tails of it? Some can but others cannot necessarily without help. (Still others I’m sure can choose not to believe the images are real at all. – MR)
[4] CF. RCH Lenski. The Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel. P. 737, for a different opinion: he believes that these indeed may be entirely different spices
[5] W. Wessel: Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Mark, The Resurrection (16:1-8), Book Version: 4.0.2 : it was a single act of love and devotion probably meant to reduce the stench of the decomposing body. Palestine's hot climate causes corpses to decay rapidly. Thus the action of the women seems strange. Perhaps they thought that the coolness of the tomb would prevent the decomposition process from taking place as rapidly as it otherwise would.
[6] They aren’t alone. NT Wright, The Bishop of Durham, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm ‘Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins’ (Originally published in Gregorianum, 2002, 83/4, 615–635) makes this observation about the pagan beliefs in the ancient world: “whenever the question of bodily resurrection is raised in the ancient world the answer is negative. Homer does not imagine that there is a way back; Plato does not suppose anyone in their right mind would want one. There may or may not be various forms of life after death, but the one thing there isn’t is resurrection: the word anastasis refers to something that everybody knows doesn’t happen. The classic statement is in Aeschylus’s play Eumenides (647-8), in which, during the founding of the Court of the Areopagus, Apollo himself declares that when a man has died, and his blood is spilt on the ground, there is no resurrection. The language of resurrection, or something like it, was used in Egypt in connection with the very full and developed view of the world beyond death. But this new life was something that had, it was believed, already begun, and it did not involve actual bodily return to the present world. Nor was everybody fooled by the idea that the dead were already enjoying a full life beyond the grave. When the eager Egyptians tried to show their new ruler Augustus their hoard of wonderful mummies, he replied that he wanted to see kings, not corpses”
[7] Time Magazine. Cover: ‘Is God Dead?’ Vol 97., No. 14: April 8, 1966. From the article, Toward a Hidden God: “Even within Christianity, now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form, a small band of radical theologians has seriously argued that the churches must accept the fact of God's death, and get along without him. How does the issue differ from the age-old assertion that God does not and never did exist? Nietzsche's thesis was that striving, self-centered man had killed God, and that settled that. The current death-of-God group* believes that God is indeed absolutely dead, but proposes to carry on and write a theology without theos, without God. Less radical Christian thinkers hold that at the very least God in the image of man, God sitting in heaven, is dead, and—in the central task of religion today—they seek to imagine and define a God who can touch men's emotions and engage men's minds.”
[8] On Good Friday 1962, no less, after hanging a sacrileges image from his balcony: http://www.kakool.com/content/john-lennon-good-friday
[9] They had moved the cargo to a different part of the warehouse and it turns out that none of it was any the worse for wear in the end.