Word of Salvation – Vol.42 No.12 – March 1997

 

Jesus is Going Ahead of You

 

An Easter Sermon by Rev R Brenton

on Mark 14:27-31 & Mark 16:1-8

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in our Lord.

Today is Easter.  It is the happiest day of all the year and the most blessed day of all time because Jesus has risen from the dead.  Hallelujah!  Jesus has risen indeed!

How do I know that Jesus has risen?  The Bible tells me so.  The Bible tells me that on the first day of the week, early in the morning, Jesus rose and appeared to some women.

These women, then, rounded up the men – Jesus’ disciples – and told them where they could find Jesus.  So, they went to the place where Jesus told them to go, and there they saw him.  They were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of the dead.

But what if there were no eyewitnesses?  What if nobody was at the right place at the right time?  What if nobody showed up at the place where Jesus had said he would be?  And what if the message that Jesus has risen was never passed on to the right persons?

I can almost hear you saying, “Don’t be foolish – what if?  …what if?  …what if?  How dare you even hint at the possibility of nobody finding out about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead?”

Before you drag me away from this pulpit, just suppose that the only Bible you have to go by is the portion you heard a moment ago from Mark.  Let’s also suppose that Mark has nothing more to say to us after chapter 16 verse 8.

Did you know that the oldest manuscripts we have of Mark (some of which are held to be the most reliable copies) end with chapter 16 verse 8?  Some members of the early New Testament Church have stated that there is nothing beyond verse 8.  Furthermore, it is common knowledge that the first gospel to be published was the Gospel according to Mark.

So, I say again, suppose Mark is the only Bible you have and the only Word on Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  You have no other testimony.  No eyewitnesses.  All you have is what you heard from Mark.  Listen again to Mark’s Easter Message.

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might anoint Jesus’ body.  Just after sunrise they set out for the tomb, worrying along the way about who will roll the stone away from the tomb’s entrance.  Arriving, they looked up and saw that the stone – which was, by the way, very large – had been rolled away.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in white.  They nearly fainted with fright!  Don’t be alarmed,’ he said.  You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified.  He has risen!  He is not here.  Look!  Here is the place where they laid him.  Now go.  And give this message to his disciples and to Peter: He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  You will see him there – just as he told you.’

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.  They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

Let me say it once more.  Suppose Mark is the only Bible you have and that this story of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the only one you know.  Don’t you wonder what happened after the women fled from the tomb?  Did the disciples and Peter get the message that Jesus was on his way to Galilee?  Did they meet up with him there?  Or did they miss out altogether on seeing the Risen One in person?  Did these three terrified women, due to sheer fear, keep their silence forever?  What really happened?  How did the women’s visit to the empty tomb end?

Never mind how Matthew tells the story.  No fair looking at Luke.  For now, Mark is the only Bible you have.  Mark makes you wonder how it all ends, doesn’t he?

We are accustomed to reading stories that come to a fitting end.  In the mystery novel Sherlock Holmes cracks the case and we find out ‘whodunit.  In the great adventure the explorers surmount all the obstacles and arrive at their longed-for destination.  And Prince Charming kisses the Sleeping Beauty, breaking the spell and waking her up; they marry and live happily ever after.  In each instance the story ends: case closed; mission accomplished; they live happily ever after.  A good story always ends.

So, Mark- it has been said – set out to write a good story, but for some unknown reason, never got around to the ending.  And people can’t stand for that.  A good story – and surely a story as good as God’s own gospel – has got to have an ending.  You just can’t end with three terror-stricken women fleeing from the tomb.  There must be more to Mark’s story beyond chapter 16 verse 8.  But is there?

Some of the old manuscripts of Mark include a formal sounding ending which speedily sums up the story.  It reads, “And they delivered all these instructions briefly to Peter and his companions; afterward Jesus himself sent out by them from east to west the sacred and imperishable word of eternal salvation.”

Other old manuscripts supply a longer ending which either replaces this one or is added onto it.  The longer ending is included in many modern Bible versions as chapter 16 verses 9-20.  Read them sometime in the light of verses 1-8.  Hardly anyone in the world of New Testament scholarship believes that Mark is responsible for these endings; these endings were fabricated by someone with the urge to finish the story, someone who wanted to do Mark a favour by giving his gospel a proper ending.

Let’s now suppose that Mark didn’t want to write an ending – that he purposely wrote an open-ended story!  Let’s suppose that Mark wanted his readers to wonder whether the women ever broke their silence, and whether Peter and the disciples ever got the message and went to meet the Risen One?  Why would Mark do that?  Why would he intentionally write a Gospel that turns out to be a story without an ending?

I’ll tell you why Mark did it.  He wrote an open-ended story because the life of the believer is open-ended.  We walk by faith, not sight.  We trust the Lord.  We hope in his promises.  In that respect, your life and mine (as believers) is as open-ended as Mark’s gospel.  Our life is not a closed case.  Nor does it have the ‘living-happily-ever-after’ quality of The Sleeping Beauty

By this I’m not suggesting that our life in Jesus Christ is not secure.  We are never more secure than we are in Christ, for in him we are children of the Heavenly Father who always holds us in his loving, almighty hands.

What I am saying is that as long as we live, our life in Christ remains a life of faith and hope.  The road to the future is by no means an easy road to travel, but the empty tomb of the Risen Jesus means that the road to the future is open for us.

The three women who came to the tomb were not ready for that opening into the future.  Their beloved Jesus had died.  He was therefore deserving of a proper anointing in his burial.  Their concern was to somehow push the stone away from the tomb’s entrance.  How that would happen was the focus of their conversation all the way to the tomb.

They had run this errand to put the finishing touches on Jesus; to supply in the form of fragrance that which their loved one lacked in dignity.  They had come to write THE END after that final bitter, cruel chapter in Jesus’ life.

When they got to the tomb they found to their amazement the stone already rolled back from the entrance.  A young man in white said to the dumbstruck women, “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene.  He has risen!  He is not here.  I have a message for you to give to his disciples and Peter (the one who denied him): He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  You will see him there, just as he told you.”

Could it be true?  Just three days ago, while on the way to Gethsemane, Jesus had said to his followers, “You will all fall away.”  Why?  Because the Scriptures had foretold that God would strike the shepherd and the sheep would be scattered.  As always, God’s Word must be fulfilled.  “But,” said Jesus, “after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee” (Mark 14:27-28).

As you can see, Jesus had already given his disciples the Easter Message they needed to hear.  That message, however, was lost on them as they immediately began to take issue with Jesus over their own falling away.  Jesus had said that they would desert him, and even disown him.  But they wouldn’t hear of it.  Peter boasted, “I’ll never fall away.  Even if everybody else does, not l!  I’ll die with you if I have to.  Never will I disown you!”

All the disciples, in fact, defended their loyalty to Jesus unto the death with such vehemence that they lost sight of the one truth they would soon need to depend on: “After I have risen I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

Now the man in white tells the women to bring that same message back to the disciples and to Peter: Jesus is going ahead of you into Galilee; you will see him there, as he told you.

This message, my friends, is Mark’s Easter Message.  Better.  It is the message our Lord Jesus saw fit to repeat so that those who finally do get it will be open to God’s future with his risen Son.

As I’ve said, if Mark’s Gospel was all we had to go by, you’d have to wonder whether Jesus’ message ever got through.  Did the terrified women who fled the empty tomb keep silence forever?

Well, had the women actually kept their silence forever, or even for a day, then Mark obviously would have had no story to tell at all.  It is a matter of fact that Mark got the information for his Gospel from poor old Peter (the very one who missed Jesus’ message first time around, and went on to deny him).

Furthermore, Mark is not the reporter of the Channel 2 news team; nor did he publish this account in the Jerusalem Times on Easter Monday morning.  Mark published this Gospel some 30-40 years after the event in question.  By then the Roman World was teeming with Christian believers: men and women, boys and girls who were following the One who had lived and died on a Roman cross before leaving this world’s scene.

This Gospel – the first “Christian” gospel ever written – is a declaration to Rome, and to Rome’s Lord (the Caesar) that Jesus is Lord!  The only Lord.  This Gospel tells the secret of the success of the Christian mission: the reason Jesus has the allegiance of so many followers is because he ever lives and goes ahead of his people.  He is the Living Lord who opens up the future for his people, and for the world.

My brothers and sisters, I submit to you today that Mark purposely chose not to end this Gospel of Jesus because he wants the whole world to write the ending… until Jesus, the Risen One, appears in heavenly glory.  This means that you and I must take our part in this never-ending story.

How do we do that?  How do we find our part in the story?  We find it by following the one who is going ahead of us.  For the disciples and Peter it meant going back home to Galilee to meet up with their Risen Lord Jesus.  We well might assume that they were set on going back home anyway – back to the old familiar fishing nets.

There they would chalk up their three years with Jesus to experience, and regretfully agree with their tradition that nothing good ever came out of Galilee.  They had been duped because they were dumb enough to follow this strange Galilean rabbi all the way to the slaughter house.  A three year misadventure was all they had to show for it.  Yes, we might well assume that they’d go back to Galilee.

But – what if they go back to the old hometown with Jesus’ message in mind?  “I’m going ahead of you – to Galilee – and you will see me there.”  What if that message were on their minds?

Mark’s Gospel presupposes that this is indeed what happened.  The success and expansion of the Christian message is based on the supposition that the disciples, and Peter in particular, somehow got the message, obeyed it, and went back to Galilee with Jesus in their lead.  And there – on their own home turf – they saw for the first time the Risen One!

We have been conditioned to view the Christian mission through the eyes of Luke, where we see the gospel going out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and then on to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

For Luke, the Christian mission originates in the Most Holy Place of the Temple, as you recall from the Story of Zechariah (Luke 1).  And Luke’s Gospel ends with Jesus’ followers worshipping God in the Temple in praise of their ascended Lord.  So, the Acts of the Apostles (part 2 of Luke’s Gospel) begin in Jerusalem, the Temple Town, and spread out from there.

Mark does not mean to contradict Luke, but he certainly does write with a different slant.  The Jesus Mark shows us begins his ministry by preaching in the back country of Galilee (where there is little interest in the Temple).  And he ends his ministry with the promise that he is going ahead of his followers to Galilee.

So, Galilee – the old hometown, the place of fishing and mending nets, raising families, paying taxes, eating meals, going to school, and playing games – Galilee, not Jerusalem, is where it’s at!  That’s the place where the Risen One goes ahead of his people.

According to Mark, Galilee is home base for the Christian mission to the world.  Don’t get me wrong.  Mark isn’t contradicting the activity of the Apostolic church based in Jerusalem.  Mark is simply letting Rome know why the Christian mission is an unstoppable success.

The mission is a success because Jesus goes ahead of his followers to Galilee, the old hometown.  For all of its power, the Gospel of Jesus is not a power play.  Its success cannot be attributed to the fact that Jerusalem (a politically powerful city) served as its main mission base; or because the church was headquartered in Temple Town.

Let me be practical here.  Our well attended worship centre and beautiful liturgy cannot by itself account for the expansion and growth of the Christian mission.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ makes its mark in the world when it takes hold in the old hometown as a grass-roots movement.

What I’m saying is that the Gospel must first come home to roost before the world will listen to our crowing.  What the Gospel does for us on the first day of the week means nothing to the world unless we live out and give out our first day blessings throughout the week.

Oh, how we need Jerusalem – the Temple gathering of God’s people for worship.  Oh, that we would love the Temple more, and attend more faithfully to it.  But listen.  We don’t live in the Temple.  We live in Galilee – that filthy, despised world from which no good thing can come…  unless something good takes root there.  Unless the Risen One goes before you.

It is my joy as God’s messenger to declare to you today that the Risen One, your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, goes ahead of you.  He is already waiting for you at the one place that needs salvation.  If you follow after him, you will find him,

Yes, you will see him in Galilee.  Even in your corner of Galilee: the place where you need him the most.  He is able to make his Gospel light shine in your small corner.

So, I say to you today, don’t be afraid anymore.  Follow Jesus.  Follow the Risen One all the way home.  Seeing him there will make all the difference in the world.

Amen.