Seized by the resurrection
Mark 15:40-16:8
Main Idea: The resurrection of Christ unsettles everything and evokes a response.
I. The Trauma of Death (15:40-47)
Death is always traumatic and an unwelcomed enemy and intruder (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26), but the crucifixion of Christ was especially traumatic. Joseph of Arimathea exercised “courage” because he was requesting the body of a convicted and executed man who was viewed to be cursed by God (cf. Isa. 53:9)
We owe it to those first Christian disciples to do our very best to understand the utter hopelessness of their situation after the crucifixion. They had invested their whole lives in what appeared to be a diabolical joke. They had seen their beloved Master scourged almost to death, dragged through the streets, nailed to a cross and abandoned to suffer public agony in the face of the obscene mockery of everybody in Jerusalem. Once they had basked in the reflected status of a celebrity who had been mobbed by large crowds; now he had been judged a nonperson, fit only for the most degrading and sadistic death that the human mind was capable of devising. If there had been any solidarity among his followers, it had vanished; not one person had dared to come forward in the Master's defense, and their supposed leader, Peter, had cravenly denied Jesus three times, There was nothing left… The Messiah was supposed to usher in the kingdom of God; for those disciples who had staked their lives on Jesus being that Messiah, it cannot be stated too strongly: there was no hope.
~ Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death
II. The Shock of Resurrection (16:1-8)
Despite Jesus explicitly predicting his crucifixion and resurrection four times in Mark (8:31-32, 9:30-32, 10:32-34, 14:26-28), no one is expecting nor looking for Jesus to be raised from the dead. This is why the women are “seized… alarmed… trembling… astonished… and afraid.”
Mark’s ending points to a truth that often gets lost in the celebration: Easter is a frightening prospect. For the women, the only thing more terrifying than a world with Jesus dead was one in which he was alive.
~ Esau McCaulley, "The Unsettling Power of Easter”
III. The One Who Goes Before Us (16:7)
The resurrection of Christ should:
1. Challenge your reality (“see the place where they laid him”)
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
~ C.S. Lewis, “God in the Dock”
2. Comfort your heart (“go, tell his disciples and Peter…”)
3. Change your life (“he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”)
The resurrection of Christ is not just something to believe in; it’s something to be lived. Christ is not a dead teacher. If he was a dead teacher, then being a Christian would just be to believe what he said. Since he’s a risen Lord, he comes and penetrates our lives with a new order of being.
~ Tim Keller
