Easter Sunday: The difference the resurrection makes (Mark 15:40 - 16:8) If Jesus had not risen... I wonder if you have ever stopped to think what Christianity would be like if Jesus had not risen from the dead. Now in one sense, of course, it’s a stupid question, because there probably wouldn’t be such a thing as Christianity if Jesus hadn’t risen again - the whole thing may well have died out within a few years. But just suppose for a moment that it hadn’t, and that Chistianity was still around today. What would it have been like? In the first place, it wouldn’t be a particularly joyful religion - if there was any music involved, for example, it would be more about commemoration than about celebration - the music would be funeral music. It’d be all about commemorating a dead teacher, not celebrating a living Saviour. In the second place, I suspect the focus would not be on what Jesus has achieved for us, but instead on what we can do for him - or rather, in memory of him. So the church wouldn’t really be a bunch of people saved by Jesus and belonging to Jesus; instead it would be a group of people dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, and committed to trying to continue on earth the things that Jesus started doing but wasn’t able to finish because he died so young. And in the third place, the attitude toward Jesus that people would have would not be one of love and fear and worship, the sort of attitude that you have toward the man who is alive today, and who holds your eternal destiny in the palm of your hand, and who one day will be the judge of all the world - it wouldn’t be that kind of attitude, but instead a sort of reverence and respect for a dead hero, a bit like the way people used to view Lenin in the old Soviet Union, and file in past his dead body in the Kremlin to pay their respects. That’s the kind of religion that I suspect Christianity would have been if Jesus had not risen from the dead. In some ways, it’s a lot like what goes on in many churches today. And it’s a little bit like the feeling that you get when you read the last couple of paragraphs of Mark 15 and the opening verses of Mark 16. It’s about a righteous, God-fearing man doing what he can for the dead teacher, making sure there’s a proper tomb so that his body doesn’t stay hanging up there on the cross over the Sabbath. It’s about a small group of women going off to the place where Jesus was buried, to anoint his dead body with spices and try to preserve his remains and pass on his memory. His tomb would probably have become a bit of a shrine, where people would come and pay their respects; those women might have become the first of millions, to make the pilgrimage to the place where the dead teacher was buried. And Christianity would have been one more religion like all the others, with a collection of noble ideals, and a group of committed followers, and the tomb of a dead teacher. That’s what Christianity might have been like if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead. But Mark isn’t writing his gospel to record the sayings of a dead teacher. He’s writing it to tell us about the death and resurrection of the son of God. And the last chapter of Mark’s gospel points us to the event that makes all the difference. The event that makes all the difference But before we come to that event - to the resurrection of Jesus - Mark wants to underline for us the facts of his death and his burial. Over the years there have been a number of groups and individuals who have claimed that Jesus never died on the cross. The Koran, for example, says that God would never allow a holy prophet to die a death like that, and that the whole story of Jesus dying on the cross was a perverse lie made up by the early Christians. The rationalists of the eighteenth century couldn’t bring themselves to believe that a man could die and then be raised back to life, and so they kind of liked the theory that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, but instead he just swooned and passed out, and then woke up a couple of days later, rolled back the stone, staggered out into the open air, appeared to his disciples a number of times in Jerusalem and Galilee and then mysteriously disappeared. Or so the theory goes... But Mark is like the other gospel writers, quite insistent that Jesus really did die and was buried, and rose again from the dead. * he died (15:40-47) And so, in the first place, verse 44, he goes out of his way to tell us about Pilate checking with the centurion to confirm whether Jesus had really died, before giving permission to Joseph of Arimathea to take his body down from the cross. And the centurion, who would have been used to supervising executions and knowing when someone was dead, confirms for Pilate that Jesus is in fact dead. John’s gospel gives us the added detail that the other men crucified with Jesus had their legs broken to speed the process up and get it over before the Sabbath, but that when they came to Jesus he was already dead, so they put a spear into his side just to confirm the fact, and his blood had already separated out, as it does after death. The gospel writers tell us those sorts of gory details not because they want to be offensive or distasteful, but because it’s important for them to confirm the fact that Jesus really was dead. * he was buried (15:40-47) Not only was he dead - he was also buried. The normal practise of the Romans was to refuse burial to a person who had been crucified; often they would leave the body up on the cross as a public example, to hang there and rot and be eaten by the vultures and the flies. In Judea, because of Jewish sensibilities, they made an exception and allowed the bodies of criminals to be buried in mass graves. But in Jesus’ case, that doesn’t happen. A man called Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent religious leader amongst the Jewish people, who was already some kind of believer in Jesus, goes to Pilate and makes the arrangements to take Jesus’ body down and give it a proper burial. And so, courageously, he takes custody of the body from the centurion, and wraps it up in grave-cloths and places it in a tomb. * he rose (16:1-8) And then, after the events of the death and the burial of Jesus, Mark records one more event that is quite breathtaking. Chapter 16 verse 1: When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” 8 Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. And that’s the end of the story. If your Bible is like mine, it’ll add on after verse eight a couple of versions of additional endings that were written for Mark’s gospel by people within the early church, in the first few centuries after Jesus. People were presumably a bit shocked by the abruptness of the ending of Mark’s gospel, and felt that it needed a proper conclusion. They’re interesting, but they’re almost certainly not original. The original ending of Mark is abrupt, I think it’s meant to be like that; it describes an event that hit like an explosion when it occured, and it leaves the original witnesses dazed and shell-shocked. If you want to know what happened next, after the dust cleared, read Matthew or Luke or John. But if you simply want to feel the force of the original explosion, then read Mark. And even in Mark, the basic elements of the resurrection accounts in the other gospels are already there. There is the empty tomb, with the stone rolled away from the entrance. There is the angel - the other gospels tell us that there were in fact two angels, though only one - the one that Mark refers to - only one of them spoke. There is the insistence that the Jesus who was alive was the same Jesus who had been crucified. “Don’t be alarmed,” the angel says, verse 6: “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.” The resurrection that Mark is talking about is not just a kind of ‘spiritual resurrection’, where the disciples had dreams and visions of Jesus and he lived on in their teaching. It was a resurrection that involved an empty tomb, and the body of Jesus - the same body that had been crucified two days earlier. What Mark is talking about in these verses is a bodily resurrection from the dead. And finally, there is the fact that this same Jesus who died is now alive again - this same Jesus is going to gather his disciples together once more in Galilee, verse 7, and to meet with them and continue to be their Lord. The difference that it makes... The event of the resurrection is the event that makes all the difference. * to the gospels It makes all the difference to the gospels. It means that they are not just books that claim to be a summary of the teachings of a dead leader, but instead an account of his triumph over death, and an invitation to us as we read them to know him and to put our faith in him. It means that we read the gospels not as closed stories, with a neat ending, safely distant from us, with the death of Jesus as the end of the story, but instead as books that reach forward into our lives and our time, and say: “The Jesus who called us to follow him is alive today and also calls you to be his disciple too.” He is alive - verse 7, to bring to fulfilment the words that he spoke before he was crucified. “Tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” When you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, it makes all the difference to the way you read the gospels. * to our lives But it doesn’t just make a difference to the gospels; it also makes all the difference to our lives. Paul says in First Corinthians 15: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.... If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.... If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men... If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” If Christ has not been raised, then we are left with the kind of Christianity that we spoke about at the beginning of the sermon - sad and half-hearted and a bit pointless, really. As Paul says, if you don’t really believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive today - if you don’t really believe that then you might as well just eat and drink and enjoy this life while you’ve got it. You might as well just live the same life that everyone else around us does. But if Christ has been raised then that changes everything. Notice the difference between the way the women come to the tomb and the way they leave it. They come to the tomb with their hands full of spices and their hearts full of sadness, ready to anoint the body of Jesus. Their biggest dilemma is how they’re going to find someone to roll back the stone for them. They are heartbroken over the death of Jesus; they are full of love for his memory; and it’s all about them doing something for him, in memory of him. They leave in amazement and bewilderment and fear. Because the Jesus they thought was still in the tomb is not dead and passive and relying on them to do something for him. Instead he is powerful and alive and he is more in control than even they ever realise. Even in their initial reaction of shock, it’s clear that the resurrection of Jesus has completely changed their lives. And it’s the same for us. If Jesus is really alive then we’re not in charge at all. We can’t just read the book and pick and choose the bits we like. You can do that with a dead teacher. You can’t do that with the living Son of God. You have to make a decision either to run away and hide from him, or to worship him with everything you’ve got. That’s where the last chapter of Mark’s gospel leaves us. End of story? It’s a strange ending in some ways, isn’t it. A few women go to the tomb of Jesus, find it empty, meet an angel and run away terrified. End of story. Except it’s not really the end of the story, is it. In one sense, of course, it is an ending. The work of Jesus on earth in his first coming is finished and fulfilled, and God has finally and completely revealed himself in Jesus, and he has fully dealt with all our sin on the cross - the story is a completed one in that sense. But it’s also true to say that you can’t write the end of the story of Jesus. Mark’s gospel is the kind of story that ends in a way that drags us into it, and says, it’s not all over yet, and the Jesus we meet in Mark’s gospel is still alive, and when the gospel has been fully preached to the nations, and when the time that God has appointed comes about, that same Jesus will come again, as the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven, and he will be the judge of all the world. So the ending of Mark’s gospel says to us - Go back and pick up this story, and read it again and again and again, and get to know this Jesus. Love him, and be devoted to him; fear him and take his word seriously; and follow him.