On Sunday morning, upon encountering the empty tomb and a young man “wearing a white robe,” just inside the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene “went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping” (Mark 9:9). Whoever those people were, they couldn’t believe what Mary was saying. It was too over-the-top, stretching their thinking beyond an ability to believe, and “they refused to believe” (vs. 11). It would take a little time to sink in. I get that. I’ve been to a lot of funerals in my life but I’ve never been to a resurrection. Resurrection is a staggering thought to think and embrace.
Later that day, as two of Jesus followers were “walking along on their way to the country,” Jesus appeared to them. Whatever they experienced on that walk energized them and “they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe” (vs. 12-13).
These encounters lead me to say that if you have friends who find it difficult that Jesus was raised from the dead, cut them a little slack. Resurrection is a mind-blowing reality, and an easy believism is never called for. It even took Jesus time to get the message across to His disciples that He really had risen from the dead. When His resurrection is received and believed, all of life is changed in a most dramatic way.
I read recently of a conversation between Michelangelo and a fellow artist. Michelangelo asked the other artist, “Why do you keep filling gallery after gallery with endless pictures on the one theme of Christ in weakness, Christ on the Cross, and most of all, Christ hanging dead? Why do you concentrate on the passing episode as if it were the last work, as if the curtain dropped on Him with disaster and defeat? That dreadful scene lasted…a few hours. But to the unending eternity, Christ is alive; the stone has been rolled away and He rules and reigns and triumphs” (ministry127.com).
It is interesting to me that in our story here in Mark, those impacted by the resurrection simply shared what they had experienced to others. They were not responsible for what the others did with their testimony, but they sure did share it. They lived it, too. Outcomes were left to God. The believers simply shared, the Holy Spirit then took their witness and one by one began to change, first those who followed Jesus in His life, and in time those who lived throughout the world, even “to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NASB).
Let us live lives that reflect the fact that Jesus is alive, and then leave results to God.
We’ve a message to give to the nations,
that the Lord who reigns up above
Has sent us His Son to save us,
And show us that God is love.
(H. Ernest Nichol, 1896)
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