Where are you finding and hearing ‘good news’ today? We are hearing it here today through the Word, music and Sacrament. But what about out in our world today? There are some days that we really need to strain to find it and hear good news.
As our country gets heated up between now and November, we need to keep straining to find and hear the good news. We here at Faith Lutheran will continue to provide God’s word, God’s presence here in this beloved community. We will continue to hear God’s Word read and sung and experienced in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Today and through the Easter season we will be remembering our baptism, which reminds us that we are God’s children, loved and saved through grace.
Good news is often experienced in the daily things that we do. It provides us with a structure that brings comfort and support. The women in our Gospel lesson today are experiencing grief, confusion and uncertainty. They are trying to move forward by doing what is normally done that is to take care of a body that is dead. This body happens to be their friend and teacher. There was no embalming fluid in those days, thus they would in a sense anointing the body with perfumes and spices and redressing the body.
In their conversation on the way to the tomb, they wondered who would help them roll away the stone that had sealed the tomb. When they arrived, the stone had been rolled away. They probably were wondering who did this and what did this mean? Did someone do their job? Did someone take away the body?
I can imagine they wondered if they should enter the tomb as they did not know who had rolled away the stone. Who or what would they would find? Maybe they approached hesitantly and slowly peeked in. None the less they needed to know what the story was. When they entered, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side.
We can only imagine that they were alarmed. Was this an angel? The women were probably vacillating between terror and amazement. It stopped them in their tracks. They said nothing, but the young man seemed to know what they wanted to ask and how they were feeling.
He told them not to be alarmed, that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they were looking for, who had been crucified, had risen. He showed them the place where Jesus had been laying and said, see, he is not here. The young man told them to go and tell Jesus’ disciples and Peter that Jesus had gone ahead of them to Galilee.
He reminded them that Jesus had told them that is where he would be. Jesus had started his ministry in Galilee and did the majority of his healings and teaching there. It sounds like he was back at work again. At the beginning of Mark, we hear this is the beginning of the Gospel or good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now we come to the end of the Gospel of Mark and might want to hear how the good news was still being told, how it would continue.
But, after we hear of the women’s experience, we might wonder if they would be running to tell the disciples and Peter what they had experienced, and that Jesus was back to Galilee, in order to continue sharing the good news. Mark tells us that they ran out of the tomb as terror and amazement had seized them. They said nothing as they were afraid. Usually when we hear that people are afraid it is not usually good news.
Even after they heard the good news that Jesus had risen they were afraid and according to Mark didn’t say anything to anyone. So, after I read the Gospel lesson today and proclaimed it as the Gospel or good news you responded with Praise to you, O Christ. It seems that we both agreed that this was good news. When it ends with, ‘for they were afraid’, it doesn’t really sound like good news, does it?
The good news was in the lesson, it was stated by the young man in the white robe, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look there is the place that they laid him. So yes, we did here the good news, but often the last words of something are what rings in our ears, for they were afraid. In the Greek it literally says they were afraid for… as if the sentence was not finished.
The women were struggling with what do with this news, it sounded good, but was it really true. If it was true, it was definitely good news. Mark doesn’t really say how the good news carried on, and thus leaves it open ended. What can we learn from the women experience? What is Mark trying to telling us about the furtherance of the good news?
The women heard the news and were quaking with fear. They had already experienced a trauma, the loss of Jesus, their friend and teacher in the most painful way possible. Now they are confronted with this news that Jesus had risen. How is this possible? Would anyone believe them? Do we not struggle with how to share this good news that we hear and experience here?
It says that they were seized by amazement and fear. In the Greek the word amazement is ekstasis, ecstasy. It literally means throwing the mind out of a normal state. This is what the women were experiencing. Should they be afraid or just go with it? When we go through difficult times in our lives such as the death of a loved one. Is this not what we experience? So many feelings all at one time. Yet to move forward in our lives, don’t we learn that we need to work through these feelings and begin to let some of them go? It is when we give these feelings of uncertainty to our risen savior that we begin to feel whole again and are able to see, experience and be the good news for others.
Mark gave the responsibility to the reader, all of his disciples. You see Jesus continues to share the good news through others, you and me. Most of us who have experienced the death of a loved one, hear and experience the good news through the love and support of others.
Today we are challenged to continue sharing and being the good news to others. I know we do hear it in our beloved community, and we have our Micro Food Pantry, our Parish House, our Caring committee, the fact that we welcome and affirm all people and there are other ways that we invite others into experience the good news that we have here. But, we are called to tell the good news, the resurrection story everywhere.
I believe that God is calling each one of us in our schools, work, groups that we participate in to be and share the good news. The good news is in each one of us. What we experience here in this place through Word, Sacrament, music and each other is what we are gifted with and are challenged to share with others outside of these doors.
Stop straining to hear and see the good news, it is within in us and around us in this beloved community.
Our world needs to hear and experience this good news, the love that Jesus has shared with us through his death and resurrection. We are the continuing story of sharing the good news of his love.