Matthew
28: 1-10
As
you know we have four books in the Bible that are totally about the life, death,
resurrection and ascension of Jesus; they are our gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. Each gospel gives us its own
account of Jesus. They all are the same,
because they are all about Jesus, but they are all different. Each gospel has its own twist so to speak, on
what it decides to include in its book.
It is believed by most scholars that Mark was the first gospel
written. It is the shortest and the most
succinct. It is also believed by
scholars that Matthew and Luke used Mark as their prototype when they were
writing their accounts of Jesus.
The
account of the resurrection of Jesus in Mark is quite bare. It consists of three women who were followers
of Jesus who went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away. The women went
into the tomb to look and did not see Jesus but saw a man in white linen
sitting where Jesus had been. They were
scared to death; the empty tomb and the man inside literally scared them
speechless. The man told them not to be
afraid but that Jesus had arisen from the dead.
The man told them to go tell the other disciples that Jesus had arisen
and that he would meet everyone in
From
Mark’s account, we are not sure whether these poor frightened women ever made
it back to the other disciples, for the end of the chapter says “they fled from
the tomb in terror and they said nothing to anyone because they were so
afraid.”
Thanks
to Matthew and the other gospel writers, as Paul Harvey says, we learn “the
rest of the story.” Matthew tells us
that indeed, these poor frightened women recovered and recovered quite well. They began to run back to where the disciples
were staying, but as they did, they literally ran into Jesus. They fell at his feet and grabbed him and held
onto him crying and worshipping and praising him. Jesus bent down and helped them up and told
them to keep on their way in order to tell the rest of the disciples what he
had told them before he was crucified, “Meet me in
The
gospel of Mark celebrates the empty tomb.
Matthew goes further and celebrates the resurrected Jesus, the crucified resurrected Jesus. As we know from other gospel accounts, the
resurrected Jesus showed his hands, feet and side to his followers. In his resurrection, the marks of his
crucifixion had not gone away. In fact,
the angel that met the two women in today’s gospel said, “Do not be afraid; I
know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised.” The literal translation for the word “crucified”
that the angel used, is that the crucifixion had not been just a temporary
episode. The word in Greek is what is
called a perfect participle, meaning a completed act but with ongoing
consequences.
The crucifixion of
Jesus was not a past event exchanged at the resurrection for heavenly glory. The
crucifixion of Jesus was not a temporary event in his career. Yes, the
crucifixion was a completed act, but it had ongoing never-to-end consequences.
The scars of the
cross represent the “ongoing consequence” of the cross, the forgiveness of our
sins. The scars of Jesus will never be
erased; they will never be removed. But because
of the ongoing consequence of the crucifixion of Jesus, our sins are always erased;
our sins are always removed.
Amen
Pastor Scales