Mark 16:1-8 - Do Not Be Alarmed! - April 4, 2021

I don’t know about you, but I’m about sick and tired of this modern culture and climate of alarmism. When did we all become such sniveling cowards? Oh, I know, when everyone – from politicians to the media to so-called “experts – starting telling us that fear is the new #1 virtue. Be afraid that one mask isn’t enough – so put on two or three more. Be afraid that each new virus variant might be more deadly than the last. Be afraid to go to work and school and travel. Be afraid to visit your grandparents and grandchildren. Be afraid that our economy is floating on the top of a bubble that’s about to pop. Be afraid that our nation is so divided politically and racially and morally that it may never heal. Enough! It’s Easter. And the command of the angel to those three women on that first Easter morning is also the Lord’s command to us this Easter morning: Do not be alarmed!

Why not? Well, let’s start at the end. Mark tells us that after the angel spoke to the women, they went out and hurried away from the tomb, trembling and perplexed. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. That’s a rather strange reaction, isn’t it? These women were privileged to be the very first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, his empty tomb – and they run away trembling and afraid? Why? Why weren’t they dancing and shouting to each other: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” I suppose, if we take a step back, we can understand their fear. They’d woken up early in the morning with the goal of giving their Lord a proper burial. The biggest question on their minds is who will roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb for us? But then, when they get to the tomb, the stone is already rolled away. That’s not right! And there’s a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. That’s not right, either! Jesus’ body is gone! That’s really not right! Imagine if you were heading to a cemetery to put flowers on a loved one’s grave and when you get there the grave has been dug up, some guy is sitting nearby and when you look into the casket, it’s empty. You’d be alarmed too! You’d be convinced that something is not right here – because you know exactly what those women knew: dead people don’t rise to life.

But the fact is that this dead guy did. Did you notice how transparent and straightforward the angel was? He didn’t try to spin it or sugarcoat it at all. He just tells it as it is: you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. In a culture flooded with fake news, isn’t it nice to get the straight facts? At this point I could cite the many eyewitness testimonies preserved for us in the Bible as validation of the resurrection (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11), but today, I’m not going to do that. These are the inspired words of the Holy Spirit, they can stand on their own. The angel said that the same Jesus who was nailed to a tree and died has risen and he invited them to see the empty place where his body had been laid. Those are the facts, you can take them or leave them.

I suppose the question today shouldn’t be “why were the women alarmed” – but why are we still alarmed? Oh, we may blame our alarm on the uncertainty of our times – that we don’t know if these vaccines will work, when or if we’ll ever be able to burn these masks, when or if life will ever go back to normal. But if we’re honest – and here in God’s house we should be – those aren’t the real reasons for our alarm. The reason for our alarm is that even though we’ve been baptized, even though we’ve been absolved, even though we’ve received Jesus’ true body and blood we live like our sins aren’t forgiven. They prowl our consciences; they haunt our thoughts; they disrupt our sleep. The people we’ve hurt, disappointed and wronged are always in front of us (or maybe sitting right next to us). We know the kind of people God expects us to be and yet are not. Oh, sure, we know the facts. We know that Jesus has paid for our sins, that sin and the devil have been defeated, that God is satisfied and heaven is open. But it’s one thing to know the facts – it’s another to live them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows that Jesus has reestablished peace between God and sinners (Romans 5:1) – but often struggles to let that truth soak in and live in that confidence. And if ever there were reason for alarm – this is it! If being uncertain about where you stand with God isn’t cause for alarm, then nothing is!

So why do we, who just minutes ago fearlessly shouted “He is risen, indeed!” still act alarmed and perplexed and afraid like those women? Paul tells us why: if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). There it is. That’s our problem. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. He’s still lying, cold and dead and decaying in that tomb. He isn’t really the Son of God; he didn’t really live a perfect life in our place; he didn’t really pay for our sins (1 John 2:2); and, therefore, we’re still in our sins and when we die, we’re going to hell forever. Is that putting it too bluntly? No! Because if your conscience and your memory and the devil can still cause you alarm over your sins – then, for all intents and purposes, that’s what you believe.

So what should you do when your conscience terrorizes you, when your memories haunt you, when you feel like a slave to your sins? You go back to the facts: He has risen! He is not here. This fact means that you are forgiven – whether you feel it or not. Jesus left that tomb empty – not a sin in sight. And here I want you to think big. Don’t just think about the biggest, blackest, most shameful sin you’ve ever committed – the ones you can’t forget. Don’t just think about the biggest, blackest, most evil villains who have ever lived: Judas and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, Stalin and Hitler and Osama bin Laden. No, think about the people you will see this afternoon as you gather around your Easter ham or Easter bunny – who reject the Gospel and refuse to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection at church and yet have the gall to wish you a “happy Easter.” What about them? Are their sins forgiven?

Well, what does Easter say? C.F.W. Walther once said that “Easter is the absolution which has been spoken by God himself to all men, all sinners, in a word, to all the world.” (Romans 3:23-25; 4:25) There is not a sin that has or will ever be committed that wasn’t hung on Jesus. Jesus suffered and paid for them all. If that weren’t true, he’d still be in the grave. If his suffering and death weren’t enough to pay for the sins of the world, death would still hold him as it does all damned sinners. But Jesus isn’t in that grave! He’s not here! He’s risen! Let that fact place a muzzle on Satan and silence the siren of your conscience! Let that serve as fodder for your conversation later with those people who don’t think they need or want Easter. (I’ll even give you the ice-breaker: “You know, pastor talked about you in his sermon today.” That should get their attention, right?)

Let me show you how completely you have been forgiven. Look at our text. Jesus had told his followers several times that he would go to Jerusalem, be handed over to the his Jewish enemies, be handed over by them to the Gentiles, be convicted and tortured and crucified – but that three days later he would rise again (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34), but they didn’t believe him. But look at how forgiven they are: The angel doesn’t offer one word of rebuke to these women. No, “Oh, you of little faith!” On top of that, the angel doesn’t tell the women to go and scold his unbelieving disciples – and especially that miserable denier Peter – but just the opposite: go, tell his disciples and Peter that Jesus is risen and therefore his sins are forgiven! Did you catch that? He still calls those deserting and denying sinners his disciples. So silence the alarm! Jesus still calls denying and deserting sinners like us his disciples!

Do you know the only sin Jesus rebuked his disciples for after his resurrection? Not for deserting him. Not for denying him. Not for their secret sins of lust, greed, pride or worry. No, the only sin the risen Jesus rebuked the disciples for was for doubting, for not believing the witnesses of his resurrection (Mark 16:14). Jesus rebuked them for still allowing their consciences to be troubled, for thinking that God was still angry, that heaven wasn’t open. If there is anything I must rebuke you for today, it’s not the sinful things you’ve said, thought, or done – it’s for doubting that those sins have been buried in the tomb and fully and freely forgiven for Jesus’ sake!

But maybe it’s not your sins that are setting off alarm bells but the wages of sin: death (Romans 6:23). Well, I have good news for you, too – Jesus has kicked death’s teeth in – death can’t harm you anymore. That’s the fact. But we have the same problem with death that we do with sin, don’t we? We often live as if the facts weren’t true. Instead, we live as if the poem entitled “The Dash” were true. The premise of the poem is that the little dash between the date of your birth and your death on your headstone is all that there is to life – and that you had better be careful how you spend that dash. It’s a trendy poem to have read at non-Christian funerals. It’s sick and, well, satanic. [1] But isn’t that how we often live? We talk about believers who have died in the past tense. She was a good cook. He had a good sense of humor. She was a great mother. The little dash of their life has been ended by the date chiseled behind it. Rather than seeing the graves of Christians as mere pit stops, as resting places, we view them as permanent.

If that’s true – and if we live as if that’s true – then, as Paul said, we are the most pitiful people of all (1 Corinthians 15:19) – because we have placed our hope in a myth. If that’s true then the alarm bells of death that are sounding from the so-called experts, from our doctors, from our smart watches, from our own creaking and groaning bodies aren’t ringing nearly loudly enough. If our hope in Jesus ends at the grave, then you’d better find all the masks and vaccines you possibly can; then it would be much better to not waste one second believing in him at all!

But did the grave that seems so permanent to us seem so to Jesus? Did Easter end with a sealed tomb? Nope, an open and empty one. Jesus rose. Good Friday wasn’t the end. The women thought so. They went there to – metaphorically speaking – chisel in the date of his death and set the headstone so that they would have a place to come and visit in the future. But their unbelief didn’t stop Jesus – and neither does ours. Just because death seems so permanent, so lasting, so final to us – doesn’t mean it is for Jesus or for those who died in faith. He rose, and Paul tells us that Jesus is just the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). Jesus is the first, but not the last; he’s the first of many. Death is nothing more than a nap, a sleep from which all who believe will awaken. Easter silences the alarm bells of death because Easter means that death has been defeated, swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54)!

That’s a lot to swallow, isn’t it? (And not just because you just ate a big Easter breakfast!) It’d sure be a lot easier to swallow and believe if we could just go to Galilee and see Jesus in the flesh like the disciples, right? No, it wouldn’t! Galilee is a long way away and flights are expensive – and, what’s more, we have something even better. Jesus comes so that we can see him here. We see him at work in the water of Baptism where he takes children and adults in his arms and enfolds them in his forgiveness and adopts them into his Father’s family (Galatians 4:4-5). We see and hear him when his called servants declare that our sins are forgiven week after week after week (John 20:22-23). We see and taste him when we receive his true body and blood in Holy Communion (Matthew 26:27-28). Those women ran away from the tomb afraid because they hadn’t yet seen Jesus. We have seen Jesus, right where he promised to be – in the means of grace, the Gospel in Word and Sacrament (Matthew 18:20) – so there’s no reason for alarm here.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of this alarmist climate and culture. I’m sick and tired of being told to be afraid of everything from social upheaval to global warming to one of you breathing on me. Thank God it’s Easter. Easter silences all those alarms with the assurance that because Christ is risen, you are forgiven, death is defeated, and you need go no further than here to God’s house to see him. You know how satisfying it is to roll over and slap your alarm clock to shut it off? Or how good it feels to shut off the news when every “breaking news” alert seems to announce another reason to be deathly afraid? It’s even more satisfying for us to be here today to stare sin, death, the alarmist world, and the devil himself in the eye and shout (shout with me): Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! (Do you hear that? That’s no reason for alarm!) Amen.

[1] https://thedashpoem.com/