A Foretaste of Glory Richmond s First Baptist Church, April 1, 2018 The Resurrection of the Lord Mark 16:1-8

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1 A Foretaste of Glory Richmond s First Baptist Church, April 1, 2018 The Resurrection of the Lord Mark 16:1-8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid. One of the things I learned when I was trying to teach religion to college freshmen is that the first essay turned in is not always the best one. For seven years I taught a course called Jesus and the Gospels as an adjunct professor, and the final exam every year was to write your own gospel. I would pass out those blue exam books and then sit there at the teacher s desk, looking out over the classroom as John, the poet, would glance out the window for inspiration and then write long, flowery sentences with a quill pen; as Luke, the storyteller, would lean over the page and smile to himself, picturing the scenes he was writing about; as Matthew, the scholar, would stare up at the ceiling, counting off the Beatitudes on his fingers; and Mark, the journalist, would jot down just the facts, and sometimes so fiercely he would break the point off his pencil. His was always the first one turned in, and as I said, not always the best. There is a reason we don t usually hear the Easter story from Mark s Gospel. It s short, and it lacks a resurrection appearance. If I were grading it I might ask: Where is the risen Christ? But Mark s Good Friday story is a different matter. It may be Mark at his best. It s bleak. In Mark s Gospel Judas betrays Jesus and Peter denies him, but in the end all the disciples abandon him just as Jesus has predicted. He is falsely accused, wrongfully convicted, mocked and flogged until he is unable to carry his own cross. The soldiers offer him wine mixed with myrrh as a sedative, but he refuses. So they strip him 1

2 of his clothes and nail him up to die. In this Gospel there is no mention of women standing at the foot of the cross. Those who pass by deride him, the chief priests and scribes mock him, and even those who were crucified with him taunt him. At noon the sky turns dark; you can almost hear the thunder rumbling, almost see the lightning flashing. At three o clock Jesus cries out with a loud voice, My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me? and shortly thereafter he breathes his last. With a little imagination you can almost see his limp body hanging there, as the rain falls, and the mud splashes against the base of the cross. And that s where some of you are this morning. What you want now is to see the stone rolled back and Jesus striding forth from the tomb as the one who has conquered death forever. You want the preacher to say, Christ is risen! and hear the congregation thunder back Christ is risen indeed! You want the choir to launch into the Hallelujah Chorus and get goosebumps when the sopranos hit the high notes. That s what you want. But that s not what you get. Instead you hear about three women making their way to the tomb early on the first day of the week, taking spices to anoint the cold, dead body of Jesus, and along the way wondering who will roll away the stone. When they get there they find that the stone has already been rolled away, and just inside the tomb there is a young man in a white robe, sitting where Jesus body had been. He tells them not to be afraid, that Jesus is not there, he is risen. And then he charges them to go and tell the disciples this good news. But they don t. They went out and fled from the tomb, Mark says, for terror 2

3 and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. And that s when Mark turns in his exam and walks out of the classroom. The early church couldn t stand that ending! It was too short, too abrupt, too unfinished. Almost immediately they began to tack on longer endings and if you look in your Bible you will see one, and probably two. The first is called The Shorter Ending of Mark, and it says, And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. The second is called The Longer Ending of Mark, and it gathers up every resurrection appearance it can find in the Gospels and puts them in one place. It has Jesus appearance to Mary Magdalene from John 20; his appearance to those two disciples on the Road to Emmaus from Luke 24; to all the disciples together from Matthew 28 (including the Great Commission); and then some bizarre instructions from who knows where about picking up snakes and drinking poison (for which most of us are thankful that this part isn t really in the Bible). But if Mark could speak for himself I think he might say, I didn t need to add a resurrection appearance to my Gospel. I gave you one already, in chapter nine. To which we might say, Chapter nine? What s in chapter nine? And then turn back a few pages to discover, oh yes, the Transfiguration. That strange scene with Jesus on the mountain, accompanied by Moses and Elijah, his face shining like the sun; one that we ve always had a little trouble with if we re honest. But how is that a resurrection appearance? To which Mark might say, Take a look. And when I do I see Jesus on the mountain in all his glory and realize that the Resurrection is all about glory. i In Luke 24 Jesus tells those disciples on the road to Emmaus, Was it not necessary that the Messiah 3

4 should suffer and then enter into his glory? In John 12, just before his passion, Jesus tells the disciples, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. In Matthew 24 he tells them about a day when the Son of Man will come on the clouds, with power and great glory. Whatever else that might mean, it seems clear that before his resurrection Jesus doesn t have glory, but after the Resurrection he does. ii So, what is it? The dictionary defines glory as high renown or honor won by notable achievements. Rising from the dead would certainly be considered a notable achievement, but I don t think that s what the Gospel writers are talking about. A second definition is magnificence or great beauty, and although the risen Christ may have appeared magnificent, even beautiful, I don t think that s what they are talking about either. A third definition is praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to a deity, as when we sing Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, but I don t think the Gospel writers are talking about that either. A fourth definition is a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Jesus or a saint. And that s the one that interests me most, because in the Bible glory is often described as something almost tangible, less like a quality than a substance. The word is found 328 times in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and if you will, let me read from the notes I jotted down as I read through those verses: From Exodus: The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. The glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire. The glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. It sounds like a cloud, I wrote, a luminous cloud: shiny, radiant, 4

5 splendid. When Moses came down from the mountain, out of that cloud, his face was shining. From the Psalms: I love the house where you live, the place where your glory dwells. And when I read that I thought about glory not as a luminous cloud, but as a glorious place. I thought about Jesus going through a gate in a garden wall, and coming back drenched in the smell of lilacs, lilies, gardenias. Is that how it is with glory? Does it cling to you like some rich fragrance? From Isaiah: Then the moon will be abashed, and the sun ashamed; for the Lord of hosts will reveal his glory on Mount Zion. And I pictured a beauty contest, where the moon comes out and everyone smiles, and the sun comes out and everyone claps, but then the glory of the Lord comes out and they leap to their feet, whistling, stamping, and cheering. On and on it went, with glory that was shining, shimmering, moving, glory that thundered, glory that shook, glory that looked like a rainbow after the storm, glory so thick it could be felt. And with my imagination liberated by the Scriptures, I wrote down some of my own ideas about glory. I thought about the way some people describe depression as a deep, dark hole and thought about glory as the opposite of that: a high, bright mountain. I thought about how any of us might come out of that Glory Garden I mentioned earlier, smelling sweet and shining like the sun, filled with a sense of euphoria. I remembered what Julian of Norwich said, All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, Was she talking about glory? 5

6 In Colossians 1:27 Paul mentions Christ in you, the hope of glory. Did he mean that someday we too might enter into that glorious state, that blessed condition? I don t think I can exhaust the meaning of the word glory, but whatever it is, it s good, isn t it? Paul talks about it as if it were the best thing in the world, like a kid talking about mint chocolate chip ice cream. He can t wait to have some. And that s when I begin to think that Mark is not the poorest of the Gospel writers, but but the Ernest Hemingway the New Testament. He knows that life hard, that it is nasty, brutish, and short, and that there is no guarantee we will make it to the end. And so he puts his resurrection account in the middle. As part of my research for this sermon I watched a YouTube video about bioluminescence and watched as a man swished his hand through the water just off an island in the Maldives, and all these microscopic plankton lit up with a beautiful blue glow. iii He did it again, later, in the dark, and this time you couldn t see his hand; you could only see the blue glow swirling behind it as he moved it through the water. It reminded me of that story from Exodus, where Moses begs God to let him see his glory. I don t know why. Was Moses exhausted from leading God s people through the wilderness? Was he on the verge of giving up and going home? Whatever the reason, God grants his wish. I will put you in the cleft of the rock, he says, and I will cover you with my hand. I will make all my goodness pass before you but you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live. Did God move past Moses like a dark hand through dark water? Did Moses see only the swirling blue glow that followed God wherever he went his glory? 6

7 How different for those disciples on that other mountain! They saw God. They looked on his face. They saw it shining like the sun. It was a foretaste of glory, a glimpse of the future, and maybe just what they needed to carry them through the days ahead. Because the days ahead would be dark darker than they knew. They had no idea what was about to happen. On the way down from the mountain Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about what they had seen until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead, but they didn t even know what he was talking about. They had no idea what was about to happen. And if they had told anyone what they had seen up on that mountain they wouldn t have been able to believe it. Not before. But afterward? Maybe. Glory is seen most clearly in the dark. Mark says those women who fled from the tomb didn t say anything to anybody because they were so afraid, but what about those disciples who had been with him up on the mountain? What about Peter, James, and John. Don t tell anyone what you have seen until after the Son of Man rises from the dead, Jesus said, but after that? After that you can tell everyone. And that s just how I picture it: Peter, James, and John telling everyone who thought Jesus was dead and gone about that time they were with him up on the mountain with Jesus, and his face began to shine like the sun. It was a foretaste of glory, a glimpse of the future. Maybe Mark knew exactly what he was doing when he put his resurrection appearance in the middle of the Gospel rather than the end. Mark knew that life was hard. He made that clear in his description of Jesus suffering and death. He didn t pull any punches. And he knew that we can t wait always wait until the end of our lives to get a taste of God s glory; we need it now. And so the risen Christ comes to us in the middle 7

8 of our own stories. He lifts us up; giving us strength and hope, power and peace. And then he slips away as quietly as he came, leaving behind the swirling, loving, luminous glow of his glory. Jim Somerville 2018 i While the word glory is never actually used in this passage, the detail about his clothes becoming dazzling white is an apocalyptic image that connotes glorification, according to the HarperCollins Study Bible note on 9:3. ii With the possible exception of John s Gospel, where Jesus remembers his glory before the incarnation, reveals his glory through signs, and anticipates the glory to come. iii Sea of Stars, Vaadhoo Island, Maldives ( 8