Amazing Terror (Easter 2021)

1. Bible times were simpler, but the people were not naïve. Through observation, they collected impressive knowledge on a variety of subjects. Jesus acknowledges common weather predictions (Matthew 16:2-3). The citizens of Nazareth make a back-handed comment on Joseph as Jesus’s father (Matthew 13:55, surely related to the timing of Jesus’ birth). On death, Martha, sister of Lazarus, doesn’t want to open her brother’s tomb because “he stinketh”(John 11:39  - you have to love the KJV on this verse).  
2. The women only expected Jesus to be dead. They went to the tomb for a ritual much closer to last rites than to an Easter sunrise service.
3. The resulting shock of Jesus’ resurrection fills the women with terror.  Mark uses words like fear, trembling, and fleeing. It’s impossible to dress up their terrified astonishment.
4. Mark uses a double negative to emphasize the silence of the women who first experienced the resurrection.  
5. I chose not to spend time on it in the sermon, but many Bible scholars think Mark intended to end the gospel at verse 8, precisely to make his point: now that they know about Jesus, how can they not tell?  If verse 8 is the end of the gospel, the abrupt ending matches the abrupt beginning. None of the other gospels begin or end with the suddenness of Mark. 
6. It’s impossible to go back and recreate the shock of the women for the contemporary reader. I attempted to drive home some “unsettledness” by recognizing the implications of a few of Jesus’s radical teachings.