Mark 16

Posted on Mar 2, 2017 in Bible (NT) in a Year |

Thursday

So who’s going to roll the stone away?

This is the question that the women ask themselves. They are in such a hurry to attend to Jesus’ body because they couldn’t on Friday night because at sundown was the Sabbath and this was a special Sabbath as it was the beginning of the Festival of Unleavened Bread (or Passover). No work was to be done on the Sabbath. So any preparation for burial had to wait until sundown on Saturday. Saturday night would have been too dark for the work to be carried out, so the women waited until the first light of day and headed to prepare Jesus’ body by anointing him with perfume and wrapping him in burial cloths.

So here they are heading out to take care of what they couldn’t on Friday night and it is now Sunday morning… and who is going to roll the stone back? Don’t you think you should have asked that question before you took off?

The women approach the tomb and much to their surprise the stone is rolled away. The cautiously enter – I wonder if they were holding on to each other as they peered inside? And oh my…. There is an angel in their calmly telling them… He’s not here. He is risen.

The women are to be the first to share this message… but you can imagine how terrified they must be. And so Mark reports that they were so afraid they couldn’t even speak to anyone. But we do know from the other accounts that they do find their voice and the message of the empty tomb in shared with the other disciples.

The oldest and most reliable of the ancient manuscript of Mark end with verse 8, but there are other manuscripts that have different ending. So your translation may have verses 9-20 added on with the Great Commission being given at the end and the ascension of Jesus.

As we conclude our time with Mark I think it is true to say that this isn’t the end of the story but actually the beginning of the gospel of Jesus the Christ. So my questions to you and to myself is … “what will the next chapters look like? How can we continue to share the story?”

In His Love

Pastor Kathy