Mark 16,9-20. Quasimodogeniti

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

Mark 16,9-14[15-20]   2313

Quasimodogeniti (1. Sonntag nach Ostern)  036  weiß 

Hegesippus, Church historian, † 180 at Jerusalem 

7. April 2013

1. Almighty and Everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery has established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith (The Book of Common Prayer). O Risen Christ, eight days after Your resurrection, You had to give the Apostle Thomas convincing proof that You were indeed alive and well. Help us, O Holy Spirit, to use convincing words when we speak to neighbors about Christ and His resurrection, so that they may hear the gospel and believe unto salvation.  Amen. 

2. Now when Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After these things He appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward He appeared to the Eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen. And He said to them: „Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in My Name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.“ So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs. 

3. When Jesus had risen from the dead, His reception was met with skepticism by His apostles and disciples. The women left His empty tomb in fear. Peter and John went to the tomb, but did not understand what it truly meant. Today we heard in our Gospel Reading how Thomas refused to believe the testimony of his fellow apostles. The days surrounding Easter Sunday are muddied with unbelief. 

4. „There’s lots we can miss out on without great loss in this life and even in death, but this one word: „The Lord is risen“ – that’s vital and necessary. We can’t miss out on that one if we want access to life eternal with Him and His holy Church“ (Löhe 159). And yet, in the hours and days following Jesus’ resurrection His disciples were in danger of just that: missing out on eternal life with Jesus. 

5. We can rationalize their unbelief, for after all, how often does a person rise from the dead after being in the grave for three days? If we search the entire Holy Scriptures for resurrection miracles we will only find a small handful of examples of them in both the old and new testaments. Three people are resurrected in the Old Testament and three people are resurrected in the Holy Gospels by Jesus.

 This is no coincidence. By the time Jesus died, six people had been raised back to life. This mirrors the six days of creation, one person for each day, and on the seventh day Yahweh rested from His work. The seventh person raised back to life is Jesus on His day of rest so that all people might enjoy the eternal day of rest of everlasting life on the new heavens and earth. Following Jesus, there were three more resurrections that occurred in the early days of the apostles. 

6. If unbelief clouded the hearts and minds of Jesus’ apostles and disciples, who saw Him personally raise three individuals back to the life, and the last being Lazarus merely weeks before Jesus’ own resurrection, how much more does unbelief threaten to cloud our own hearts and minds who have no personal witness of Jesus raising people back to life. This lack of experience, however, is no excuse for anyone today, twenty centuries removed from the first Easter Sunday, from hearing and believing in Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus rebuked His apostles and disciples when they had heard the proclamation of His resurrection and yet refused to believe the testimony given to them. Jesus issues this same rebuke to people today who after hearing the proclamation of His resurrection, also still refuse to believe what they have heard. 

7. Do not let unbelief cloud your hearts and minds. Do not dismiss the working of the Holy Spirit in your hearts and minds when you hear the gospel preached to you. There is only one path to eternal life in heaven, and that path is the resurrected Jesus. He Himself tells us: »I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me« (John 14,6). The world says that there are many paths to God, and these need not be through Jesus, but Jesus and the Holy Scriptures say otherwise: eternal salvation is through Jesus only. This is why Jesus is adamant about His apostles and disciples believing the proclamation they had heard of His resurrection. 

8. By the working of the Holy Spirit through the proclaimed word, Jesus’ apostles and disciples all believed in Him and His resurrection. Through their preaching, many others heard the resurrection gospel and likewise believed. The Apostle Paul reminds us that: »Faith comes by hearing the preached word of Christ« (Romans 10,17). This proclamation has been carried out throughout the centuries by succeeding generations of Christians who have cast a wide net of preaching throughout the whole world. You and I are merely a small portion in the large catch of fish that have been drawn into the holy ship of the Church (Mark 1,17). 

9. Jesus sent His apostles out with this command: »Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned« (16,15-16). Q: How is faith created? A: Faith is created by preaching and baptizing, which is simply the ministry Jesus has given His Church and her pastors to do. You believe because you heard the gospel and were baptized. This is how the Holy Spirit creates and sustains faith. 

10. The world has moved on from recognizing Easter. Other news now grabs their attention. We, the Church, continue to celebrate and remember Easter. We will do so for a full fifty days until we reach the Feast of Pentecost. It is our duty as Christian disciples to remind our neighbors that Easter is not over nor forgotten. The Easter proclamation is about the risen Jesus. He is not a ghost or a spirit. He is not an inspirational story. His empty tomb is not a cleverly devised myth promulgated by His disciples. The Easter proclamation is about the risen Jesus whose resurrection is proof that the sins He paid for on the cross are indeed forgiven. His resurrection is proof that God the Father is well-pleased with His Son, and if He is well-pleased with Jesus then He is well-pleased with us, too. We need to hear this gospel time and again to encourage us when the world wears us down with tribulations and doubts. Our neighbors need to hear this gospel so they do not forget about the life Jesus has purchased and merited for them. The world needs to hear this gospel for it creates Christians who are salt and light upon the earth, thus providing a check upon the wickedness of this fallen creation. 

11. In one of His parables, Jesus describes preaching as a man taking a handful of seed and throwing it to and fro upon all types of soil (Mark 4,3-8). As the gospel is preached, some words fall upon fertile hearts and yields faith and salvation. May the gospel of Jesus’ resurrection sustain faith in your hearts and minds, for you are heirs of the 1. century apostles and disciples who first proclaimed the risen Jesus here and there in the world.  Amen. 

12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, You have done great things for us, and we are glad. You are risen, You are risen indeed. We have heard the gospel of Your resurrection, and we believe, even though we have not seen You with our very eyes. Keep us grounded in this saving faith when the world and our sinful flesh seek to draw us back to the darkness and misery of unbelief, so that we may soar high in the heavens certain and overjoyed at Your resurrection and its power in our lives, namely, that as You are risen and live forever, so too will we.  Amen.

To God alone be the Glory 

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

Löhe, Wilhelm. Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu! (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!). A. Schuster, Ed. Copyright © 1949 Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau.