Easter Changed Everything

First, I want to thank you for coming out this morning. I know that the Breakfast was more of a draw then my preaching. I am okay with that, because I like food too. So I will try to keep this short.

I always enjoy the Easter sunrise service, but it is one of the hardest services that I preach because everyone smells that wonderful aroma of the Easter Breakfast! Amen! Amen! Well, we are going to consider the Gospel of Mark this morning for our message, and I hope it will be a blessing to you as we consider Mark 16:1-8.

Did you enjoy the youth of our church reading the scripture as a radio play.

As I listened again, it became clear the the women and even the disciples were still captured by Good Friday thinking.

Look at Mark 16:1

Mark 16:1 NASB95

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him.

We find Mary Magdalene, Mary of mother of James, and Salome coming with spices to the grave of their friend. Now, think about this, they are on their way to anoint a dead body, enough though Jesus had said, repeatedly, he was going to rise for the dead.

They are prepared to honor him with a last act. Why, because he was dead.

Regardless of what Jesus had said, he was dead now. Everyone knows dead is dead.

People don’t come back to life. They had never experienced that before. He had been a great friend, a thought-provoking teacher, even an outstanding communicator. But now he was gone. Dead is Dead.

She did not know, “Easter changed everything.”

They were not alone. Everyone at that time saw dead as the final note of life’s song.

It was the custom in Palestine to visit the tomb of a loved one for three days after the body had been laid to rest. It was believed that for three days the spirit of the dead person hovered round the tomb; but then it departed because the body had become unrecognizable through decay. Jesus’ friends could not come to the tomb on the Sabbath, because to make the journey then would have been to break the law.

No doubt they had preformed this same ritual for other family members before. And after all Jesus is dead and dead is dead.

The philosophers of the day knew that dead was dead. On the tombs of the day you read epitaphs such as, “Once my brief candle is out, I must sleep through perpetual night.”

Or, “I came, I was, I am not, I care not.”

They also did not know that, “Easter changed everything.”

In Mark 16:3 we read: “They were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?””

Their concern was who would roll away the stone. It was, no doubt, a massive rock. The soldiers dig a sloped trench so when they released the rock, it would roll down the slope and seal tight against the tomb. This was to insure that grave robbers were unable to get in.

This time it served a second purpose and that was to guarantee Jesus disciples were unable to steal the body. Then claim he had been raised from the dead.

Notice, the people who put Jesus to dead knew Jesus had said he was going to rise from the grave. They even took steps to ensure that if Jesus did come back from the dead, he would find himself in a sealed tomb.

They did not understand, “Easter changed everything.”

Imagine their shock as the looked up and saw the stone had been rolled away.What was the greatest concern. The huge stone had already been dealt with God.

You can see that they had been held captive by their Good Friday thinking. Listen again to what they said, “Who will roll looked away the stone."

They did not realize that Easter had already happened. They were still at the cross. They came with their spices.They came to honor a dead body.But Easter had already happened.

As Peter Parker Marshall puts it, "The stone was not rolled away so Jesus could exit the tomb, It was rolled away so the disciples could get in." The stone being rolled away was for the disciples.

Reflect on this for a moment, the women were consumed by a stone that God had already rolled away. They did not grasp that "Easter changed everything."

There are a lot of people that I meet who are still living with good Friday thinking.

They are dark, emotionally. They shuffle through life. Shoulders slumped, eyes diverted, just barely getting by.

You can tell when you walk into a hospital room whether the patient is consumed by good Friday thinking, or has experienced Easter. I stand amazed when I met a hospital room and the person there is a believer.

But the place you can tell it most is in the funeral home. You can always tell if the person who is died is a believer not. As if there believer. There's a different spirit in the funeral home. There is, can I say, a sense of true joy. Not joy that ignores grief, but a joy in spite of the grief.

As Paul put it so well, "we do not grieve as those who have no hope." He did say that we would grieve. But not as those who have no hope. We green but we grieve on this side of Easter. We grieve, but it's a grief that knows we will see our loved one again. It's a grief that we can only have this side of Easter.

That's why Paul would say, "if there was no resurrection, then there is no Christianity." The way he put it is, "if there is no resurrection, we are of all people to be pitied."

But you see, "Easter changed everything."

Some of you here this morning maybe struggling with Good Friday thinking. You are in a place of despair, problems are coming at you and you don’t know which way to turn. Easter is for you. Let God deal with the problems, he may already be at work. You may be worrying about a stone, God has already moved out of the way.

Easter changed everything.

Death is no longer the final note in life’s song, it is simply a prelude to Easter.