Not On Your Own - Mark 16:1-4

Not On Your Own

                  Years ago, while we were living in Ramer, an armadillo was run over by a car in front of Mt. Vernon, the church we were serving.  As the dead body of that armadillo laid out on the road during the next couple of days, it began to stink.  Soon, the whole area was inundated with the putrid odor of rotting flesh.  Someone told me that I ought to take the armadillo away and bury it so that the stench would go away.  I thought that was great advice, since Mt. Vernon was roughly 100 ft from the church manse in which we lived.  I grabbed my shovel, dug a hole, and tossed the lifeless corpse of the armadillo into the whole and covered it with dirt.  We quickly began to notice the aroma of the area improve.

                  As far as the ladies knew, Jesus was dead.  They had seen Him die roughly 33 hrs earlier.  They had seen His body wrapped in grave clothes and laid in the tomb 30-32 hrs earlier.  They saw how the tomb had been officially sealed so that no one might enter, because they feared Jesus’ followers would attempt to remove His body and proclaim that He had risen, as He said He would.  Now they had a job to do.  To honor Him, they needed to anoint His body in strong, yet pleasant, smelling spices to mask the pungent odor which would soon be pouring forth  from His tomb due to natural biological processes which come along with death.

                  It was well known then and is well known today.  Death stinks.  Among the chemicals formed during biological decomposition of dead bodies are two compounds which tell the story in their names: cadaverine (from cadaver) and putrescine (from the word putrid).  The women probably did not know the chemistry behind the decomposition which they were confident was taking place in their Lord’s body.  All they knew was that if they wanted to honor Him one last time, as Mary had done just days ago, anointing His body with oil made from nard.  They must act now, because the smells from the dead body of their Lord soon would become overpowering. They needed to cover the grave clothes with these oils to encase the grave clothes and keep the smells in.

                  This morning, instead of telling you my points all at once, I’m going to tell them to you one at a time.  The first one is death stinks: literally, emotionally, and spiritually.  I have walked through the literal form.  Likewise, most, if not all of us have lost someone close to us.  We know the pain left in the wake of a loss.  Jokes can be made that will sometimes take the edge off of the pain.  I once heard of a man who walked into a funeral home to visit with the family of a friend who had passed.  Walking up to the casket with his children, he looked at the body of his departed friend and said, “Well, the shell is still here, but the nut is gone.”  The reality is that we can know that the body of a loved one is not the totality of that person.  Yet, the pain of no longer being able to converse with that individual or feel their loving arms wrap you up in a hug, or whatever the reminder of their loss might be, has the potential to leave a gaping hole in the heart.  Death stinks emotionally.

                  Death stinks spiritually.  God said in the day that Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die.  We know that they did not die.  Still from scripture, we can extrapolate that something did die in their stead that day.  Yet, their relationship with their Creator was fractured, if not severed, leaving them with the inability to walk in relationship to Him.  We know that the wages of sin is death.  Death stinks in the nostrils of God, because it is the aroma of sin.  God is not the god of the dead, but of the living.

                  Point number 2 this morning is that death, like the stone, is immovable.  Moving back to our text this morning… the women had a job to do, honor Jesus, but they didn’t know how they were to accomplish it.  There was a large stone which was too heavy for them to move.  They did not know how they were going to get to Jesus.  They knew that which they wanted, but they knew not how they could accomplish their goal.  The stone, in this moment, was a reminder of the immovable nature of death.  No one can move it.  Through science, we might be able to hold it at bay for a time.  We might seemingly extend our lives by several years.  However, the reality is we are all going to die.  Whether it is a stone covering the door to a tomb, several feet of dirt covering a casket in a vault, or a ½” – ¾” piece of slate enclosing a niche, it all brings into clear focus that death is final and immovable.  At some point in our lives, that door will be closed by someone, and try as we might, we cannot move death once it has arrived. 

                  Point number 3: God reverses everything!  Let’s look at it again and see what God has done.  The women arrive, thinking that either they are going to have to move the stone, or they will have to find someone to move it for them.  Yet, by the time they arrive, God has already moved it.  He did what they never could.  Even with the seal present, if it was illegal for them to move the stone, they could not be charged with moving the stone and breaking the seal, because they did not and could not move the stone.  In fact, no human had moved the stone.  God charged His angels with moving it.  They did it prior to the women arriving, as the women were the first to arrive that morning, with the exception of the guards.

                  While death might physically, emotionally, and spiritually stink, the life that God gives is physically, emotionally, and spiritually pleasant.  This does not necessarily mean that everyone who Jesus saves will smell like a bed of roses.  However, I cannot help but think about how when Stacy gets to hold a new baby, she spends the rest of the day commenting on how good a baby smells and the fact that the odor has been transferred off to her.  Still, I might offer that even though not all followers of Jesus have a pleasant aroma about them physically, it still may be observed that the aroma of death does not enshroud them.  Likewise, those who have been infused with the Spirit of Life should be emotionally the aroma of life to those around them, especially to those who are alive forever more.  These individuals, having been filled with the spirit, should be encouraging and joyful.  Like an apple orchard or a vineyard, there should be a pleasantness about them due to the spiritual fruit they are producing through their lives.   If death is a stench in the nostrils of God, because He was not the author of death, but the giver of life, then spiritually, when one is alive, they too become spiritually pleasant to God, because they are following His ways.

                  Finally, like Jesus had been wrapped in grave clothes and the women were coming to anoint His body with these spices to encase His body and keep in the smells, God does the reverse.  He gives us life.  He clothes us, not in burial clothes, but in His robes of righteousness.  In doing so, He does not encase us to keep the smells of life in, but seemingly causes the wind of the spirit to flow through us carrying the pleasant aroma of Christ’s likeness into our surroundings, and then bringing us into His presence. 

                  The reality of His reversing the way things take place is to show us that getting to Him cannot be done… Not on our own.  Instead, He opened the way to Him. Cleared out death, and brought forth life where there should be none… not just in Jesus’ dead body, but even more so in our sinful hearts… and it was all because of Jesus.