Mark opened his gospel with these words “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” and ended with “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here.” Mark is saying to his readers, you began searching for the Messiah and now I tell you that this one who said that He was the very Son of God has proven it through his resurrection. The empty tomb is open for all to enter and to see with their earthly humanity that Jesus the Nazarene was and is and ever will be the very Son of God.

The women will be the first to be given the honor to know this news. The temple guards who fled know as well but will be bribed to keep silent. The chief priests hear this news but will add to their guilt heaping lies and deceit upon the charge of murder. The disciples will be the last to know for they are sequestered behind closed doors shaking in fear. It is the women alone who will boldly walk the quiet dim streets of Jerusalem wondering “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” It is the women who will enter the quiet garden and instead of a tomb darkened by death, see and hear from a heavenly messenger commissioned just for this purpose to tell any who would enter: “He is not here, He has risen just as He said.” Peter later would write that angels long to catch a glimpse of what God had not revealed until this very moment. They had waited through time unknown to us for such an event as this and as at the birth of Christ when the angelic choir sang Glory to God in the Highest we wonder if at the resurrection they added the words “Hallelujah.”

Beloved, Christ is not dead, He is risen just as He said. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Do you know this risen Christ as your own personal Savior?