Verses 1-10
Chapter 94
Prayer
Almighty God, if thy blessing be given unto us, we shall know no more any pain of want or any weakness of fear. Send thine angels to us to tell us what thou wouldst have us do. With the music of their message in our ears we shall run, if with fear yet with great joy, to bring thy disciples word. The word is thine, every letter and tone of it; it is not ours else it would perish in the wind which first hears it, but it is thy word, full of the music of thine own heart, tender with the tremulousness of thine own love, and because it is thy word and none other, it shall find acceptance in the earth, and make the whole world pure and glad. Herein is our trust, here do we find the light of our hope, into this promise as into a rock do we run in the time of darkness and desperate sorrow. When thou dost try our faith, we would that our faith might be strongest; when the cloud is darkest, we would break it up by the urgency and penetration of our vehement cry; when the night is longest we would charm away all its darkness by continual songs of hope. This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Lord, increase our faith. Faith is the gift of God: we ask thee for it now, with loving and expectant heart.
We come to thee by the way appointed, broad as thine own love, and bright as thine own heaven Jesus Christ, the Living Priest, by whom we have received the atonement, and because of his sacrifice and intercession we shall have all things and shall truly abound in all heavenly bestowals, and in us shall there be a daily inspiration that shall renew our strength and our hope.
We have come to bless thee with many words and many songs, to recall all thy tender mercies, though it be impossible so to do, to set our memory upon the miracle of complete recollection. Lord help us to do what we cannot do but in the straining attempt to do it, we shall increase the strength which is mocked, and shall show thee how loving is our grateful heart.
Thou hast been with us all the day, so that we hardly know one day from another, so Sabbatic has been the quietness of the whole week, so tender the suggestion of every shining hour. Yet dost thou give us special mercies amid all that is even unusual. Thou raisest up mountains, the higher the one than the other, even in the land of great hills. Thou dost send upon us unexpected joy, and if now and again thou dost touch the foundation of our tower, it is that we may learn that if our foundation be not in God it is insecure. How terrible art thou, and yet how gentle: in wrath remember mercy, in the day of judgment look upon the bow of promise, and in all the fire of thine indignation against sin, remember how frail we are, a leaf that fadeth and a shadow that fleeth away. Enable us to work well during the hours of light, knowing that the night cometh wherein no man can work. Give us a right view of the work of thine house, may we feel that there is no slavery in thy bondage, that thy captivity is freedom, and that to be the Lord's slaves is to be the Lord's sons.
Thou knowest what our life is, shattered and torn, lying around us in many a ruin without shape or meaning; thou knowest how our vows have been broken, and our prayers have been plucked back from heaven without answer and without pressure; thou knowest us altogether behold we have but a handful of days to live, do thou pity us, spare us, and work out in us all the way of thine own love. Enable us to live the larger life, to look upon the whole revelation of thy truth with the eyes of the heart, which take the whole sight, and which seeing perceive also.
Lift the burden where it is too heavy, dry the tears where they do not enlarge the vision but blind it, open for us ways upon roads that are at present inaccessible, give us a humble, heartfelt trust in our Father's goodness, and may we stand upon that as upon a rock that cannot be shaken. Go after the prodigal whom our prayers fail to overtake, bring back the wanderer who has left all the common roads of life and is groping in thickets and wildernesses which we cannot penetrate. Nurse our sick ones, lift them awhile from the hot bed and give them rest within thine arms lay them down again with thine own gentleness, and give them sleep.
Baptize all our little ones with dew from heaven: preserve their lives that they may become good and great and wise and honourable. Watch our houses that they be not broken in upon with violence: may we find a sanctuary on the hearthstone and the beginning of heaven in the innermost joys of the house.
We say this in the dear, great, tender Name, we baptize our prayer with the blood of the cross without that baptism what is our prayer but a speech of the lips? Hear us at the cross, and as thou hearest come to us with assurance of perfect pardon and release from every sin and every accusation, and may we find a Sabbath within the Sabbath, the peace of nature enclosed within the larger peace of God's own calm. Amen.
1. In the end of the Sabbath (late on the Sabbath), as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
2. And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
3. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:
4. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
5. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
6. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord Jay.
7. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
8. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.
9. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. ( Rejoice!) And they came and held (clasped) him by the feet, and worshipped him.
10. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren (by spiritual relationship) that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.
Reunion
Jesus Christ has for the time being withdrawn from the page we are perusing, yet we can think of nothing but himself, even during his temporary absence. After the high converse we have had, we cannot easily fall into common talk. The sleeping city is a mean sight to the man who has been out early and come down from the mountain whence he saw the sun rise. To him the sleeper seems to be almost a criminal: the sleeper is a man who has lost an opportunity and can never have that opportunity renewed under precisely the same conditions. So all the people that are now moving upon this page, up to a given verse, are commonplace, and would be intolerable but for the inquiry which strains and elevates their attention. We have no patience with them, but their inquiry makes a common standing ground for the human race. Let us join it, and ply heaven with the same eager and expectant question.
"In the end of the Sabbath." No! In the end of the Jewish Sabbath mayhap, but not in the end of the Sabbath. Literally in the end of the Sabbaths, as if they had all come to a point of termination. The Sabbath is only about to begin; there are no endings in God's blessings what we call the end is only the little rest which the blessing takes, to come up again in fuller bloom and tenderer colour and larger fruitfulness. Why have you this word "end" in your speech as Christians? There is an end to nothing but sin. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." No beauty is lost, no light, no speech of tenderness, no comfort of benediction, no inspiration of truth. The Sabbath can never end: man would take it back again if it were to be withdrawn. Forms may undergo changes, but the sabbatic spirit, the genius of rest, the elder brother of the days, the queen of the week, the shining star amid all the galaxy of time the world would not willingly let die, the great religious heart of man can never allow to expire.
"As it began to dawn." Yes, that is just what it did. That is the very poetry of the occasion; the word written with apparent accident is the very expression of heaven. It began to dawn, a new tender light shot up in the eastern sky, the orient trembled with a new presence, and glowed as with an infinite surprise. Christianity is always dawning: the Sabbath dawns over all the world; the Sabbath day is more than half over away down in the eastern lands in the far-away western places, men are just beginning to rise now, and when we have concluded our service they will begin to sing
"This is the day the Lord hath made."
In the highest sense that can challenge the imagination and satisfy all the religious vision that is in us, Christianity is a continual dawning. When Christ comes the light comes; when Christ shines upon the life the darkness flees away; when the mind gets its first true conception of Christ, it is as if a shaft of light were shot from a great firmament of gloom, and as if all heaven shone. It began in the beginning. God created the heavens that dawn every day. Believe me, we live in beginnings. Give me some hint of endings, and strength goes, inspiration expires, and energy says, "There is no longer use for me to unfurl the banner, or blow the trumpet's bray in the ear of the dead. Let me lie down and die too." There is a joyousness about the dawn and the beginning, the stirring tune, the hour of activity, when every energy leaps to the front, and every power says, "Baptize me for thy service, and may I be crowned as a blessing in the world's commonwealth."
"As it began to dawn towards the first day." That also is just what it did! Now the primacy of time is covered with the higher primacy of grace. The "first day" it had always been since time was broken up into weeks and months and years. For many a long century it had been the first day of the week as it were by nativity but now it is born again. It was sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it was sown a little glint of time, it rises big with eternal splendour. So may we be born again. You are first in intellect, would that you were also first in goodness. And you are first in energy, would that you were also first in prayer. You in the third place are first in wealth would God every golden piece you have were made more golden still by being transformed into the gold of the sanctuary. Be not satisfied with natural or hereditary primacies; over those you have next to no control, it may be; but in this primacy of goodness, where may elevation cease? There is no terminal point on that heaven-ascending line.
The women came to the sepulchre, and Luke gives us some additional and illustrative particulars about them and their coming. According to Luke's account, the women came, "bringing the spices which they had prepared." Notwithstanding they had been distinctly told that Jesus Christ would rise again on the third day, with that singular obstinacy which distinguishes the prejudices of the human mind, those blessed and affectionate women came with their spices to embalm their Lord! How can you account for the stubbornness of this view of death? The women had been told, and told by Jesus Christ himself, that on the third day he would rise again, and yet so treacherous is the memory, or so irreligious the heart, that Sight staggers Faith. The women saw him die; any recollection of a promise of "rising again" must have died in that death. So forgetting the prediction, or regarding it as a sentiment that had perished, or otherwise viewing it as a hope rather that as a fact which lay within the possibility of accomplishment, they came "bringing their spices which they had prepared."
The angel chided them. Said the angel to them, "Remember how he spake," and "they remembered his words," but the remembrance of his words would have been of no avail to them two hours before they saw the angel. If they had found the stone at the door of the sepulchre they would have remembered no such words but Sight now helped Faith. The grave was empty, the stone rolled away, celestial visitants were the attendants of that gloomy place, and out of the depths of death they heard the voice of Resurrection; "then they remembered his words." That remembrance is all but fatal. There is a time when our religious remembrances will rather be aggravations of our sin than mitigations of our mistakes. What was it to remember the words when the grave was empty, when the angels were filling it with morning light, when the stone, fastened, sealed, watched, was hurled back? It was nothing to remember then. That is the true faith which sees in the darkness as well as in the light, which goes to the grave bearing no spices but the spices of the immovable certainty of the resurrection and the life. You take your spices to your graves in the form of flowers and immortelles. It is pardonable, because the bones of the dead body are still hidden under the sod; it would be better if we could look straight up into the blue morning and breathe upward the spice of a concentrated life and a hopeful and all-conquering spirit.
Memory is to be touched in many ways. The old sermons will yet come upon us with great vividness, the mighty prayers that took us up to heaven's gate so that we had a mind to alight there and never return, will come back with all but infinite energy and pressure upon the forgetful mind. And all the holy sabbaths that stand out upon the plain of time, like great mountains, will rush upon the recollection and become the chief of our joys, or the most oppressive and unanswerable of our accusations. Cultivate your memory; live in your religious recollections; if you let your yesterdays die, I wonder not that your to-morrows are amongst the darkest of your fears. Rather would I say, The Lord who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this uncircumcised Philistine. Remember the old battles and the old victories, the ancient fears, and the light that drove them away like shadows that could stand no longer in their presence, and say with heightening thankfulness,
For what purpose did the women come? According to Matthew they came to "see the sepulchre." An atheist might have done that, any man might have done it but when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary do it, it seems as if the Heavens were closed up and the earth were a place that had no sky. We trust to the womanly heart to keep up our noblest hopes, we give ourselves over into the custody of that higher love and trust. When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary cease to pray, no man will have audacity enough to lift his face heavenward. The mother must save us, the housewife must make the house a sanctuary, the womanly heart must keep the altar-fire ablaze.
They came "to see the sepulchre," and they did see it: they saw more of it than they expected to see they saw it turned inside out. So may all our expectancy be fulfilled! We came to the sanctuary to see what? One another? an individual? an occasion? a service? a sepulchre? May we all be disappointed in this same happy way: may those who come to see the outside, the mechanical, and the transitory see the Lord's own face, aglow with the light which fills all heaven with its splendour. Many have gone with aching hearts to see some religious sight, who have returned with great joy.
"And behold the angel of the Lord had rolled back the stone from the door." Mark describes this angel beautifully; Mark took more notice of certain particulars than any of the other evangelists; for the detail of the picture, always consult the evangelist Mark. According to Mark the angel was young man. Are there any old men in heaven? None. There are really no old men on earth, if we take the right view of the case. How old are you, trembling pilgrim? Do you say eighty? I can show you a tree three hundred years old. Do you say you have passed the fourscore years, and now there remains but a little more light, and you will soon be gone? You are an old man, but you are a young being: the age is an accident, the existence is a fact. Do not give way to old age, it is only a mockery, it is not really old age: you are, if in Christ, always young. How else could the narrative read than that a young man came and did this? For God could have sent no old man, having none in his great household. "Who are these, arrayed in white robes? and knowest thou whence they came?" "These are they who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne night and day, and serve God in his temple. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." A youth that has no necessities, a youth on which time can write no wrinkle. We shall all be young some day, when we are clothed upon with our house from heaven! God is always sending young men down into the world to roll its stones away, to break up its rocks, to liberate its captives, and to give new dawning. Encourage the young, be large-minded and pitiful toward their mistakes, and see in the outputting of their energy the possibility of a noble and beneficent manhood.
He rolled away the stone. The stone was turned to new uses, for the angel "sat upon it." What thought the stone had occasioned by Joseph's rolling it to the door of the sepulchre! It was kindly meant: no other construction could possibly be put upon Joseph's act in that matter. It was sealed, it was watched, it was guarded and yet it was rolled away. God sends a great wind upon the earth and throws down your towers and temples and towns and fortresses an invisible wind you cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes, but it comes in great shocks and tries the foundations of your structures, breaks the ships of Tarshish, and troubles the sea as with great agony, and yet it is only a wind, without shape, without colour, without measure, almost without name, invisible but when you see the ships hurried before it, and all their proud mast-work torn to rags and thrown into the foaming deep, and see great structures bulge out and fall flat down on the astonished earth, we feel how, in some aspects, we are truly little and weak.
Now the angel speaks, and I would hear every word he says. "Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen as he said: come, see the place where the Lord lay, and go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead, and behold he goeth before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you." You could not have put more matter into so short a compass. The angels speak concisely, they have specific messages to deliver, and with miserliness of language they crush into every syllable all the meaning which it will hold. The speech was sympathetic "Fear not ye." The speech was heart-reading "For I know that ye seek Jesus." The speech was explanatory- "He is not here, he is risen, as he said." The speech was comforting "Come, see the place where the Lord lay." The speech was inspiring "Go ye." The angel was the first to preach Jesus and the Resurrection; all other preachers follow the "young man" who announced the Resurrection and sent the women to proclaim it.
What was the effect of the preaching? The women departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word. Haste, joy, energy, this is the missionary way, this is the true ministerial way, this is the great lecture upon the method of preaching. They departed quickly with fear and great joy, reverence and infinite rapture, and did run to bring his disciples word. We have fallen into a mean amble, we have slunk off and let every racer beat us; the gospel messenger lags somewhere in the rear, he is outrun by many a man. We want more quickness, more energy, more running power in the church. We are indifferent, we are respectable, we are reluctant, we are calculating, we are selfish. Rather would I belong to a Christianity that is censurable from a worldly point of view by reason of its vehemence and energy, than belong to some perversion of Christianity which regards its religion and its slumber as coequal and synonymous terms.
And as they went it always so happens! A thing is never complete in itself; incident runs into incident, and the whole work is carried on with infinite skill to perfectness, to symmetry and life. "And as they went," Jesus met them! No man can go upon his errands without his company. Jesus Christ always meets his messengers or joins them or overtakes them: he is alway with his angels to the end of the world. And Jesus said, "Go." Some day we shall collect the incidents in which that word Go is used, and we shall see how wonderfully God's Spirit always points in the direction of movement, aggression, energy. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." With such a "GO" ringing in our ears, with the resonance of a thunder-trumpet, who will sit down or stand still or forget his errand?
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