"They rolled back the stone"...A Resurrection Message.  by Don Gooch

   "And looking up they see the stone is rolled back".---Mark 16:14

   "The stone is rolled back". That declaration, as it introduces us to
the fact which it indicated constitutes the answer to all the
forebodings to which "the stone against the door of the tomb" gave
rise. Let us consider the fact indicated by that stone being rolled
back from the tomb.

   The stone rolled back was not the supreme fact, but rather an
indication of the fact, something which was intended to draw attention
to the fact itself. The rolling back of the stone happened after the
resurrection. Matthew gives a full account of the event. It was not
rolled back from the tomb in order that Jesus might pass out of the
tomb. By no means is this the case. It was rolled back to show that He
had gone.

   When the stone was rolled back, what was there to be seen? An empty
tomb, and undisturbed grave-clothes. These grave-clothes were lying in
the very folds that they had been in, around the body of the dead
Christ.Thats what Peter and John saw when they looked into the grave,
those clothes lying exactly as they had been around His body; but His
body was not there! It was that vision of the undisturbed
grave-clothes, that convinced Peter and John that He was risen. If the
grave-clothes had been disturbed and carefully folded up, then they
might have imagined that somebody had unwrapped them, and that the body
of Jesus had been stolen. This then was what they saw when the stone
was rolled back--an empty tomb and undisturbed grave-clothes.

   What then is the fact that was thus indicated? The very fact which
the angel announced:"Ye seek Jesus the Nazarene.....He is risen: He is
not here." Jesus of nazareth had been raised from the dead; had emerged
from all its material bondages and bandages; had passed into a new
life, the same, yet, entirely different; had proved Himself Victor over
death, and Conqueror of the grave. That is the central fact of
Christianity through all the centuries. If that is not true, then
Christianity is doomed. But, it is true.

   It is the central fact of Christianity. It is the fact that cannot
be explained except by revelation and revelation has never explained
the process of the resurrection. But it is declared that "God hath
raised Him from the dead". Whether that declaration be believed or not,
may rest upon our concept of God. But if God is greater than His
universe;if in brief, He is the God of the bible, Who spake and it was
done, Who commanded and it stood firm, Who upholds all things by the
word of His Power, and is able out of apparent nothing to bring cosmos
and beauty into being, and to deal with chaos and disorder, and destroy
them; If this be our God, then though we never have an explanation of
the process of resurrection, we have a fact upon which we can rest.
"God raised Him from the dead."

   Not only is it a fact that cannot be explained away; not only is it
a fact that cannot be proved; it is also a fact that cannot be denied
except by ignorance. This is the only way that fact can be denied and I
say this with sympathy for one who is that ignorant. The word
"ignorance" is derived from the Latin. We may more politely use the
Greek equivalent and say, It cannot be denied, save by agnosticism. The
Greek "agnostic" sounds more poetic than the Latin equivalent
"ignoramus" but they mean the same thing; the man who does not know. No
intellectual soul finds its last resting-lace in ignorance. The
resurrection cannot be disproved by agnosticism. Such action can never
disprove it. The resurrection cannot be disproved by denying it. Nor
can His appearance after the resurrection be disproved. The appearances
of Jesus of Nazareth, alive from the dead, after He had been most
certainly crucified, are as well authenticated as any facts of history.
To deny them is to deny all history as well. Perhaps there is no
history?

   The final and conclusive fact, however, is that the whole Christian
propaganda is the last proof that He rose from the dead; for the whole
of it is based upon this belief, and inspired by this fact. Had there
been no resurrection, what then? Then there would have been no
Christian Church, no Christian propaganda, no Christian influence.
Everything for which the lonely Nazarene stood, lay murdered, dead, in
the tomb when they rolled a great stone against it. His disciples had
been scattered like chaff before the wind, and the whole movement had
been stamped out. How did it live again? It lived again and still lives
because He lived again and still lives!

   Let us consider the values resulting from the rolling back of this
stone. The one main, inclusive result is Christianity. I want to show
three aspects of that one result, which also have been continuous. the
result of the empty tomb, and the fact of the risen Christ which it
indicated, was first, the transfiguration of the Cross for His
disciples; secondly therefore, it was the vindication of His teaching
for His disciples and all such that consider that teaching; and
finally, it was for His disciples and for all time an interpretation of
His Person.

   It was the personality of Jesus which made an appeal to these men in
the earliest days. It was His Person they first came into contact with.
Then as they walked and talked with Him they came to know His teaching.
At the last they knew His Cross. The resurrection transfigured the
Cross, vindicated His teaching, and interpreted His personality.

   What is the transfiguration of His Cross? Remember how these
apostles had feared the Cross. They feared it for Him. They feared it
for themselves. Their fear was not low or mean. The more I study these
Gospels, and follow these men, the more I can sympathize with them in
their shunning of the Cross. I do not think it was selfishness that
made Peter say, "That be far from Thee, Lord. It was pure affection for
his Lord. He feared the Cross. If He (Jesus) were to die, where were
all their high hopes? He had talked of a Kingdom. All that must come to
an end if He died. They did fear the Cross. From the moment when He
began to explicitly to declare it to them, they could hardly bear to
walk and talk with Him. They could only see the wrong of the Cross.
They were right in so far as they saw. There is nothing so shameful in
all human history as the Cross of Jesus. There is nothing that reflects
in such unmistakable and deadly manner upon the human heart as the
Cross of Jesus. Man has murdered God! If we lose that early sense of
the horror of it, then we are losing a good deal more than we realize.
It was a terrible thing! When the disciples saw that it really
happened; that brutal men caught Him, mauled Him, bruised Him, murdered
Him; they felt it was all over, and they fled.

   Now, see how these men came to glory in it. "God forbid that I
should glory, save in the Cross of Jesus Christ my Lord". The apostles
gloried in it for Him, and by so doing, gloried in it themselves. They
"counted it all joy" that they were considered worthy to suffer shame
for the Name of Jesus. What had happened? The resurrection made them
look back. If ther had been no resurrection, there would have been
nothing but the black tragedy of a murder. The resurrection revealed to
these men, and has revealed to us for all time, that in that dark hour,
God wrought in the darkness for light, through death unto life, in
bondage for the creation of liberty. Come, "behold the place where they
laid Him! He is risen: He is not here". "The stone is rolled back".

   The resurrection was the vindication of His teaching. His teaching
concerning relative values, His teaching concerning moral standards,
His teaching concerning redeeming motives. Along these lines His
teaching proceeded through all the three years; line upon line, precept
upon precept, here a little and there a little, He had been dealing
with these things.

   Concerning relative values He perpetually insisted upon the
supremacy of the spiritual over the physical; calling men always into
that attitude where they sought first the Kingdom of God, remembering
that all the things of material necessity should be added unto them. He
persistently declared to men that the spiritual is supreme over the
physical, and as insistently claimed the sacredness of the material. He
lived a life that natural and beautiful in the physical and the
material. They had taken that fair and beauteous body, and brutally
murdered it, and put it in the grave. But said the angel, "He is not
here: He is risen"; and in that rising His teaching was vindicated. His
victory over death was His vindication of the supremacy of the
spiritual. It was also a vindication of His Conception of the
sacredness of the material. If the body were an evil thing, when He
emerged into the spiritual life, after the resurrection, He would have
left the body. When He came back, He came in a risen body, as John
wrote about in His Gospel, eating and fellowshipping with His
disciples. This is where intelligence breaks down. The senses cannot
comprehend this. The supremacy of the spiritual, and the sacredness of
the material were both vindicated by the fact of His resurrection.

   Concerning moral standards, He taught the glory of holiness. He
stood among the sons of men the most insistent demander of purity; yet
to sinning men and women He had said, "Thy sins are forgiven thee";
"Hath no man condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee; go thy way;
from henceforth sin no more". He taught two things apparently
contradictory; the necessity for absolute purity, and yet the
possibility of so forgiving the sins that out of the sense of
forgiveness there should spring a new moral incentive. By the
resurrection that teaching was vindicated. By the resurrection the
glory of holiness was revealed. Said Peter on the day of Pentecost, "It
was impossible that He should be holden of death". Why? Because in Him
is no sin, and by His resurrection sin was destroyed. Yet more than
that--and this is the supreme thing to every human heart. By that
resurrection the possibility of forgiveness was vindicated, for the
resurrection is the sign and symbol to men everywhere that God has
accepted the mystery of atoning work for the redemption of humanity.

   His teaching concerning redeeming motives was vindicated. He had
taught the beauty of sacrifice; and no one had believed Him. He had
declared the strength of love; and they had murdered Him. Now, behold
Him, alive from the dead! In the resurrection is the vindication of the
beauty of sacrifice, the vindication of the ultimate triumph of the
sacrificial life. In the resurrection is the wonder of eternal love.
Love is stronger than death and mightier than the grave. That motive of
compassion that would have been lost were He dead, flamed again, in
light and power and beauty, by the way of the resurrection.

   By the resurrection these men came to a new interpretation of His
Person. They new the Man Jesus, they honored Him, and they loved Him.
They knew that the Man Jesus was the Christ. They had accepted His
Messiahship, they had followed Him as Messiah, and obeyed Him as such.
They had gained an intellectual conviction that He was the Son of God,
as Peter had himself declared as Caesarea Phillipi, "Thou art the Son
of God".

   Paul, in his great Roman Letter says that after the flesh He was the
seed of David, but that He "was declared the Son of God with power from
the resurrection of the dead". Literally translated "declared" is
"horizoned". "He was horizoned the Son of God with power...". He was
placed upon the horizon in a new light, so that men saw clearly, as
they see the sun in it's rising, Who He was. By that resurrection they
discovered this deepest truth concerning His personality. They all came
for ever after to speak of Him with reverence as "the Lord Jesus
Christ".

   So "the stone is rolled back". The conception of God lives on. The
ideal of humanity not only remains, but is attainable. The passion to
redeem is operative, and has been through all the centuries. The
religion of Jesus triumphs: faith as its foundation, love as its
structural power, hope as its finality.

   I will close with these striking word's of Mazzini.... "He came. The
soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous, the most deeply
inspired by God and the future, that men have yet seen on earth--Jesus.
He bent over the corpse of the dead world, and whispered a word of
faith. Over the clay that had lost all of man, but the movement and the
form. He uttered words until then unknown; Love, Sacrifice, a heavenly
origin. And the dead arose, a new life circulated through the clay,
which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that corpse arose
the Christian world, the world of liberty and equality. From the clay
arose the true Man, the Image of God, the precursor of humanity".

   Amen! Don Gooch Troy, Mi. 4/6/90