The Trembling at the Dawn: The Victory of the Empty Tomb Text: Mark 16:1-8
Introduction: The Unthinkable Fact
We live in an age that prides itself on its sophistication, its cynical realism. Our world is a closed system, a predictable machine of cause and effect. Miracles are for the simple-minded, and a resurrection from the dead is the most outlandish miracle of all. The modern mind, which is really just the ancient pagan mind in a lab coat, has declared that dead men stay dead. This is the central dogma of materialism. And because of this, the world is a graveyard, a place where all our striving, all our loving, all our building, ultimately amounts to nothing more than rearranging the headstones.
Into this gray, hopeless consensus, the resurrection of Jesus Christ crashes like a lightning bolt. It is not a myth, not a metaphor for spring, not a spiritual feeling in the hearts of his followers. It is a brute, historical fact. It is the hinge upon which all of history turns. Two thousand years ago, a man who had been publicly executed by the most efficient killing machine the world had ever known, the Roman Empire, did the unthinkable. He got up and walked out of his tomb. This event did not just undo one wicked plan; it overthrew the entire kingdom of death. It was God the Father's public vindication of His Son, the ultimate "amen" to Christ's "It is finished."
The account in Mark is abrupt, immediate, and raw. Mark's gospel moves at a breathless pace, and it ends in the same way. There is no gentle fade to black. There is an explosion of divine power, and the first witnesses are left trembling, astonished, and afraid. This is not the sentimental, soft-focus Easter we see on greeting cards. This is a collision with the raw power of the living God, and it is terrifying. It is the kind of fear that purges all other fears. The women come to the tomb expecting to perform a sad, religious duty for a dead prophet. They leave having been confronted by the central reality of the universe: Jesus Christ is Lord, and because He is, nothing can ever be the same again.
This passage is not just about what happened then. It is about what is. The resurrection is not simply an event to be believed; it is the power by which we live. It is the proof that God's new creation has broken into the middle of the old, dying one. And it demands a response. You cannot be neutral about an empty tomb. You either have to explain it away with frantic, nonsensical theories, or you have to fall on your face and worship the one who vacated it.
The Text
And when the Sabbath passed, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of thetomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.' " And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment were gripping them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
(Mark 16:1-8 LSB)
Devotion in the Face of Defeat (v. 1-3)
We begin with the faithful actions of the women, undertaken in the shadow of utter catastrophe.
"And when the Sabbath passed, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, 'Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?'" (Mark 16:1-3)
The Sabbath is over. The day of rest has passed, but for these women, there has been no rest. Their Lord was dead. Their hopes were shattered. But notice what they do. They do not abandon Him. Their love and devotion compel them to perform one last act of service. They buy spices to anoint a dead body. In their minds, the story is over. All that is left is to manage the decay. This is a picture of faithful love, but it is a love still trapped in the old world, the world where death has the final word.
They are operating under the assumption that Jesus is a failed Messiah. They are not coming to the tomb expecting a resurrection. They are coming to a grave. This is crucial. The disciples were not predisposed to believe in the resurrection; they were predisposed to mourn. They were not inventing a story to keep their movement alive. Their movement was dead, and they were just trying to give it a decent burial.
Their very practical concern highlights their unbelief. "Who will roll away the stone for us?" They are worried about a rock. They are focused on a physical, earthly obstacle, completely oblivious to the cosmic, earth-shattering event that has already taken place. This is so often our condition. We fret about our "stones," our practical problems, our logistical hurdles, while God has already defeated the ultimate enemy. We are worried about the lock on the cage when the dragon has already been slain. Their question is a human question, a reasonable question. But God is about to answer it with a divine, unreasonable reality.
The Divine Interruption (v. 4-5)
As they approach, their human problem has already been solved by a divine power they had not accounted for.
"And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed." (Mark 16:4-5)
The stone was not rolled away to let Jesus out. The resurrected Christ does not need a door. It was rolled away to let the witnesses in. It was a public declaration, a divine unveiling. God was opening the evidence locker for inspection. The stone, which was "very large," was a symbol of the finality of death. It was the seal of the grave's authority. But God contemptuously flicks it aside. What man sees as an insurmountable obstacle, God treats as a pebble.
They enter the tomb, the place of death, and what do they find? Not a body, but life. Not decay, but glory. They see "a young man...wearing a white robe." This is an angel. The white robe signifies purity, holiness, and the realm of God. He is sitting, a posture of rest and authority. The battle is over. The victory is won. The representative of heaven is calmly waiting to announce the news.
And the women's reaction? They were "amazed." The Greek word here is related to our word "trauma." It means to be utterly dumbfounded, thrown into a state of alarm and astonishment. Their categories were being shattered. They came expecting a corpse and found a cherub. They came to a place of sorrow and stumbled into the throne room of the universe. This is what happens when the creature encounters the work of the Creator in its raw, unveiled power. It short-circuits the brain. It is the beginning of real knowledge.
The Proclamation of the Gospel (v. 6-7)
The angel then speaks, and his words are the first proclamation of the gospel of the resurrected Christ.
"And he said to them, 'Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'" (Mark 16:6-7)
The angel first calms their fears. "Do not be amazed." This is a common refrain when heaven breaks into earth. It is a command to reorient their thinking, to move from creaturely shock to covenantal understanding. He then identifies the very one they are looking for: "Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified." The angel does not shrink from the shame of the cross. The crucifixion is not an embarrassment to be glossed over; it is a badge of honor. It is the very title of the victor. He is the crucified one who is now the risen one. His death was not a defeat; it was the means of His triumph.
Then comes the central declaration of all history, the five most important words ever spoken to mankind: "He has risen; He is not here." This is the gospel in miniature. It is a declaration of an accomplished fact. It is not "He will rise," or "He lives in our hearts." It is "He has risen." It is an empty-tomb-in-Palestine-on-a-Sunday-morning kind of fact. The angel then invites empirical verification: "Behold, the place where they laid Him." Look for yourselves. The evidence is right here. Christianity is not a blind leap; it is a faith founded on an verifiable, historical event.
The proclamation is immediately followed by a commission. "But go, tell..." The resurrection is not private information. It is public news that must be heralded. And who are they to tell? "His disciples and Peter." This is a beautiful, surgical strike of grace. Peter, who had so spectacularly failed, who had denied the Lord three times, is singled out by name. This is not a rebuke. It is a restoration. The Lord is specifically sending a message to His most broken and ashamed disciple that he is not cast off. The grace of the resurrection is for cowards and failures. It is for Peters. And the message is one of hope: "He is going ahead of you to Galilee." He is not waiting for them to get their act together. He is leading the way. Just as He promised.
The Holy Terror of the New Creation (v. 8)
The women's response is not what we might expect. It is not immediate joy, but overwhelming fear.
"And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment were gripping them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." (Mark 16:8)
They flee. They are seized by "trembling and astonishment." This is not the cowering fear of a slave before a tyrant. This is holy terror. It is the awe-filled dread that comes from standing in the presence of the numinous, the divine. They have just looked into the epicenter of God's new creation, and the radiation of that glory has overwhelmed them. They came to anoint a dead man and were instead commissioned as the first apostles of a living God. The sheer magnitude of the reality was too much for them to process.
Mark ends his original gospel here, on this note of terrified silence. Later scribes, uncomfortable with such an abrupt ending, would add the longer conclusions we find in our Bibles. But there is a profound theological punch to this original ending. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the news of His resurrection, is not a tame thing. It is not a comforting platitude. It is a terrifying, world-altering reality. It is the news that the rightful King has taken His throne, and that the old world of sin and death is now under judgment. Their fear was an appropriate response. It was the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. They were silent because human words were inadequate to describe what they had seen. Before you can speak rightly about the resurrection, you must first be struck silent by it.
The World Turned Right Side Up
So what does this raw, abrupt account mean for us? It means everything. The resurrection is the ultimate proof that Jesus is who He said He was. As Paul says, He was "declared to be the Son of God with power...by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). It is the guarantee of our own justification. "He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25). His resurrection is the receipt, stamped "Paid in Full" by God the Father.
But it is more than that. The resurrection is not just about getting us to heaven when we die. It is about the restoration of all things. Jesus is the firstfruits of the new creation (1 Cor. 15:20). His resurrection body is the prototype for our resurrection bodies, and for the renewed heavens and the renewed earth. What happened to Him in that tomb is what will one day happen to the entire cosmos. The power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that is at work in us, bringing us from spiritual death to life (Eph. 1:19-20).
The women came to the tomb with spices, intending to fight a losing battle against decay. They left having been confronted with a power that reverses decay itself. We live in a world that is obsessed with managing decay. Our politics, our medicine, our philosophies are all just different kinds of spices, different attempts to make the corpse of a dying world smell a little better. But the gospel is not about managing decay. It is about resurrection. It is the announcement that the King has risen, that death is defeated, and that His life is now flowing out into the world, making all things new.
The proper response to this news is the same as that of the women: trembling and astonishment. We should be struck with a holy fear that drives out all other fears. Fear of failure? He is risen. Fear of man? He is risen. Fear of death? He is risen. And once that holy terror has done its work, once it has silenced our proud and foolish mouths, then we are ready to obey the commission. Then we are ready to go and tell. We are ready to tell the disciples, and we are ready to tell the Peters, that the crucified one is alive, that He is going before us, and that His victory is now our own.