Day 318 (Matthew 28, Mark 16) - Year 4
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

If you're doing our New Testament plan, today we finished our first and second books. And if you're doing the whole Bible, we finished our 40th and 41st books. Congratulations! It's also kind of a big day in Bible reading plans regardless because it's Resurrection Day. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul writes about this moment 30 years after the fact, he says, If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. The death and resurrection of Christ is the hinge point of history and the foundation of our faith.

Roughly three days have passed since Jesus was crucified, and it's now the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning. While it's still dark, there's another earthquake that happens concurrent with the appearance of an angel, and it seems they may be working in tandem to roll the stone away.

We've talked about this before, but angels always appear as human males, which is one reason why Mark's Gospel may refer to the angel as a young man. Angels are often dressed in white, and while Scripture never shows them with wings or halos, their appearance is usually described as radiant or like lightning. There are some Scripture-based theories that they may be very large, like bigger than Shaq big, and when they encounter humans, they often open with the phrase, fear not.

Probably because of their size and because it seems like they can travel at the speed of thought and manifest out of thin air. Angels are maybe terrifying, so when the guards see the angel, they basically become catatonic. But here come Mary Magdalene and Bonus Mary, we're not sure exactly which Mary she is or if we've even met her before, and Joanna and Salome.

Here's something worth pointing out before we get too deep into this. Some Gospels record two angels, and some Gospels record only one Mary. But as we've seen, the authors tell the part of the story that shines a light on the point they're trying to make. It doesn't mean there's any kind of contradiction or manipulation, just a different focus. When the women arrive, the angel speaks to them and tells them not to be afraid. I kind of love that he didn't tell that to the guards. He's not there for them. He's there to give a message to the followers of Jesus. It's fine and fitting for his enemies to be afraid.

You may have a note in your Bible that this is where the oldest manuscripts of Mark's gospel end, at the raising of Christ in verse 8. A lot of what's said in verses 9 through 20 can be found elsewhere in Scripture, so we'll address those parts when we get to them. But for the parts that only appear here, since they're questionable, we'll just let Scripture whisper.

The angel tells the women that Jesus has been raised from the dead. He invites them to see the empty tomb, then tells them to spread the word to the others. So they go and spread the word, but even then it seems like maybe Mary Magdalene still doesn't quite understand, at least according to John's gospel. Since we're covering the resurrection in today's recap, I have to spill a few of the beans from tomorrow's reading in order to cover all four gospel accounts. So forgive me.

The timeline isn't given clearly here, but it seems like a lot of people keep returning to the scene and having different encounters each time.

The best sense I can make of the order of events is that the women show up and see the angel in the empty tomb, the women leave and tell the disciples, Peter and John run back to check things out, and Mary goes back as well, and maybe some of the other women join her too. Meanwhile, the guards have shaken off their shock and they go back into the city to tell the authorities what they just saw. The elders bribe the soldiers to lie about what happened and say that his body was stolen by his disciples during the night.

The soldiers realize they can be in big trouble for leaving the tomb, so they agree to the conspiracy. When Peter and John come to see for themselves, John stoops to look in. But Peter, ever the daredevil, goes all the way into the tomb. Then John follows. John's account says they both saw the linen grave clothes bolded up and placed aside.

One reason this is noteworthy is because they may have still wondered at this point if his body had been stolen by grave robbers, but thieves don't fold laundry. They never would have taken the time to unbind him, fold the clothes up, and place them to the side. They'd just take the body, mummy rags and all. So this is one of the disciples' first clues that Jesus has risen from the dead. Meanwhile, Mary is outside sobbing, probably dealing with a whole mixture of emotions that include feeling confused and elated and hopeful and fearful.

She stoops to look back into the tomb, maybe trying to make sense of it all or just double-check that she's not going crazy, and she sees two angels sitting at each end of where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and one at the foot. What's significant about this is that it resembles the description of the mercy seat. The mercy seat is the cover for the Ark of the Covenant, and it's the very spot where God's presence would come to dwell with his people in the temple. The mercy seat had two cherubim, one on each end.

In Exodus 25:22, God told the Israelites, "I will meet with you there above the mercy seat, between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony." Granted, cherubim and angels are two different types of created being, but they're both agents of God sent to mark out His plan. And there, between those two angels, God's presence had been made manifest not only in the death of His Son, but in the raising of His Son.

When Mary turns around, she's in the darkness of the tomb, and it's probably still dark outside, or maybe the sun is starting to breach the horizon. And she sees a man outside the tomb. She assumes he's the gardener. Remember from yesterday how the soldiers took Jesus' clothes and cast lots for them? In this day, most men had only one tunic. It was usually made for them by their mother, and they wore it every day. Scholars say you could probably recognize a person at a distance just by the cut and color of their tunic. But Jesus doesn't have his tunic anymore.

We don't know what new clothes he's wearing or where he got them, and it's dark outside and maybe he's even backlit by the rising sun, and Mary still has tears in her eyes and she has no way of knowing that the man she thinks is a gardener is actually the risen Christ standing in front of her. But he speaks her name, Mary, and suddenly she knows. She weeps and falls at his feet and grabs onto him and worships him.

There are a few things worth pointing out here. First, Jesus receives worship. This serves as evidence of his deity. Second, Matthew 28 9 tells us she grabbed his feet. He's not an apparition or a ghost. He's a real risen body.

Third, in this day, women could not be witnesses in court. They were considered unreliable. If someone were making this whole story up, they would have chosen a more reliable witness in that culture to help give this story more validity. But Jesus has always gone to the rejected, to the outcast, to those considered less than. It's such a Jesus move to have his first resurrected revealing be to a woman, much less a woman who was once possessed by seven demons.

I love that about him. It's one of my favorite moments in scripture. You'll get to read all about it tomorrow. As for today, my God shot was in Matthew 28 10, where Jesus tells Mary to let his brothers, the disciples, know he's alive. The last time we saw them all together, he told them they would all fall away on account of him. And they did. And it was in the moment of his deepest need.

But despite their betrayals, he still calls them his brothers, and he still can't wait to see them. I love his heart. I'm in awe of it. He's where the joy is. We are crossing into new territory with our Spanish language formats. We have the Spanish language podcast, the Spanish reading plans on the Bible app, the Spanish language book, and now we're offering the Spanish podcast episodes on YouTube. The Spanish name is La Sinopsis de la Biblia.

You can find these episodes on our YouTube page, The Bible Recap, or at the link in the show notes. So remember to tell all your Spanish-speaking friends and family to join us.