Who Is Jesus?
9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. 11 When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.
12 Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. 13 These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.
14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
As we begin our journey into Lent, with Mark as our guide, I need to be clear that this portion of Mark is not included in the earliest manuscripts of Mark. These verses do not cause us trouble with any other portions of the gospels. And when we get to Easter, we will be looking at Mark 16.1-8. That will be the end of the Easter story, with our place of wondering, and the need to return to the beginning of the gospel.
I find this ending of Mark, whether at verse 8, or later, has a similar effect that the movie "The Book of Eli" had when I first watched it. When we get to the end we want to start the story over to see the things that we obviously missed the first time. All right in front of us, but we have to see the end once to understand what we had been seeing.
In Mark we find the Gospel is showing us who Jesus is. It becomes clearest at the end, with the crucifixion and the resurrection. But like the disciples we have a hard time getting it the first time. They were rebuked here again for not seeing it until they saw the resurrected Jesus himself.
We are going to look at a few texts from Mark over the coming weeks to see who Jesus is. We have an overall theme from Lent to Easter of: “Who is Jesus?” Each week we can see a little more of who Jesus is. We will have opportunities to write our own responses to seeing Jesus and put them up as we leave worship each week.
As we go through these weeks we want to see Jesus and know who he is. Not needing any longer to be rebuked as we saw with the disciples. Seeing Jesus and hearing from others who he is. Believing what we hear about him in his life, his death and his resurrection. Even if we were not there as it happened.
May we all see Jesus for who he is and believe that he comes as Saviour then, and now, for all to believe and receive life, forgiveness and belonging.