Don't stop at fear

This week's new media web 2.0 bible study is on Mark 16:6-8:

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Some versions of this part of the Bible end pretty much at these verses. The women, given a direct instruction, are instead paralyzed by fear. It's great news they've been given, but it's too much for them to process. They don't know how to handle what they've just seen and heard. Other accounts of the events in the other gospels are more flattering, but what if this was it?

If things really did end at this point, nobody would know what happened. Their paralysis would have cost us our knowledge of what Jesus had done. Luckily Jesus appeared to more people, and even followed up on these women, but think of what would have happened if he hadn't. We could have gone through life completely unaware of the sacrifice that had been made on our behalf!

God can be overwhelming sometimes. We encounter things that are beyond our capacity for reason. It happens even to those people who God chooses to greatly honor. I mean, what's cooler than being the first people to get the news that Christ had risen from the grave? You'd have to be pretty scared to hide that!

Anyway, we know that the women eventually told the rest of the disciples. Despite having an experience so intense that they couldn't imagine continuing, they were still able with God's help. That's encouraging. If we find ourselves in that kind of situation with God, where our whole world is turned upside down and then shaken, we know that he can put us right back on track.