NOTES:
1] The original ending of MK may be lost, though some scholars think the abrupt ending is original. Some versions print one or two other possible endings. 2] Only MK & LK tell us the women went into the tomb. 3] LK tells us the women saw two figures. 4] Have a look at 1 COR 15.

WARMING UP:  Do we prepare any special Easter food? Is it time to develop something both Easter & Australian?

TREASURES OLD & NEW: Identify God at work in anything this week?

ENTERING INTO THE STORY:

1-4        What range of emotions do we imagine the three women were experiencing? Have we got too much into the habit of only thinking about the things of God rather than feeling them too? Does the earliness of the women's expedition speak to us more of coolness of day, eagerness, secrecy, fear, or something else? Do we ever wonder who is going to roll away the 'stones' locking our own life in some 'grave'? Do we ever feel powerless in facing such stones? Why might that be? Have we ever, like the three found some big 'stone' rolled away? Did that have an Easter kind of feeling about it? Does it still? What is an Easter feeling? Does our church have an Easter feeling about it - all year round?

5-7        Given MK means us to understand the 'young man' as a supernatural being, is he a sign of: i) the women's (or MK's) imagination? ii) a continuation of the mystery surrounding Jesus' Passion, & now, Resurrection? iii) God's continuing activity  in what's going on? iv) Something else?
How do we tell when God is intervening in the events of life & death, ours or someone else's? Do we have an expectation of God's intervention(s) these days? Does it, or doesn't it happen?

If it's 'politically incorrect' in some church quarters to believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead as literally as the 'young man' (& MK) clearly expect us to believe, how does that affect our knowing what to believe? Is there anything for the women or anyone else to tell about what happened at Easter if Jesus was not really 'raised from the dead' at all except in some 'spiritualised' sense? Has Jesus' resurrection made any marked difference to our own life? Are we living evidence for Jesus' resurrection or not? Or is 'being raised with him' just something preachers go on about? Do we have any expectation that Jesus has 'gone on before us', not to Galilee but to wherever we happen to be heading in life? (Not just to that 'river' where we're all supposedly going to gather one day!) Do we ever recognize that Jesus who's 'gone on ahead of us' in some place or situation? Can we ever prove that kind of  experience? Have we ever tried? Does it matter whether we can or can't?

8       Do we identify at all with the way the women feel as they run from the tomb? Do we ever 'run from the tomb' in any sense? Are we ever amazed, afraid, mystified, etc. at what God has done in raising Jesus? Or are we still not sure what really happened?