Our Risen Lord's Love for Penitents.
I. Marvellous was the acceptance of penitence by the Cross; but, if possible, more marvellous yet at the Resurrection. At the Cross the outcast and penitent was equalled to the holy and the pure; at the Resurrection she was even preferred, Holy Scripture does not tell us how or when the Redeemer healed her sorrows, whose very soul the sword had pierced at His Crucifixion: it does say of the penitent, that to her Jesus appeared first. He who had passed by all the angel-hosts, and took not their nature, but ours, the last of His fallen creatures, passed by her through whom He took that nature to comfort her who had most degraded it. His mother, doubtless, He comforted by His Spirit; the penitent He comforts by His very Presence and His words. Oh, wondrous condescension of redeeming love! who rose early in the morning to seek her who, late though she had loved Him, then sought Him early; and as an earnest of His yearning tenderness for penitents first revealed His risen glories to a penitent, made her an apostle to Apostles, a comforter to His brethren.
II. The mercy of the Resurrection was even fuller than the mercy of the Cross which it completed. The mercy at the Cross was acceptance; the mercy at the Resurrection was not acceptance only, but enlarged grace, heavenly visitations, to be known by name to Jesus, called as His own, spoken to in the heart, to have one God with the Man Christ Jesus, one Father with the co-eternal Son. At the Cross Jesus promised that the penitent should be with Him; in the Resurrection Himself cometh, victorious over hell and death and Satan, to be with the penitent. Thou needest not, then, to sit down in weariness and hopelessness, whatever, of early years, thou hast lost, whatever grace thou hast forfeited, though thou hast been in a far country, far away in affections from Him who loved thee; and wasting on His creatures, nay, sacrificing on idol-altars with strange fire, the gifts which God gave thee that thou mightest be precious in His own sight. He who called Magdelene in her calleth thee. Be thy soul to thee as a empty tomb where Christ's lifeless body was once buried by thy sins, and now is not; be it that thou see nothing but darkness, feel nothing but the chillness and damp of the tomb, catch no ray of light, look again and discover no trace of Him, yet despair not. Mourn His absence, desire His Presence. The very desire isHis Presence. He will appear unto thee by some comfort in prayer; by some secret stillness of the soul, or ray of light, though but for an instant; or by some thrill of joy on one steadfast purpose, henceforth to have no other object but to win Christ, to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
E. B. Pusey, Sermons for the Church's Seasons,p. 340.
References: Mark 16:9. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 230; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons in India,p. 125; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xi., No. 625; vol. xiv., No. 792; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 198. Mark 16:9-11. Homilist,new series, vol. iii., p. 619; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 386. Mark 16:10. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 86. Mark 16:11-13. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 493.Mark 16:12. T. T. Shore, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 221; F. W. Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 408; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,vol. ii., p. 9; W. Meller, Village Homilies,p. 168. Mark 16:12; Mark 16:13. R. C. Trench, Studies in the Gospels,p. 324.Mark 16:14. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 219; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 197; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 502.