Seeing the Resurrection: It’s all around you (Sunrise Service)
Can you see what is right in front of you? Outside of those of us with bad eyes, it probably feels like a ridiculous question. Of course, I can see what is right in front of my eyes. That’s when something is obvious. We might say this, but it isn’t actually our experience. How many times have you looked back on your life and thought “why didn’t I see that?” Have you ever been looking for something and ended up passing it by numerous times, because it wasn’t where you expected? Or been to an event or watched something and found that someone else noticed something that escaped you? It would seem in life that we don’t always recognize the obvious that is right in front of our face, especially when it isn’t what we expect, or are watching for.
In many ways, that is the story of Jesus’ life, his resurrection and even the story of the church. Again and again, there is something right in front of people and yet they can miss the truth of it, and in these cases, they are missing the overwhelming hope and love that overcomes it all.
Mary Magdalene is a practical person. Sure, she may have experienced the miraculous as she was healed by Jesus. She saw the power of God work through Jesus - even as her brother was raised from the dead. She knew his authority and love as he taught and changed lives. But she saw him suffer and die. She knows people don’t come back from the dead. She knew her brother Lazarus would die again and stay that way. Sure, she might have had a distant hope for something more, but this is life we are talking about. We know its limitations.
How often do we get trapped in this kind of knowing? We limit God and hope, because we believe we know what is true. We believe that our limited understanding of our experience has told us everything there is. Yet, how often does this close us off from the hope and potential of God working in our lives? I look back on my life and I can’t even count the number of times I thought that there were no good options. The times I thought there was no redemption. The times I thought I was stuck. So, what did I do? I settled. I gave up. I stopped watching. Or fought instead of followed. I think we have all been here.
Mary settles into the horrendous knowledge that Jesus has died. It has happened, there is no changing that. She believes that is the end, so she can’t see the redemption and transformation. So, she does what she can? She goes to take care of Jesus’ body. She can at least show her love for him through caring for his body, right? How often we settle into a lesser love, because we don’t understand how to love through the resurrection.
This love service, though limited both in its scope and understanding, still leads her to the truth. Seeking out Jesus with love is an essential part of seeing him and knowing the resurrection. We might do this in our weak and limited ways, but it will take us to him, so that we like Mary might have our eyes opened to a far greater love.
The first thing she experiences is something that points towards the resurrection: the empty tomb. Sure she can make any number of excuses of why this is? The wrong tomb, thieves, someone else is anointing him somewhere, a parade. Either way, she knows Jesus should be there. She knows that this should be a place of grief and death and yet it is empty. We all have tastes of resurrection offered to us. Spring itself is a taste of resurrection as life comes back to an all to dead or hibernating land. We might be able to explain it away and normalize it, but it is a sign. We all have seen something come out of really bad situations. We have all seen good come out of pain. We have all had second chances. We all likely have seen a restored relationship, experienced forgiveness, or been through labour pains as life comes out the other side of loss and pain. This is not resurrection, but these are tastes of it, that should point our way towards a new and present reality.
We shouldn’t just leave these experiences to the wayside. They are real and good. Like a good map, we often need them. Instead, we need others to help us. We need to draw in others to see, experience and ask questions. Peter and John come running. They experience the empty tomb. They believe that something has happened, but they don’t seem to understand what that means. We often need angelic people in our lives to point the way, to show us where these signs point. Like street signs in another country, the directions might be unknown at first, but once you know them they are practically self evident.
But like so many of us, Mary is stubborn in her ability to forego practical realities and previous conclusions. Sure, there is an empty tomb and angelic figures sitting where they weren’t moments ago, and the words of Jesus telling her that this would happen and that he would rise from the dead, but what is that to a lifetime of believing something else? What is this to a broken world that tries to tell her the opposite? To whatever our loss and pain is we cry out in our misunderstanding, “They have done this and I don’t know why” or as Mary says “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t where they have put him”.
Jesus doesn’t just leave us with tastes of resurrection though. He doesn’t just let the resurrection have an effect as it changes this world. Jesus enters and we can meet the resurrected Jesus. We too can experience the resurrection. Jesus comes and walks beside us asking, “Why are you crying? What is wrong? What are you looking for?” He keeps walking with us too, waiting for us to see him.
The hard part, is that we don’t usually know what we are searching for. Sure, Mary was looking for Jesus, but not in the way she needed to. Mary was looking for death, a dead body and a semblance of a loving goodbye. What are we looking for? We might be looking for something good, but not truly be looking for the truly good that has its source in Jesus. So, what are you looking for? I can’t speak for you, but I remember looking for friendship and success. Sure, I found it at times, but it was only fleeting and hollow. It was often as empty as the empty tomb, or it would become that way.
When we meet Jesus, know and understand his resurrection, it changes all of that. All those empty and fleeting things are like sand in our hands, but we suddenly have hold of something lasting, good, full and containing life itself. No wonder Mary wants to hold on. Well, who wouldn’t want to hold onto a friend we thought was dead or gone, but that’s the point. When our grief and loss is overturned. When the world seems different. When we experience even a taste of the resurrection we want to hold on and we don’t want to let go. As we should.
Jesus says to Mary and to us. Don’t hold onto me . . . yet. We do want to hold onto this new life, this new hope, this reality that changes everything, but guess what? God still has more for us. It’s not enough to God, just to transform death and suffering or redeem all evil, no Jesus has always had it in his plan to make heaven and earth one. To bring us back to our first purpose. God wants to resurrect everything and give everything and everyone a heavenly and earthly eternal life. He is saying to us, don’t just hold onto me now, hold on as I ascend to the Father. Hold onto me then, so that as I ascend, I will take you up with me. So that even now as you live, you can know that heaven lives in you as I live in you and you live in me.
Through the fullness of this encounter we don’t just see the resurrection reality, though we must do that, we also take it on; it becomes part of us. We find that the resurrection doesn’t just mean an eternal life like the one we currently live, but it means an eternal life that knows heaven on earth - even while the rest of the world can’t quite see it.
We as the church become like those angels. We know the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. We know the difference it makes. We live in it. So, we tell people. When we see someone holding onto death, loss and pain - we tell them that this is empty. The dead are not in the grave, suffering has been transformed and loss is not what we think it is. We tell people that Jesus has been raised from the dead, that he has defeated sin, suffering and death and opened for us a way to his Kingdom, his heaven on earth reality. People may not understand it at first, but the resurrection story is all around us, encroaching in on our story. Jesus walks beside us waiting for us to realize that it is him we have been seeking this whole time. In this we all can experience resurrection. AMEN
