It’s a wonderful day!  It has to be; the church plans for this all year long or actually four months ago.  But four months ago was Advent; and the church a long time ago decided to put within its calendar the telling of the story again.  From Advent the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ—Christmas, then birth.  And then to move forward into what we called Lent; and Lent being now culminated yesterday with Holy Saturday and our highest point of the year, Easter.  And everything else flows from Easter.  It’s not the birth of Christ; it’s the death and resurrection of Christ that is the center of our faith. 

            When we were doing the planning for Lent, the Worship Team, almost four months ago for this time, we looked at choosing a theme.  Encountering Grace was started.  Then we headed off encountering God’s grace.  Whose grace would we encounter but Gods?  Then each day or each Sunday in each week we had a theme based upon that particular word.  And a long time ago we chose praise for Easter thinking what more appropriate way?  But the more we looked at the Scripture for today from the Gospel of John, the more we understood that praise has to come from something within, from the vision of seeing clearly why we give praise to God.  For we can not honestly encounter God’s grace through praise until our vision has been cleared up from the things that cloud us to God’s wisdom and vision so that we might see the truth with our minds and with our hearts. 

            This last week, Holy Week as it is called, from Palm Sunday through the end of Lent yesterday, Holy Saturday, we had a series of services.  If you were able to attend most of them, hopefully you experienced the telling of the story again of that powerful week.  The three chapel services that we had on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I want to tell the story again when Reverend Charles Hutchinson led the devotions at that chapel service on Wednesday evening.  He told the story that I had remembered.  It goes like this: 

            A little girl was by herself in a family—no brothers or sisters yet.  And she told her Mom and Dad, when she understood that her mother was pregnant and expecting a baby, that she wanted a little girl as a sister.  No questions—I want a baby sister!  So guess what?  It was a boy that was born.  She expressed a little bit of disagreement but acceptance still.  And they brought the little baby brother home.  She told her Mom and Dad, now 3-year olds can be this way sometimes, they can be so adult.  She said, “I want to talk to my baby brother alone.”  Well, the parents thought, “What is this?  Where is this coming from?”  She insisted, “I want to talk to my baby brother by myself.”  So they thought, “How can we do this?”  The little baby was in the baby’s room; they had an intercom, the marvels of today’s technology, so they could hear the baby.  So they thought, “Well, let’s try it.”  And they told her that she could go in by herself and talk to her baby brother.  Of course, the intercom was on.  They listened.  They heard her little footsteps enter the room, then silence.  They began to worry until they heard her little 3-year old voice say, “Tell me what God looks like.  I think I forgot.”   

            Have we forgotten?  Have we forgotten the vision of what God looks like?  Not the literal face of God but the power of God’s creation?  That’s what Easter is for!  It brings a vision to our eyes if we will but see.  In a moment we are going to hear from the Gospel of John.  As we read through it, we are going to see the response of several disciples—Peter and John in particular—but also Mary.  And Mary is the focus for today in the Gospel according to John.  As you hear it read, listen for the following things:  What was Peter’s view and response?  And what was John (and John, by the way, as the author of the Gospel of John, describes himself as “the other disciple, the one who was left.)  So John is recording this well after the fact.  Listen to the interesting responses and how they see the event, how with their human eyes they look at the facts that are before them.  Their view of this is no different than probably our own view.  Remember, they have lost their beloved leader.  He has been crucified and hurriedly laid in the tomb on Friday evening because by the rules of their faith, no one was to prepare the human body for burial on the Sabbath.  They quickly did some few things and she’s coming back now to finish this act of love as she believes only that which she can know and see.  The added grief of the death is there and the fear of what she will find or not find is set aside out of a sense of loyalty.  So let us hear as we read through the Scripture from John 20:1-18: 

            Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him!”  Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb, both were running.  But the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did no go in.  Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went in to the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head.  The cloth was folded up by itself separate from the linen.  Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.  He saw and believed.   And in John’s own words, to explain what that means… (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)  So the question at this moment, what did John believe?  Then the disciples went back to their homes. 

            Grief is something almost always experienced in one way or the other.  The highest grief seems to be the death of a loved one but it can also be a serious illness or it can be what the world would say are not really that important but they are important to you.  The loss of something or someone is the basis of grief.  And grief is something we feel inside.  When it comes to the death of a loved one, our culture hold high the responsibility of caring for the earthly remains of our loved one until ultimately our goal is to bring them to their final resting place.  We will spend great amounts of money and effort to accomplish that fact even to the recovery of the smallest fragment of the earthly remains.  Remember 9/11?  How many months?  Over a year they spent sifting through the rubble of that disaster just to find whatever they could of any human being.  I talked to two funeral director friends of mine who were called into service for that and they described how painstakingly careful they were to find whatever item, part, piece of a human being and care for it so that they could send it back to the loved ones and they could accomplish that taking the early remains to their final resting place.  Each item found and dealt with in care.  It’s something that we believe we must do and Mary was there to accomplish that out of love.  

            Now I believe that Scripture is inspired by God, but there are parts of this and other parts that I wish God had filled in a little bit more detail for those of this world, including myself at times, when I want to see the facts and know the truth.  Just when we think that Mary’s insult and the death of her friend was there, there is injury added to it when she believes that the tomb is empty and that someone has stolen her friend’s body.  You see, her love for the dead now is set aside.  It hurts.  As we read on, what else can she do in Verse 11?  “But Mary stood outside the tomb crying.  As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels had arrived seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’  ‘They’ve taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’  Again, believing only that which she can trust in her past experience—an empty tomb, no body--no body; therefore, someone has stolen it.  Believing only what we know we can see, isn’t that the way we approach life versus what the Christian faith tells us is that we need to believe in that which we cannot see or necessarily even know?  It is hard for some of us to believe that way.  But eventually what God helps to provide is new information that clears out our old vision so that when we can see only what these people could see, asking a more sensitive question, “Why are you crying?”, we know that there is reason beyond the tears that she has.  Mary continued to be blinded, though, by her grief and understanding of what life is about.  And so do we!  When someone in good faith comes to us and says, “Yes, your loved one has died but bear with God.”  Does that really help?  It may to a point.  But when we need to go through the transition, is to be able to actually see the truth before us.  In this case, for Mary to see the Lord.   

            So in Verse 14, “At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there but she did not realize that it was Jesus.  ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘why are you crying?  Who is it that you are looking for?’  Thinking he was the gardener she said, ‘Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you put him and I will get him.’  Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’  And at that moment her vision is changed forever.  For the fact of this world is replaced with the truth and eternity.  Her vision is changed when someone speaks to her personally calling her by name.  That’s a powerful story isn’t it?  When you walk down a hallway at a shopping center or store and someone says, “Hey you!” do you turn around automatically?  Maybe, but always a question.  “Hey you,” could be anybody.  But if they call you by name, no question you turn around.  Now maybe they were calling someone else by name; and that gets to be so commonplace in this church, there are almost too many “Bobs”.  They’ll say, “Hey, Bob”, and 12 of us will turn around at the same time.  But there is also that voice recognition.  There is a way a person who loves you calls you by name.  There was no mistaking; not because Mary was by herself, but when that voice called her name out of the love of her Lord, she knew.  You see, we have this understanding of the life that is before us.  “And she turned around to Him,” with that voice recognition, “and she cried out in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni!’ which means ‘Teacher’. 

And Jesus concludes this part by saying, “Do not hold on to me for I have not yet returned to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.  Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news.  ‘I have seen the Lord!’  And she told them that He had said these things to her.”  What a change when it comes.  Closure is no more the issue.  Hope now replaces that sense of lost.  The fear of the actual body she now knows my fulfillment and my responsibilities are over.  He is still here.  I can believe and trust because He spoke to me personally and said Mary.  She can only believe now what she heard, not just what she saw.  And what she heard speak to her soul changed her vision dramatically. 

It’s interesting how our world’s culture, particularly in the United States, at one point is described as being the one who seeks youth and good looks and power and position.  And yet we also seem to be enamored by death and destruction.  Just notice how many TV programs are built on the pathology of death.  I saw one the other day that was parallel to Mary and this situation.  The woman was lost.  All the evidence pointed to the fact that she was dead, but her mother said, “She’s not.  I can feel her.  I know she is still alive.”  The pathologist called her whacko because he said the evidence points that she is dead.  There is no question in his mind.  The story turned out that she was right and faith again trumps fact.  And the pathologist had to know that there was something greater than the very evidence.  And Mary now knows something greater than the very evidence of what was so clear to everyone else—even to Peter and John at this point.  Because when John said he saw and believed, he believed that the body had been stolen just like everyone else.   

But now Mary goes back and tells them the good news.  You’ve all been mistaken.  The truth is different than what you knew before.  When someone calls you by name, you respond.  When someone calls your heart by name, you respond with greater energy and vision than ever before.  Jesus himself called her name and Jesus calls us by name.  Or does he?  You see, I can’t ever say in my life that I heard clearly that Jesus called “Bob”, me, by name.  I do not have that connection.  I can only go in trust and belief of what someone else has told me.  Or maybe there have been moments when God has spoken.  I won’t tell you another grandson story today for those who’ve heard a few of them before.  But I will tell you a story that I found indeed enlightening and parallel and maybe you will connect with it.  It’s a story told by Will Willer, Bishop Willer, who said that he and a friend commented on a common friend of theirs who they had gone to school with.  He was a very intelligent young man, but he chose to waste his high intelligence and his gifts on carousing and just going through a desolate life.  They thought than when he got married that might change him, but it turned out she liked the same thing he liked so they caroused together and spent their life together chasing things like the wind.  Until she became pregnant, and here at 33 she presented both of them a baby girl, and he was never the same after that.  Did that baby girl speak of what God looked like or call him by name?  No, but the look changed his life.  For God speaks to us not always by the direct voice but by an event or happening in the life, particularly the child, and it makes all the difference.  And he reflected that before then, he was wasting his life; now he had reason and purpose.  And both of them settled down, settled in and focused on his little girl.  If you met him on the street after the little girl, you wouldn’t have recognized him compared to the way he was before.  Now the main pleasure of his life was doing all that he could that was right to provide for his child’s future, to be the best father possible, and to find the good life. 

What happened?  It happens so many ways.  Only a few can go to an empty tomb and have Jesus call you directly by name.  Only a few will have that spiritual experience.  But for all the rest of us, God is speaking if we will hear it in those small and big events of life.  It is when God encounters us and in a sense takes our face and moves it this way until we see the way that God wants us to see, to see the vision that God has already prepared for us to see, focusing our head and our eyes and our minds and our hearts is the refocusing that this young couple had in their hearts.  That’s why so many times Pastor Nancy and I and other pastors will see young families with a new gift in their life return back to the church.  Or maybe the church was never a part of their life.  They see now the need for what they believe the church speaks for and that is the hope and promise of something greater and that they can bring their child and raise them in a place of love and care and grace.  God encounters us with God’s grace in those moments of life. 

How has it been for you?  It’s when God reveals Gods self is the moment of truth.  What does God enable us to see?  It’s that we can now see what Mary and Peter and John, and yes even Thomas, who was the doubter and needed to touch Jesus, that they could see the risen Christ, the truth.  By the way, when Thomas wants to see the truth for himself, when he finally comes in to the presence of Jesus by the mere calling of “Thomas, come and touch these wounds”, he believes without having to touch.  Thomas, Mary, Peter, John, you and I are there to be revealed by God the truth of what will be.  Not in our misperceptions, not in our past visions, not in our world view that only sees what you can touch and believes only that which you can measure.  He turned their gaze away from the past to the future.  That’s why we call Christianity the “revealed” religion.  From the very beginning God, in his scripture, is revealing God’s self.  You can’t see God until God offers himself. Given to you until one has experienced the gift of the risen Christ, the word of our name called or, as Paul said, “we see differently now but occasionally from time to time we se face to face.”  That’s why the little girl asked a very important question.   What does God look like?  What does God look like in your life?  And will you act in a word of praise when you see the risen Christ, when you see the evidence of the risen Christ, when you hear your name called by some beautiful event? 

You can argue with people about their belief in Christ, but that never really sticks.  Because someone else with a greater intelligence can out argue you and debate it to the point.  But what changes is the life changing belief that Christ has called you by name.  So when Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, “I have seen the Lord!” she was telling the truth.  And what we need is the truth that we have seen the Lord in some way, in some event that we heard our name called by that loving event when God reveals the truth to us.  And what does she do after that?  The most meaningful act of praise possible—she went back to those disciples and told them all the things that she had seen and that she had heard. 

Maybe today, this Easter, will be an opportunity for you to hear God calling you by name, to sense that presence, to believe anew or renew in that revealed risen Christ.  That’s what the purpose of the church is about.  It all focuses on this truth of this day which then, by the way, according to church calendar, just generates us and energizes us for the rest of the year.  For the beginning of the birth of Christ to the resurrection, that’s the story and that’s why God came in Jesus, the Christ.  When you leave today with a new sense of hope and a touch of the revelation that Christ has been risen and that Christ is in you.  We find any way possible to tell others about good news that has happened to us. Maybe you will leave from here with a word of praise on your lips and the joy of telling someone else about the risen Christ. 

Let’s join together and listen in a moment of silence for God to speak to you.  “Thank you, gracious God, that it is you who initiates the encounter of your grace for us.  It is you that rolls away the stone of grief and pain and loss to reunite an empty tomb with a risen Lord and Savior.  It is you who has made this world and our lives to bring grace to you.  May we by your spirit present here today, for Jesus left physically but not leaving us to be orphaned or alone.  It is Jesus’ spirit who enables us to experience revealed truth.  We thank you, God that you continue to work with us, be patient with us, but never leave us alone by the encountering of your grace and your mercy.  We thank you for Easter and all that has meant and will be as your Spirit calls us by name so that we might see.  In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.”

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

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