Title and other images: Pixabay.com
Early on
Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb
and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She
ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She
said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where
they have put him!” Peter and
the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were
both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb
first. He stooped and looked in and saw the linen
wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon
Peter arrived and went inside. He also
noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that
had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other
wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb
first also went in, and he saw and believed—for until then they still hadn’t
understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then
they went home.
Mary was
standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked
in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the
head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been
lying. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked
her. “Because they have taken away my
Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” She turned to leave and saw someone standing
there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t
recognize him. “Dear woman, why are you
crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away,
tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!”
(which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). “Don’t
cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am
ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene found the disciples and
told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then
she gave them his message. John 20:1-18
If someone
were to come into the building right now – someone we all know – and announce, I’ve
just seen Jesus, we would have perhaps a few questions immediately come
to the foreground:
We’d ask Girl, what have you been smoking?
Or we might ask: What planet are you from? And…after
the radical thoughts kind of died down…What did he look like?
That’s one
of the driving issues a lot of people have about the resurrection; if the dead
man, Jesus, really did come out of that tomb, what’s he like?
That was
in the back of Peter’s mind when he hurried to the tomb that morning. Peter knew he’d blown it big-time by denying
he even knew Jesus. Now, if Jesus really
was alive again, Peter would have to face that.
Peter wanted to know what he might be facing if he had to face Jesus
after his failure.
John ran like
the wind…faster than ever before…he got there first, but hesitated. Those thoughts of having promised Jesus he’d
follow him always…what if Jesus really was alive; how could John face the
failure of his own unbelief?
And Mary -
Mary wondered if anything else could go wrong, now that the body was missing;
even in death her son was disrespected.
She couldn’t even have a peaceful memory of him now.
Peter
wanted a Jesus with a short memory; John needed a Jesus to forgive him; Mary
just needed a body. And what about us…what
kind of Jesus do we want?
I was
impressed recently with a list I read of the kind of Jesus people want:
1. A Jesus who taught about love, but not a Lord
who commands us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).
2. A Jesus who helped the unfortunate, but not a
Lord who challenges us to sell what we own and give the money to the poor (Mark 10:21).
3. A Jesus who paid visits to the temple, but not
a Lord who cleanses and reforms all our traditional practices of worship (John 2:13-17).
4. A Jesus who was a friend of tax collectors and
sinners, but not a Lord who encourages us to embrace the very people we feel
are beneath us (Matthew 11:19).
5. A Jesus who supported family values, but not a
Lord who predicts that he will cause divisions in families, father against son
and daughter against mother (Luke
12:52-53).
6.
A Jesus
who accepted people as his disciples, but not a Lord who challenges us to walk
the way of the cross, to lose our lives for his sake, and to find new life
through sacrifice (Mark 8:35).[1]
Again –
when they got to the tomb Peter and John were confused. John hesitated and Peter rushed right
in. Both went home shaking their heads;
it wasn’t what they expected.
Mary
jumped to a wrong conclusion that the Romans or somebody was up to no
good. But she hung around.
Incidentally,
that’s a good thing if you’re struggling with how (or if) you want to follow
Jesus – hang around. Mary did, and she
was the one to first see the resurrected Lord.
•
Hang around for more than Easter and
Christmas
•
more than just when you have a special
invitation.
•
Hang around for Bible Study and
fellowship with the believers.
Hang
around until the resurrected Lord talks to you, even if He looks like a
gardener.
What kind of Jesus DO you want?
Even after
Jesus spoke to Mary and she recognized that it was Jesus, she couldn’t do the
one thing she’d been heartbroken without – hug him! Jesus told her, “not now,” and sent her to
spread the word.
An Interesting Question
If the
ones who were closest to Jesus when he walked the streets of Palestine did not
get the kind of Jesus they wanted, what makes us think we will?
I have two
responses to that interesting question:
1. You cannot
have the Jesus you’ve constructed in your mind – that’s only an idol
That Jesus
is an idol. God told us our minds cannot
come up to His standard
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9
The true
measure of who Jesus is not constructed in our minds – that’s only an idol we
built on our own wisdom.
2. You cannot
have the Jesus you demand…that’s only an illusion
There are
plenty of people who read an isolated verse in Scripture and decide – THAT’s
the Jesus for me. What they do
is set up a fence and demand that Jesus only operate in their lives within
those parameters.
For
instance, you could read the verse in Malachi about tithing…bring all the tithes into the storehouse…see
if I don’t bless you more than you can hold.
Some folks
take that to mean God will operate like a holy ATM; you put the tithe in – and voilà
– out comes big-time return.
(And when it
doesn’t happen, they start thinking of God like Bernie Madoff…man, that
Jesus…took my tithe, He did, and left me holding the religious bag!).
In the 17th
century there was a great fire in London.
Along with St Paul’s Cathedral, more than 80 churches were destroyed, along
with hundreds of buildings. Sir
Christopher Wren was the architect who was responsible for restoring more than
50 churches and many other buildings.
It was not until years later anyone noticed that Wren had constructed the columns about 2” short of reaching the ceiling. If you look closely at the column tops, you will see they are lovely decorations supporting nothing!
Have you
constructed a Jesus? Have you demanded
your kind of Jesus? Friend, you could
think you’ve put in some lovely columns to support your way of thinking about
the way God ought to behave. In the end
you find that is just a little short of His glory, short of making everything
firm in your world. Like Peter, John and
Mary, you could find something different in the tomb.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen!
[1] Jesus On Ice, © 2009 COMMUNICATION RESOURCES, INC.
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