“What Are You
Hoping to Find?”
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 4/5/2015
Based on John 20:11-18
In
the movie “Torch Song Trilogy”, Arnold the son of a grieving mother who had just
lost her husband, was asking his mother what she thought she would do now that
“dad” was dead? Her response was, “I
guess I’ll move to Florida.”
“Florida? What for ma, you don’t
have anyone down there, Phil (the other son) and I live here in New York. Why would you want to move down there?” “When your great-grandfather died, your
great-grandmother mother moved to Florida, when my father died, my mother moved
down to Florida, now that your father is dead, I’ll move to Florida. That’s what we do, we move to Florida!” Arnold responded with, “But mom, what do you
want to do?” She quickly responded by
saying, “I want to die, but until then, I’ll move to Florida.”
That
scene was dealing with rituals. And rituals
are great things, they help us get through periods in our lives, that otherwise
would be so difficult that we would not be able to navigate through. The most dramatic being, when we lose someone
very dear to us to death. We go into a
period of shock, as a defense so as to not load our feelings with more grief
than we can bear. It’s as if we have an
internal breaker box, that when too much pain comes, the breaker trips,
shutting down our emotions. But it isn’t
only our emotions that shut down. Our
ability to reason, to make decisions, even to recall simple events that are only
an hour old, we can also become paralyzed; our whole system seems to shut down,
to where only the bare minimal in activity seems to be allowed to function.
I
am sure as we think about this morning’s reading, many of us here can put
ourselves in-part, into the shoes of Mary and the disciples. For they were having to cope with a terrible
lose, the execution of the man they had looked to as their “rabbouni”, their
“teacher”, the one that Peter had declared as “Messiah”! They surely were operating under a great deal
of shock, as they start to deal with the death of their beloved, Jesus. They not only were dealing with his death,
but also must have been concerned about their own safety, wondering if they too
would be picked up by the authorities.
We
have this amazingly beautiful story of Mary going to the place where they had
laid Jesus, temporarily during the Sabbath, and finding that the tomb had been
opened and Jesus’ body wasn’t where they had left him. But amid all of the fear, doubt, and
confusion, we see where Jesus appears to her and speaks with her. The story doesn’t go into the technical
details of “how” Jesus” was raised, but rather the story focuses on how Mary
experienced “Jesus’ resurrection!”
The
resurrection story is an amazing story on many different levels. First off and most importantly, the story
talks about an event that goes beyond all logical and physical reasoning. When a person dies, the body doesn’t come
back to life, at least not normally.
This event, is telling us that something supernatural has occurred, and
that this event has ongoing implications for the world.
Another very
important part of this story, deals with who Jesus is appearing to, who He is
having conversation with, and who has been entrusted in sharing with the world,
this most important news! In a world
where men were the shakers and movers, here we see God once more picking the
lowly, in this case a woman named Mary, to become the new bearer of the “Good
News” that God has not died but yet still lives!
This
particular account of the resurrection story has an intriguing question being
posed to Mary by Jesus when he asked her, “For
whom are you looking?” It could be
said in another way, “What are you doing
here?”, “What are you looking for,
Mary?” “What do you expect to find?”
The
question might be asked of us when we come to church; when we come to worship,
be it on Easter Sunday morning, or Christmas Eve, or any Sunday of the month
for that matter, “what is it that we are
looking for?” ,“Whom do we seek?”, “What
are we hoping to find?” Do we come
to worship out of tradition? Do we move
to Florida, like Arnolds mother, because that’s what others before us have done? Possible we come because our families have
always come to church on Sunday’s and that’s what we do, because, it is
programmed into us. But when you get
here, what do you expect to happen? Do you
expect to find God here?
What
am I hoping to find when I come to worship?
Am I supposed to feel better for coming to worship? Am I supposed to feel closer to God when I’m
in worship? Is it in worship that I
think I will encounter Jesus. Then, like
Mary, when I get here and do not find Jesus, or I don’t feel like God is as
present as I thought He should be, am I shocked, or distressed, or even more
depressed than before I got here? When I
come to church, do I come and find an empty tomb?
Have you ever ask yourself, “Am I the empty tomb?” Do I ever think that God has died within my
own life, and I’m hoping beyond all hope that God is truly alive, maybe I can
find him living in a church, and that possibly by coming before The Cross, I
will find God? Can I too, like Mary, experience
a “resurrection” within this empty tomb?
You see, I don’t think it is as
important to believe that Jesus rose from the grave as it is about how we
personally encounter Jesus through the empty tomb.
Is
Jesus alive within us, this morning? Mary
had a personal encounter with Jesus there at the tomb. Have we had a similar personal encounter with
Jesus at our empty tomb? Or are we more
like Peter and John who recognized the empty tomb, but didn’t encounter Jesus
there at the tomb? Jesus didn’t speak to
them at the empty tomb; they left, not having this experience that Mary ended
up having, at least not at that point, for if we continue to read on, we learn
that Jesus did come to the other disciples later on.
Why
did Jesus appear to Mary and not to the two disciples who had come to
investigate the report from Mary about the empty tomb? Possibly it was because when John saw the
wrappings of the burial cloths neatly placed in the tomb; he remembered what
Jesus had been telling them about his death and would arise from death into
eternal life. Maybe Jesus appeared to
her because she needed personal comforting to ease her grief and anxieties over
the death of the one she loved For when
Jesus first appeared to her, she didn’t recognize that it was He. For me, the lesson that I see in this part of
the narrative, is that we encounter Jesus in many different ways, and often, we
do not immediately recognize Jesus being with us, but that it comes over time.
This
morning as we come to Christ’s table, we celebrate the “empty tomb”! We celebrate the story of
“resurrection”. We do experience
resurrection daily in our lives, but like Mary, we might not recognize it
immediately, but in time, as we are able to comprehend how God works in our
lives, begin to recognize God before us in our daily lives.
God’s
love for us is so great, that life renews itself, even during times when we
cannot see it! I ask you the question
that Jesus asked Mary, “What are you
hoping to find?” I think we are here
today, looking to understand that death has no victory over us, but rather,
life is eternal. This is the message of
the empty tomb: God loves his creation so much that death has no lasting sting,
but through “resurrection” life has victory!
Amen
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