Who Are You Looking For?

-

[Resurrection Station #1 -- John 20]

"Who are you looking for?”

Mary Magdalene is back at the empty tomb. That morning, she had come to finish anointing the body of Jesus and discovered that the body was not there. And after running to tell the boys the stunning news, she returned to the tomb, weeping.

Sobbing too hard, it seems, to recognize Jesus himself standing beside her, talking to her, asking her why she is crying . . . “Who are you looking for?”

You see, Mary wasn’t really looking for Jesus – I mean, not a living, walking, talking, breathing Jesus who calls her by name. She was looking for a corpse. She kept asking people where they had taken his body. That’s all that she thought was left.

I look for Jesus. At least I think I do. But I wonder how often I am looking for a living, walking,
talking, breathing Jesus. The Jesus I have looked for in the past, I fear, was probably pretty corpse-like. Cold doctrine. Hard facts. Literal history.

But doctrine does not breathe. Facts do not walk or touch. And history doesn’t call me by name. That’s all dead stuff. Important, I suppose . . . but dead.

Jesus is something else. Someone else. I keep going back to the N.T. Wright quote from my last post: that his resurrection begins the colonization of earth with the life of heaven. That new heaven and new earth described in Revelation that we all say we’re looking forward to – it’s not some ethereal existence in a spiritual state somewhere out there in another dimension. It’s a new EARTH – a very earthy earth. The new Jerusalem is coming down from heaven to a reborn and redeemed physical earth with reborn and redeemed physical people. And Jesus’ resurrection two thousand-some years ago was the signal that the heaven and new earth are already starting. WE are the start. He sent us to colonize.

So, if I want to see a living, walking, talking, breathing Jesus, I suppose I need to look for him in his living, walking, talking, breathing colonists. In the people who are being resurrected the same way he was. In the people who live in him . . . that is, who live in love.

The couple who are opening their home to Ukrainian refugees.

The lady who sends regular texts and FB messages to check on the well-being of friends in emotional distress.

My financial advisor who gave me more of her time and energy than I paid her for to put my mind at ease about my financial security.

Y’all, I don’t even know if my financial advisor is a Christian. In fact, there’s a chance she isn’t. But Jesus is God, and God is love, and I believe her loving behavior toward me is the influence of Jesus somewhere in her life, and that begs my acknowledgement.

Because the saddest part of Mary’s story, folks, is that the man she was crying over was standing right in front of her face, “but she did not realize that it was Jesus.”

Could Jesus be standing right in front of my unseeing face? Seriously, if the Lord Jesus Christ is living here in my space, showing me love . . . being friendly while ringing up my groceries, looking for money in the school budget to raise my salary, listening patiently to my stories of frustration after a long day . . . the very LEAST I can do is acknowledge his presence. How awful it would be to miss him entirely!

My task for this week of Eastertide: Look for Jesus. All around me. He is risen, and he is here. Lord, help me recognize, appreciate, and thoroughly enjoy your company.


["What's a Resurrection Station?" you ask. Glad you did. Click here.]

[Ready for the next one? Here's R-Station #2.]

Comments

  1. JennyApril 4, 2024 at 10:10 AM

    Amazing post. Very inspiring and insightful! Love you cousin! ❤️

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This One Person

-
Image
Y’all, God has blessed me with really good people in my life. People who love me, support me, appreciate me, and go out of their way for me. The gifts and kind words and all-day-long singing I received on my birthday last week were small examples of that. Seriously, friends . . . how do I deserve you? So many good people. So, I really shouldn’t give as much attention as I do to the one exception, right? One person. There’s just this one person . They are a constant burr in my saddle these days. They make my life harder – and if this isn’t intentional on their part, or at least passive aggressive, it is most certainly selfish. In almost everything they do, they seem to communicate a lack of respect for me.  It’s only one person. Why do I let this one person affect me so much? We’ve all got our baggage, you know. I’ve shared some of mine before here in this blog. One particular parcel I tote around unseen is an unspoken message I’ve heard in my heart since childhood – particula
Read more

Life is People-y

-
Image
I love my job. Really, I really, really do. But my place of employment has had a few rocky years. Every once in a while, we come to a point where I say to myself, Okay, time for a fresh start. The old issues are over. The people who were discontented have left or are appeased. Now we can move forward and have peace. Bu-u-ut no. There’s always something. I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that even though I love my job, there will always be stressors I’m dealing with. Because as my colleague says, it’s a very people-y job. And people are . . . well, people . People are wounded. Everyone has been damaged by someone and bears the scars. And that damage often bleeds out in our behavior toward others. People are fearful. They are afraid of making mistakes. They are afraid of saying the wrong thing. They are afraid of confrontation. They are afraid of burning bridges. They are afraid of being labeled and unliked. People are selfish. Even when they want to be self-less, they
Read more

Hopeful Reality

-
Image
This past July, I spent a couple crazy weeks working at Crystal Sea Drama Company (which I casually refer to as “my theater” because I've spent so much time there over the past decade). It was the year for our New Play Festival, which I’ve said many times is the best thing we do. CSDC students wrote the plays, CSDC alumni directed the plays, and CSDC campers performed the plays. Last fall, I taught the playwriting class preparing for this big event. There were six girls in the class – more than I’ve ever had for a playwriting class. They were all writers already. Most of them had novels in progress, and some of them had two or three they were working on. But writing a play . . . that’s a different kettle of fish, they learned. And it was a fun few months working with them in that endeavor. I was proud of the work they ended the semester with. Only three of them chose to have their plays performed in the festival, which was fine. But not until we were rehearsing this summer did
Read more

INFECTION

-
Image
Y’all, I’ve had two colds in the past three months. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me it can be. If I don’t treat my colds early and effectively, they grow into monsters that do me in for a month or more. That’s what happened in June. I came home from a trip sick. I mean, sick . Sicker than I’ve been for a long time. And that cold progressed into a wicked chest cough that hung around for the rest of the month, even after my doctor prescribed an antibiotic and a heavy-duty cough suppressant (which wasn’t cheap, let me tell you). I mean, people, IT SUCKS. Then the first morning of the second week of school, I woke up with the inkling of soreness in my throat and felt a bit of panic. Thankfully, because I was home this time at that first hint of a symptom, I was able to start taking my Zinc, Selenium, and Vitamin C immediately. That’s my happy little cocktail that seems to kick these little infections out the door if I start it early. The cold came . . . but it was very m
Read more