John 10:11-18, April 25, 2021, Sermon

"Life with the Good Shepherd"

Pastor Randy Butler

Our Psalm from the Old Testament this morning is one of the most well-known and beloved passages of scripture. We find it written in the bulletins of memorial services and funerals, and it has given comfort and strength to people enduring various adversities for something like three thousand years.

Preacher Will Willimon points out (and I owe a lot of my thoughts to him this morning) that perhaps because of its familiarity Psalm 23 sometimes loses its punch, and in addition, all the action is on God’s part, and we are left as the recipients of God’s shepherd like care. The Lord is my shepherd, he makes me lie down, he leads me, he restores me, he prepares a table for me. It’s all on God. As one of the other Psalms says, “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” That is Psalm 100, which gets the roles right – the Lord is God and we are not. The Lord is the shepherd, and we are the sheep of the Lord’s pasture.

This all leaves us activist minded modern American Christians feeling a little lost and without much to do to stay busy with the Lord’s work, to do our part. I remember a member of my congregation in Seattle who once said to me after a sermon, “Your sermons are nice, but you don’t ever tell us what to do.” It has been popular for some preachers to provide an outline of the sermon in the bulletin, even provide a one-two-three fill in the blank piece for us to write down and take notes with us for the week, so that we will know what to do as followers of Jesus. The man who made comments to me about the sermons eventually left us for a church that could be more specific and concrete for him. But I have never been comfortable with such a direct and specific approach. I would rather tell you what God does than tell you what to do.

Now there is no doubt that the scriptures tell us what to do in places. Faith without works is dead says the epistle of James. “He has shown you,” proclaims the prophet Micah, “What does the Lord require of you? Act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Although Micah too is not very specific. I confess that I sort of admire Islam and its emphasis on the five pillars – the profession of faith, prayers, alms, fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca. That is specific – do those things and you are a good Muslim.

In our New Testament text, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” There it is again – Jesus is the good shepherd, he is the one who lays down his life, not us. He does the heavy lifting. We are left to follow. He is the shepherd, we are the sheep. He leads, we trust and follow.

We are invited to abide. Jesus says that in chapter fifteen. “Like the branch abides in the vine, abide in me as I abide in you.” Our action, if you can call it that, is to abide. Here Jesus says “I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” So our activity is to know and abide. The emphasis is more on being than on doing; on abiding and dwelling with and in God. I’ve always loved Psalm 90 – “Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Psalm 90 invites us to dwell in the eternal presence of God. Psalm 23 promises that we dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That is our starting point – “Not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and gave his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,” as the letter of I John puts it. “We love because God first loved us.”

Twentieth century monk Thomas Merton once wrote that the root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God, the faith that one is loved by God, irrespective of one’s worth.

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” Note that he does not say “I am the good teacher, and you are my students. Here are your assignments for the week. When you complete these, come back on Sunday and we will tackle the next subject.” Nor does he say, “I am the good manager, and you are my staff. Each of us has a job to do. Let’s meet on Thursday at nine a.m. to see what kind of progress we are making toward our goal.” He doesn’t even say, “I am the good social services director. Please check on the following cases for the week, and report back to me.” He says none of that, does none of that, but simply says, “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” He is pretty much doing all that really needs to be done.

Many observers have suggested that the American church lives by what they call moral, therapeutic deism. What is that? Well it is about morality – doing good things, being good people. It emphasizes techniques, ways to fix ourselves, improve ourselves. And it settles for deism, the idea that God sets everything up and then leaves us to fend for ourselves. Moral, therapeutic, deism. We want to know that we can control our destiny, do something about it. Fix what is wrong.

Like most of us perhaps, I have had to learn that I was not in control of my destiny or anyone else’s destiny the hard way. About fifteen years ago our family was rocked by the experience of mental illness. It led to behaviors and incidents that shook us. And as that was happening, I began to realize that my perfect family was not so perfect. That I was not a perfect father and husband, and that it was not in my control to fix everything that was wrong. Things were not going well. We were out of control. They are better now, better than they have been in years, but it took being out of control to give up control. I simply had no choice. That is why I have come to love and appreciate the Twelve Steps. The first step says, I admitted that my life had become unmanageable, the second says, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

I put my life in the hands of my higher power, who I understand to be God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To the best of my ability, and every day, I turn over the heavy lifting to God. My life is in God’s hands. The Lord is my shepherd, I am one of the sheep.

Maybe that is why Psalm 23 is read so often at funerals or memorials services. Because at the time of death, when all human effort and striving are done we have no choice but to surrender to the care of the good shepherd who lays down his life for us. I am not an overly activist Christian by nature. I am probably inclined more toward the contemplative and mystical side. And I don’t want to impose my spiritual personality upon you. But this morning I do encourage us to rest in the presence of God, and in his son Jesus Christ, our good shepherd. Amen.

Luke 24:36b-48, April 18, 2021, Sermon

“Keeping it Real”

Pastor Randy Butler

I’m calling this sermon “Keeping it Real” because the last year has seemed so unreal. We have been stumbling around in a pandemic haze, isolated, unable to visit as much as we like. We can’t touch each other, we can’t shake hands, we can’t hug. It was great to be in worship for Easter this year. But even that had a touch of unreality about it – fewer people, no singing out loud, subdued greetings. It felt incomplete. When I first arrived in Baker I heard about the great Easter feast that was prepared by one of our members – but in two Easters I’ve never been to it, because of COVID. We have not celebrated that most sacred of meals – the Presbyterian Potluck, where you sit close, pass and share the food, pour the drinks, talk and eat. What a strange time it has been – unreal, surreal.

Our text tells us that it is the first day of the week after the Sabbath. And the disciples of Jesus are stumbling around in a haze too. Jesus had been crucified a couple of days earlier. And yet on this day there was word of an empty tomb, the body of Jesus gone missing. And a couple of them had even claimed to see him; that he walked with them from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They claimed that he was alive, risen from the dead. And so it is that evening. They are talking about all these things and Luke says that Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” They were startled, even terrified and they thought they were looking at a ghost. This cannot be real, they thought.

Seeing the shock on their faces he says, “Wait a minute, it’s me – look at my hands and my feet – go ahead and touch me if you want. It’s me Jesus – flesh and bones just like before. I am definitely not a ghost.” And then to make the point he asks if they have anything to eat. We assume after all that ghosts don’t eat, and yet here he is eating, just like everybody else. I like to think that he is having fun with this little demonstration – eating a piece of fish with a big grin on his face while they stare in amazement. “Look,” he is saying, “I’m real.”

But we can understand the disciples because we too wonder if Jesus is real. Easter has come and gone. He is risen indeed, but a lot of life has happened since, and perhaps Jesus seems sort of ghostlike to us too. We forget, and we are faced with the concrete realities of our jobs, our families, our very real bills to pay and real deadlines to meet. We are immersed in our reality and Jesus seems unreal, like a specter on the horizon, a ghost. His presence and reality is transparent, foggy, and we are left with a kind of phantom faith, a vague sense of God and God’s presence on the margins of our lives. So how do we keep it real? How do we move from this vague sense of God to real contact with God? Our text gives us some clues.

First we stay close to Christ’s humanity. Preacher Fred Craddock notes the continuity between the risen Christ and the Jesus who died. They are one and the same. Christ remains flesh and bones, even in his risen state. He has a physical body - he eats, has physical substance and form, his wounds are still visible. He is transformed no doubt, but he is not so spiritual now that he doesn’t need a body, that he can discard his wounded body.

We do not follow an eternal Christ divorced from historical existence. The Christian life is not so spiritual that it is without suffering for others, without a cross, without our own wounds, without engagement in the concrete life of this world. Craddock says that Easter is forever joined to Good Friday; to follow the risen Christ is to follow the one who bore the cross.

When we meet and talk with each other as fellow followers of Christ, and with members in the community our conversations are not always lofty and spiritual. More often they concern the worries and fears and losses and pains of everyday life. Certainly we pray and bring God to bear on the issues, but we are often talking about a loved one, the loss of a job, the fear of sickness. Our spiritual life is not vague, ghostlike, floating in the heavens. Rather it is anchored in real life, in the flesh and bones humanity of the crucified and risen Jesus. Do you have anything to eat? Asks the risen Jesus. That is how real he is. We keep it real by staying close to him, the real Jesus.

Second, we stay close to scripture. When Jesus finishes eating his fish he reminds them of the big story of scripture that points to his life and suffering and resurrection. He does the same thing with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In both cases Luke says that he opened up the scriptures to them. He became present to them in the scriptures. The Living Word somehow inhabits what is written. So that the disciples would say, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he opened the scripture to us, while he was teaching us?”

One of my early memories as I was coming to faith in Christ in my college years was being in group Bible study with others from our college fellowship group, and I remember my heart really stirring within me as we talked openly and honestly about what we were reading. My heart was burning within me. And Christ was becoming real to me. Christ is made known, becomes real as we read and study, discuss and pray the Bible together in our churches. Martin Luther once said “The Bible is alive; it speaks to me. It has feet; it runs after me. It has hands; it lays hold of me.” Jesus becomes real as we encounter the Living Word in the written word of scripture.

And last, we keep it real by bearing witness to what we know about Christ and serving in his name. Jesus is sending the disciples. They are witnesses of these things and they are to proclaim his message. Speaking and serving makes it real, makes him more real.

We all think and process differently. I’ve heard some people say that they aren’t entirely sure what they think until they express it to someone else. What is vague and unformed in our minds becomes clear when we say it out loud. When it moves from our minds and takes the form of words it becomes concrete – real. This is true of how we share our faith experience too. When we share our spiritual experience verbally with others at the appropriate times it becomes more real for us too. Anyone who has taught, any teacher, will tell you that they learn as much or more than their students.

And of course when we serve we embody Christ. We become Christ’s hands and feet. We become “Little Christs” as others have said. We aren’t getting by on phantom faith anymore, we are living out our faith by serving in practical and concrete ways. In 2018 we went to Haiti with twelve or fourteen people from our church in Seattle. Several youth went with us. We connected with and stayed in a church in a village called Chardonnieres way out on the Southwest peninsula. Our focus was to establish a relationship with our new friends in this church there, one we hoped might last over the years. And one afternoon the men from our group were invited to join the men’s group from their church. So we met and we had some conversation together but the highlight of the afternoon was playing games together. We played simple, silly games with balloons and tennis balls. Some of our youth and grown men - Haitian and American men playing games, competing and laughing our heads off. And as we were settling down and closing our time together one of the young men from our group turned to me and said, “You know, today I feel like we are doing what Christ wants us to be doing. I want to do more of this.” We were preparing another group to go when COVID hit, but every one of the youth who went on the first trip signed up to go again because in that experience Christ was becoming real to them.

So let us keep it real and stay close to the humanity of Christ, stay close to the Living Word of God in the scriptures, and speak and serve as Christ’s people in Baker. May Christ be ever more real to us and with us in the days ahead. Amen.

John 20:19-31, April 11, 2021, Sermon

“Is Seeing Really Believing?”

Pastor Randy Butler

Bertrand Russell was a famous twentieth century British philosopher known for his rigorous thinking and brilliant mind. He was also an atheist, believed that religion was mostly superstition. And at one of his lectures, a woman asked him what he would say if it turned out that he had been wrong about God, and found himself standing outside the Pearly Gates when his time came. When the woman asked the question Russell’s eyes lit up and he replied, “Why, madame, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.’”

I wouldn’t presume to argue with a brilliant philosopher, but Russell’s answer does make me wonder: How much evidence is enough? What role does evidence play in the life of faith? What is the connection between that word faith, and belief?

In our passage this morning, we begin on the evening of that first day – the day of resurrection. It is Easter evening and the disciples are gathered together in a room with the door locked. And yet John tells us that Jesus shows up. He simply reports that Jesus came and stood among them, doesn’t say how he got there through the locked doors. And in a very touching moment Jesus blesses his disciples, saying, “Peace be with you.” He charges them and prepares to send them into the world, and then breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

But one of the twelve, Thomas, was not there that first night, and so the others tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas is insistent and says, “Unless I see the mark where the nails were driven through his hand, and I put my finger on that mark, and unless I touch his side, (where Jesus was stabbed), I will not believe what you are saying.” I am guessing that this didn’t go down too well with the others, his dismissal of their seeing Jesus. “You weren’t even there, Thomas, when Jesus showed up. Apparently you had something better to do on the night we had heard that he might be alive. You weren’t there but he was.”

So a week later Thomas is there with them. And although the doors were shut again, Jesus comes and stands among them again. Says again, “Peace be with you.” Sort of a repeat performance, as if for Thomas’ sake. And Jesus accommodates Thomas’s demands exactly: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and touch my side.”

Now it is easy for us to criticize Thomas, his absence at the first appearance of Jesus, his reluctance to believe the others. His famous doubts have given rise to the name “Doubting Thomas” for anyone who has reservations and questions. But the others stick with Thomas – we don’t read that they throw him out, criticize or berate him. And Jesus certainly doesn’t. I think that one of the lessons of our text is that faith grows and develops not in isolation, but in community; in the give and take of fellowship with others, where we can ask questions, explore the claims of Christian belief, and come to our own conclusions.

This was certainly true for me. I was twenty one years old when I first went to a college age fellowship at a Presbyterian Church. I’d never been to church much, didn’t know all the things others knew about the Christian faith. I was a student at the Cal State University located right near the Church. And as I started going to this college group at the church I decided to take an Old Testament class that was offered. And I also took a fascinating class on Medieval history, which of course has a lot do with religion. And so when I went to this Christian college group I asked a lot of questions, thought of myself as a serious seeker, and intellectual inquirer. I am sure at times I was quite annoying. But my new friends, more mature in the ways of their gracious and loving Lord, well, they put up with me, loved me, even seemed to like me, and it changed my life. I am here today because of that experience. They gave me room, let me find my own way and ask my own questions.

Jesus’ invitation to Thomas to touch and see his wounds honors Thomas’ doubts, and respects Thomas’s unique journey. We aren’t expected to be gullible, to just accept and believe without any questions. Like Thomas we are invited to investigate the credibility of the resurrection. It is quite in-credible after all. Questions are OK, even expected. Maybe the Lord took great delight in showing Thomas his wounds. But then he finally says to Thomas, “Do not doubt any longer, but believe.” At some point we are invited, exhorted to decide and follow Jesus.

Insufficient evidence, said Bertrand Russell. Maybe. It is not always very clear. But as someone said, there is proof sufficient to convince those that are willing to be open, and proof sufficient to challenge, even judge those who are obstinate, for whom there will never be enough evidence. Sometimes our questions serve to avoid making a decision that we know will change our life. Questions can become intellectual diversions and bunny trails that keep us from joining Jesus on the way that leads to life. Are we engaging in honest inquiry or stubborn hard hearted resistance? After all the reasoning and questioning and exploring there is a time to decide. There is a tipping point, and we will have to decide, even if we don’t have all the evidence we might like.

Jesuit scholar John Kavanaugh went to work for a time in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. At this time of his life he was searching for a clear answer as to how to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. They talked for a while, and then she asked “What can I do for you?” And Kavanaugh asked Mother Teresa to pray for him to find clarity. She paused for a moment and said, “No, I cannot do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” Kavanaugh said to her that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for. But she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Ultimately all we can do is trust. We will never have enough evidence, enough information, enough clarity. At some point we finally have to act. Act with vigor, as Bertrand Russell himself said on another occasion, even without complete certainty.

Interestingly in our text Thomas is called the twin. As Bible teacher Dale Bruner asks, are we not all in some sense twins: real believers and yet semi-unbelievers at the same time? Faith is not certainty, it is well, faith. We will always be a mixture of faith and un-faith. But we can still act. We can still decide.

Thomas does – Oh does he ever! He sees and touches Jesus and then exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” This the loftiest view of the Lord given in all of the gospels. Nowhere else is he addressed as God in the four gospels. From the lips of the doubter comes the most exalted name: my Lord and my God.

He has indeed made his inquiries about this incredible resurrection of Jesus, and he is convinced. He moves from knowledge to faith. There is a shift from his head to his heart. And that must be our shift too. Jesus for Thomas is not just universal Lord and God, but his Lord and his God. We must make the Lord our own, make God our own. As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ has made me his own.”

Now today we have less to go on than Thomas did. He could see Jesus, talk to Jesus, see and touch his wounds. That was tangible evidence. We don’t have the same hard evidence – we have testimony about the evidence. We call it the witness of the apostles, their writings: the gospel of John and the other three gospels; the letters and other writings of the New Testament. Written primarily by those who knew Jesus or were close to those who knew him. The New Testament is the testimony of the apostles, whose witness we now decide to be enough or not, for us. Our text closes by saying that Jesus did many other signs which are not included in this book. But these were written so that you may come to believe. John is giving his best testimony concerning the evidence of Jesus’ life death and resurrection. This is John on the witness stand. He wants us to believe and he wants us to have life. He wants us to read his testimony, believe it, make it ours and experience a fullness of life we never thought possible.

So let us do our honest investigation, ask our questions. But then let us believe and act and live. Amen.

John 20:1-18, April 4, 2021, Easter Sermon

“Joy Comes With the Morning”

Pastor Randy Butler

I heard about a pastor who asked a question in an Easter children’s message. “What were Jesus’ first words after he was raised from the dead?” the pastor asked. It was silent for a moment and then a young girl raised her hand excitedly, “I know! I know his first words! He said: Tah dah!”

Of course it wasn’t like that at all. No “Tah dah!” Jesus in fact is very mysterious in his first appearances and words on that morning. His resurrection is all quite understated. There is no description of the actual event. None of the gospel writers tell us how it happened. We just read about a rolled back stone, an empty tomb and angels, and later these appearances of Jesus. And when he does appear he doesn’t go directly to Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the Roman governor to let them know their plans to dispose of him didn’t exactly work out. He doesn’t go immediately to Jerusalem or Rome and say, “Just wanted to let you know I’m alive.” None of that; none of what he could have done. He goes to Galilee instead, an inconsequential place in the Mediterranean world of the first century. And he returns not to the rich and powerful, but to those who knew him, to people like Mary Magdalene.

John tells us that Mary sets out by herself this morning – the first day of the week, while it was still dark. What would take place in the next couple of hours would change her life, would change the world, but she started out by herself in the dark. She wasn’t thinking about resurrection, she just wanted to see Jesus’ body. It was a dark time for her as she walked to the tomb. As Dale Bruner puts it, it was like the church was down to one person on this sad and dark morning.

But that is where resurrection begins – in the dark. It has been a dark year for us. Sure we are coping, but I think this year of isolation and pandemic and economic loss, and fear has taken its toll, perhaps in ways that we don’t recognize. It has been a hard year. We have been working our way through the dark. But so has God been at work in the dark. It is precisely in the dark that God does his resurrection work, his re-creation of life. The book of Genesis tells us that the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the earth until God said, “Let there be light.” God created life from the darkness and chaos. And God does it again in the darkness and chaos of the tomb. God working the nighttime shift to create life from death. This is the nighttime work of God. God is at work in our darkness.

So when Mary arrives at the tomb, she sees the stone rolled away and concludes that they have taken the Lord from the tomb and she runs back to Peter and John, referred to her as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and she tells them, “They have taken the Lord and we do not know where they have laid him.” In her mind Jesus is still laid out flat somewhere – dead, by no means alive.

When the two disciples hear this they run off to the tomb, in a kind of footrace. The gospel reveals a little rivalry here. We are told that John outran Peter and got there first. Then Peter arrived, following him, says John, looked in the tomb saw the grave clothes laid aside, and then John, who reached the tomb first, we are told, just so we know who got there first, John goes in the tomb and it says that he believes. But then strangely, Peter and John go back home. Kind of anti-climactic, incomplete. And maybe it is no wonder that Jesus doesn’t appear to these two competitive disciples trying to outrun each other to the tomb. There are perhaps so full of themselves that they wouldn’t see Jesus anyway. They just go back home.

But Mary, who apparently ran back to the tomb with them – she stays, right there at the tomb, weeping. She is not going anywhere until she has some answers. She doesn’t budge. She has this passion to be near Jesus, dead or alive, what Dale Bruner calls “the abiding, sticking to it, hanging in there, making one’s home with” kind of faith that Jesus so loved in his followers. Perseverance, love, desire and drive to stay by Jesus’ side, no matter what.

And this reminds us that the Christ life takes some desire and persistence. Being a follower of Jesus takes some perseverance and it takes some effort. It doesn’t just come to us naturally. It helps to worship regularly, but it also takes regular prayer, reading of scripture and the stories of Jesus, good Christian spiritual books, writings that feed us and motivate us to the kind of desire and faith that Mary demonstrates in our text. It takes serving and trying to live the life of a disciple, a disciple like Mary Magdalene. She is our example this morning, not Peter and John.

She stays and she weeps but she also looks in the tomb, and she sees two angels. Why didn’t Peter and John see the angels when they went into the tomb? Again maybe only those who weep see angels. Maybe patience and love beholds angels. Angels appear to those on the patient watch of love, as someone else put it. So Mary stays and sticks with it, and sees through her tears.

But she is still confused, operating, if not totally in the dark, still in a sort of twilight. In her mind there is still only one option – Jesus dead. When the angels ask her why she is weeping, she says again, “They have taken Jesus and we don’t know where they have laid him.” In her view of things there is only room for Jesus in horizontal position, Jesus laid out. She has no place in her mind, no category, for a vertical Jesus, risen, alive and well. It simply does not compute yet. It’s like she is living in one dimension only – flat. She is not yet ready for a three-dimensional living breathing Jesus standing upright, can’t fathom it.

So when this man speaks to her, “Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thinks he is the gardener. John tells us it’s Jesus, but she doesn’t know that yet. And her response again, “Just tell me where they laid him, and I will take him away.” She is kind of at her wits end.

Now I am kind of mystified here. I wonder what Jesus is doing. He knows full well why she would be weeping. He knows exactly who she is looking for. Why does he ask? Is it like he is teasing her? Do you know how it is when someone makes a surprise return home after a long absence? You see this a lot on things like Funniest Home Videos. Someone is filming the return and reunion of a son or daughter in the military. The camera is on his mother. She is not expecting this at all – furthest thing from her mind. Her deepest desire is that her son would be here for Christmas or whatever the event, but no way expecting it, not on her radar. And yet here comes her son. He is dressed in his uniform, and she doesn’t recognize him at first, and he is kind of toying with her, wanting to surprise her. And then “Oh, my son, is it really you?” And there is this joyful tearful reunion.

Well, it’s a totally unexpected reunion isn’t it? Jesus and Mary. She is not expecting Jesus to be upright. But he speaks her name and she recognizes him: “Mary.” “Rabbi, is it really you?” and she embraces him.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead undoes all that we expect and all that we assume about life. It rattles all our certainties, calls into question all that we thought true, about life and death. From now on anything can happen because death has been defeated. Life is victorious.

But here’s another thing. I was reminded of this by Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, and we have already pointed it out. Jesus doesn’t show up with a big “Tah dah!” He doesn’t go back to the leaders in Jerusalem to set them straight, or to the Temple or the military palace, the centers of power and influence. He goes back for Mary. He speaks her name. He doesn’t even at first reveal himself to the foot-racing disciples. He shows up for her – while she is crying and distraught. He comes back for her. He will have other things to do. Doesn’t even want her to hang on too tight. He has big things to accomplish still. But before all that he has time for her.

And so yes, the resurrection of Jesus does certainly rattle us. One of the other gospels says the earth shook when Jesus rose. Resurrection is an earthquake. As writer Leif Enger says, “When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. The resurrection is a miracle, and a miracle contradicts the will of the earth.” It takes that kind of miracle to defy the big stuff – the darkness of our time.

But know this too – Jesus is risen for you and for me. Like he did for Mary, he comes back for us. He has time for us. Reunion! He is risen, he is risen indeed.