There are several stories in the Bible that I have always found unsettling. I have never figured out how Noah gathered two of every animal for certainly the polar bears and penguins did not live in the Middle East. I’ve always struggled with a loving God calling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and for the life of me I cannot figure out how Jonah survived in the belly of a whale. But as a child there was only one story that caused me to raise my hand in Sunday School every single year. “How come Mary, Jesus’ mother didn’t recognize him after he was resurrected? Did she not know her own son? Why did she think he was the gardener?”
I never received a satisfactory answer. Some teachers just told me to put by hand down thinking I was being my ordinary precocious self. Others told me it was her grief and tears that made her mistake Jesus for the gardener, but that was never very convincing because even when I cried I recognized the people around me. And so I kept raising my hand and asking the question because I am someone who like to makes sense of things.
Just about a year ago I found myself reading that text in John 20:14 again. “At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” As I read it I believe I had an epiphany. I am always cautious about saying such things because how does one know if they have truly had a revelation from God. But now a year later I am willing to say that it is possible that God revealed something to me. I am claiming my epiphany because this post-resurrection week, for the first time in my life, I have not felt led to raise my hand when I have read the stories of Mary and the disciples failing to recognize the resurrected Christ
So here’s my revelation. I think it’s possible that Jesus was unrecognizable because a resurrected body, a body with no death in it, must look so radically different from anything we’ve ever seen. As far as I can tell every body that is walking on this earth right now, mine, yours and everyone else we know, has death in it. Every physical part in us is moving towards an end and every cell contains decay. Not since Adam and Eve have there been people who walked this earth who knew bodies that would not die. Our flesh and blood is visibly marked by death and so was Jesus’ earthly body.
But something amazing happened to Jesus… He was resurrected from the dead. His cells were all made whole and his body was given a life that would never move towards an end. I think that a body with no death in it must look remarkably different, perhaps even unrecognizable even to those who knew it most intimately. Would you consider with me this morning that the resurrection holds within it the promise that those who have the resurrected Christ within them can change so radically that people would find it difficult to recognize them? Would you consider with me that the resurrection holds such great power for change that every cell within the church could be made whole and that the body of Christ could live in such a way that the world would find it difficult to recognize us?
Is it possible that because of the resurrection that our radical judgments could be so transformed that the world would only see a people of grace? Is it possible that our financial lives could be so transformed that the world would find it difficult to recognize us because all they see is generosity? Is it possible that our desire to define some people as “out” and others as “in” could be so transformed by the resurrection that the world would barely recognize us because our arms are stretched so wide?
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