RECAP: Dr. Paul Little’s message can be heard at the link below.
Scripture: John 11, 20, 21
John 20 (NLT)
The Resurrection
20 1 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.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. 12 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. 13 “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.”
14 She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. 15 “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.”
16 “Mary!” Jesus said.
She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).
17 “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.’”
18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.
I thought it was amazing while reading this passage this week that I found myself trying to relate to Mary Magdalene. Poor Mary had just went through a traumatic event having her brother Lazerus die only to be raised from the dead by Jesus. Than she witnessed the death of her friend and Saviour Jesus Christ, thought his body had been stolen from the tomb but than talked to Him after He had risen from the dead. That’s a lot of ‘rising’ she saw!
So here’s my take on that morning that she went to the tomb.
Mary is exhausted and emotionally drained, likely hardly slept but cried all night after watching the most traumatic and cruel thing that any human eye could ever witness, the death of Jesus Christ. She wakes up early from whatever sleep she got and prepares her things to go back to the tomb where Jesus’s body lay. She arrives at the tomb scared and anticipating the emotions she will feel when she sees Jesus again than she notices the stone was moved. She is left alone and afraid but determined to find out who stole Jesus’s body.
Lets stop here for a min. Can you imagine how she felt?!? When you bury someone you dearly love it gives you some closure. Can you imagine going to their grave the next day to find their body gone?!? That would be completely devastating! Just imagine after all the horror and grief she endured and she appears at the grave to find Jesus’s body gone. Just imagine with me for a minute how she must have felt. I am not sure why God wanted to me think about Mary this week but when God puts a verse on my heart to dwell on, I keep dwelling.
So here I am reading John 20, 21 all week and I go to Church expecting to hear a message about this same passage. But instead Dr. Paul Little talks about Mary and Lazerus (John 11). Interesting….because it’s the same Mary. So there she is again. So while everyone all week was thinking about Jesus’s death and resurrection I was thinking about Mary. I thought there is got to something about Mary God is trying to teach me since God brought her to my attention again Sunday morning…but why?
I think the reason why God wanted me to focus on Mary this week was because she was so loyal to Jesus. Mary never lost sight of what she was saved from and she maintained the perspective that she needed God in a personal way. We lose our loyalty to God when we stop appreciating what He has done for us. When you have been saved from MUCH (as Mary was), than you love MUCH. When we allow God to speak into our lives and we feel impacted by Him we become more loyal to Him. But when we lose appreciation we don’t act so loyal.
Dr. Paul Little shared with us this morning three reasons why he thinks Jesus is legit. There are many reasons why we think Jesus is legit but there are three. Here they are: Jesus’s life inspired loyalty, exuded compassion, and Jesus called the dead to live.
I am going to for the next week challenge myself about how loyal I am to God. I am going to share with you what I discover on Fri when I blog again. Please pray for me and lets all ask ourselves how loyal we are willing to be to Jesus.
Some people are so willing to be loyal to God that they have lost their families, their homes, and their lives. This morning Dr. Paul Little told a story about a Pediatric Surgeon who works as a missionary in the Congo. This man could be making a million a year in the US but instead he is loyal to Christ and is saving children of war in the Congo. He is in such desperate conditions. One day the electricity went out so the back-up generators started running. But the generators run on gas and they were running for so long that they ran out of gas. Two of his patients (babies) that were on respirators died.
I just had to share this story with you. It was heartbreaking. I was once dependant on a respirator for a short time in my life when I had open heart surgery. I can’t imagine how that Doctor giving up everything to help these children must have felt when he heard the generator starting to sputter than stop….no words..
How loyal am I….I wonder.
In the clay,
Chantal Dube