The Dance Of The Holy Nobodies

FREE PREVIEW Mary was from the town of Magdala on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee and had become a devoted follower of Jesus. The gospels tell us that she was one of the last to leave the scene of his death and the first to arrive at his grave. Before the sun had risen, Mary came to Jesus' tomb expecting to spend the morning with a memory and a corpse. But when she arrived, she found the grave empty. The dead man's body had been removed. For somebody whose feelings had been wrenched raw by events of the preceding days, this was just too much. So she ran to tell others who had been friends of Jesus. They came and looked and saw that she had told the truth and went back home. But Mary lingered. We see her standing outside the tomb crying. Cautiously she looks in and this time she sees what one gospel writer calls "two angels." Another says, "two men." Their presence doesn't seem to startle her. Maybe by now she is too numb with grief and bewilderment to notice anything out of the ordinary. "Why are you weeping?" asks one of them. "Because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him." She turns away, her tear-dimmed eyes focusing faintly on another figure standing outside the tomb. Who could this be? Why are these strangers surrounding her? She had come here to be alone with her sorrow. She didn't want people prying into her grief. But the question came again: "Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?" Poor Mary. Exhausted, desensitized by sorrow, abandoned by her friends, accosted by strangers and bewildered by the gaping emptiness of the tomb where her beloved Lord had been, she seems caught in a fist of frustration. And so are we. Like Mary, we often stand before a tomb mourning the passing of that which is gone. We wonder what has happened to the world. So much that we cherished is dead and what we thought secure has been taken away. Everything seems changed. Quiet neighborhoods where folks knew each other and shared a street and chatted leisurely behind the soft spray of a garden hose; gentle, country communities like the one where I grew up, where neighbors helped each other get the crops in, looked after one another in the hard times and gathered to celebrate good news; all this has slipped into the past and we aren't sure when it happened. Now people are too busy to be neighborly. The melting pot of shoppers at the mall shows how much our world has changed. Towns are built overnight and some communities have completely vanished. Radical individualism is replacing altruism as a virtue. Terrorism has come of age. There are shootings on the highways and home invasions in our communities. Standards are slipping. We worry about the future for children and the hole in the ozone. Even faith, which seemed more certain in times past, is difficult. Where are the creeds in which we were cradled? Where is the country we thought America was? What happened to old-fashioned love that stuck it out through thick and thin? Why do so many people seem to be working harder and enjoying life less? Why are our children killing other children? Great God Almighty, what has happened? Why can't we find our way? Why can't we find our Lord anymore? Probably for the same reason Mary couldn't find hers. She was looking for a dead one. Christ is risen! And we are not going to find a risen Christ where we buried him. Too many of us wrapped Jesus in a shroud and laid him away when we finished confirmation. Or when we left home. Or when we encountered a few questions about religion in college. Or when we got through a problem. And then, when we went back to find him, he wasn't there! Maybe we encountered him again with some friends and he became a subject to study. But what we really did was classify and label him and bury him again. Even creeds and theologies and doctrines can be burial grounds for Jesus. The Bible is absolutely central to our faith. But do you know what? You can make an idol out of scripture. And all those well-meaning folks who want to gather and argue over this verse or that verse can do so until Gabriel blows his horn, but Jesus won't be there. He's on the move. His Church is not supposed to be a mausoleum or a museum to preserve the relics of a dead Christ. The Church of the Living Lord is a mission station from which he operates to heal and lift and save. Because he isn't dead, you always know where to find him. Right where he's always been. Wherever people are struggling to overcome evil and oppression and stand up in God's sunlight free and saved. He's with the prisoners of tyranny whether the tyrant is named Hitler or Ignorance or Satan or Cocaine or Racism. He is with refugees in their shelters. He is with the Haitian poor in their tin and tarpaper-shack barrios. He's overturning the tables of the greedy. He's challenging self-righteous preachers and the graft of corrupt politicians. He's holding the hands of the old and lonely and reaching out to the young who need direction in their life. He keeps on telling and showing us that he's the way and the truth and the life and that inasmuch as we do deeds of kindness to one of the least of the world, we do it unto him. He's not in a box, or a museum. He won't live in our memory. He wants to be in our head and in our heart. He is blazing new paths just as he did in the first century. And like Mary, if we look for him in the wrong places, we'll be frustrated. The world has changed and you and I are surrounded by the strange and the new. But he still loves this world and wants to save it. He hasn't given up. We mustn't look for a dead Christ. Let's go back to Mary. If her Christ had been taken away, then someone must be held responsible. Look at how she reacted. Just like most frustrated people. She struck out at the one closest. "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him..." She's not bitter, just weary with sadness, so frustrated that she's holding someone else responsible for her unhappiness. Sound familiar? When our world gets disrupted, we look for somebody to blame. When the gas prices go up, who's at fault? If the children aren't learning what they should at school, somebody is going to hear from us. If crime is climbing and morals are sinking, somebody else is at fault. Find the culprit and sic the dogs on 'em. Frustrated by the circumstances and feeling utterly incapable of doing anything about it, Mary hurled her accusation at the stranger. And he responded by saying her name: “Mary.” And suddenly, everything changed. "O! Teacher!" she said. She had found the one she had been looking for. Or to be more accurate, she recognized him. He had been there all the time. It's kind of like Mary got resurrected too, that morning! It's sad that many people never get to this part. Mary almost missed it. The Bible says that she saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Thomas almost missed him. So did the two on the road to Emmaus. The religiously orthodox of Jesus' time didn't fare any better. They didn't recognize him before the crucifixion. Maybe it was because he was always appearing where he wasn't expected. Christmas found him in a cattle barn and Easter in a cemetery. He found disciples at the fishing docks and preached sermons wherever the people were. He didn't appear at the right places or make friends with the right people or adhere to the politically correct positions. No wonder they crucified him. He wasn't the Christ they were looking for.