Seeing Through Easter Eyes
Illustration
Stories
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. (v. 14)
Mary weeps as she comes to the tomb that first Easter morning. She weeps because her dearest friend is dead. When this friend comes up behind her she turns around and sees him, but she doesn't really see him. Do you know what I mean?
Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. She implores him, "Sir, if you have taken him away tell me where you have laid him…" She sees him but she doesn't see him.
Author, Philip Yancey, tells of some history he learned while visiting "...the tip of Argentina, the region named Tierra del Fuego, ("land of fire") discovered by Magellan's sailors in 1528. They noticed fires burning on the shore. The natives tending the fires however, paid no attention to the great ships as they sailed through the straits. Later they explained that they had considered the ships an apparition, so different were they from anything seen before. They lacked the experience, even the imagination, to decode evidence passing right before their eyes."
Yancey asks, "What are we missing? What do we not see?"
What Mary could not see was her closest friend standing right in front of her. Her mind could not comprehend that Jesus was alive when she knew he was dead. She had seen him die. She had watched them take his body down from the cross. Jesus had told her and the others that he would rise again. It didn't sink in. Who could believe it? It wasn't possible.
Mary’s mind could not register that Jesus was alive until she heard him speak her name: "Mary."
What would it be like to hear your name spoken by someone you knew to be dead? Through the fog of sorrow and the drowning darkness of death, Mary heard her beloved teacher speak her name.
What can we not see? What is it that God is doing right in front of us that we cannot or will not see, that our cultural assumptions, and our basic understanding of reality in this age of science, does not allow us to see?
Fredrick Buechner suggests that "We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some subtle turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints we go on as if nothing has happened..."
Mary weeps as she comes to the tomb that first Easter morning. She weeps because her dearest friend is dead. When this friend comes up behind her she turns around and sees him, but she doesn't really see him. Do you know what I mean?
Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. She implores him, "Sir, if you have taken him away tell me where you have laid him…" She sees him but she doesn't see him.
Author, Philip Yancey, tells of some history he learned while visiting "...the tip of Argentina, the region named Tierra del Fuego, ("land of fire") discovered by Magellan's sailors in 1528. They noticed fires burning on the shore. The natives tending the fires however, paid no attention to the great ships as they sailed through the straits. Later they explained that they had considered the ships an apparition, so different were they from anything seen before. They lacked the experience, even the imagination, to decode evidence passing right before their eyes."
Yancey asks, "What are we missing? What do we not see?"
What Mary could not see was her closest friend standing right in front of her. Her mind could not comprehend that Jesus was alive when she knew he was dead. She had seen him die. She had watched them take his body down from the cross. Jesus had told her and the others that he would rise again. It didn't sink in. Who could believe it? It wasn't possible.
Mary’s mind could not register that Jesus was alive until she heard him speak her name: "Mary."
What would it be like to hear your name spoken by someone you knew to be dead? Through the fog of sorrow and the drowning darkness of death, Mary heard her beloved teacher speak her name.
What can we not see? What is it that God is doing right in front of us that we cannot or will not see, that our cultural assumptions, and our basic understanding of reality in this age of science, does not allow us to see?
Fredrick Buechner suggests that "We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some subtle turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints we go on as if nothing has happened..."
