Devotional Messages

Luke 24:1-5 – But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.  They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.  While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.  The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.” (NRSV)

It’s a pretty provocative question:  Why do you look for the living among the dead?  When I was young, if I’d lost something, my mother always told me to think about where I was when I last had it and go look there.  So, in a sense, it’s perfectly reasonable for Mary and the other women to look for Jesus in his tomb.  But he wasn’t there.

It turns out Jesus is a living thing; he’s always moving, one step ahead of us, inviting us to follow him into the wild world in need of healing.  Yet how many times have we insisted on looking for him in the last place we saw him, in the place we’d prefer he’d stay, in the predictable location where it seems he ought to be?  When we start expecting Jesus to do the predictable thing, the same thing he did last time, it may be our faith that’s the dead place where he’s not to be found.

It’s hard to experience resurrection when we’re stuck in the past.  It’s hard to experience resurrection if we’re resistant to change or afraid to try new things.  Jesus is so often out in front, moving on to the next thing.  If we’re trying to cultivate new life, we need to be prepared for New Life to blossom.  It takes a while to get used to, but if we can open our hearts to God’s power like the early disciples, we’ll get there.

Collect for the Week:  God of New Life, whose angels greet us commanding “Fear Not!”, grant that we might be bold in our search for Jesus, that we may follow wherever you lead us.  Through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit, Amen.