Good morning…
I just got up from my morning ritual of quiet time with God and my open Bible, a random pen and my current journal. For my spiritual direction training program, our cohort of classmates has been walking slowly through Larry Warner’s book Journey with Jesus, an adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Exercises written to help us “enter into a holistic, life-transforming journey toward Christlikeness.” (9) This morning, we opened our Bibles to Luke 24 which chronicles the happenings on the first day of the week following Jesus’ death on the cross.
It was very early in the morning. A handful of women who loved Jesus dearly gathered to take spices to the tomb to care of his dead body. When they arrived, they found the stone at the entrance of the cave mysteriously rolled away, and when they rushed into the tomb they could not find Jesus’ body. They stood there dumbfounded, saddened, scared, shocked. “What is up?” “Where is Jesus?” “Where is the body of our beloved friend?” We pick up the story in verses 4-11.
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with 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; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Have you ever experienced the same sudden drop from a spiritual mountaintop? You see, you hear, you touch God in a brand new way. It is amazing, profound, life-changing, and you can not wait to run back to tell the people you love, to share your belief, to transform their lives too with this tremendous truth. Then “Wham!” The words you share sound like nonsense to them. What you saw, nonsense. What you heard, nonsense. What you felt and touched and experienced, nonsense. All of your transformational truth, nonsense. Your powerful passion is pooh-poohed.
Then we read in verse 12. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
This scripture is a sweet gift to me this morning. I experienced a very challenging conversation about faith last night with two people I dearly love. Weirdly, the words we exchanged sounded like nonsense to each other. How can the dynamic dialogue between three faithful people feel like nonsense? The powerful passion of each person’s perspective somehow felt pitifully pooh-poohed. I went to bed feeling like we all had fallen off the side of a spiritual mountaintop and landed in different spots.
Then I woke to my book’s assigned scripture this morning. God met me. God encouraged me. God said, “Sue, get up and run to the tomb. Bend over. See the strips of linen lying by themselves. Then go away, spending the rest of your day, the rest of your week, the rest of your life wondering to yourself what truly happened.”
When we look for the living One in our living room, we wonder to ourselves, “What really happened?” And maybe a Peter will plop down on our couch, and, because God chooses to use our truth-telling, that Peter will get up and run to the tomb, bend over and see the linen strips, then go away and wonder to himself, “What really happened?”
…Sue…
