Who are You Looking For?

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; John 20:1-18

On that first Easter morning, in early April of the year 33 or 34, several women steeled themselves to perform a grim task. It was Jewish custom that a dead body should be washed and mummy-wrapped in linen by women who were close to the deceased. Inside the layers of linen would be sprinkled myrrh and other spices, which would disguise the odor of decomposing flesh. You can think of it as a primitive embalming method.

Friday evening, after the death of their friend, there had not been time before the Sabbath began at sundown to do the job properly. So His body had been mummy-wrapped and lain in a tomb cut out of solid rock nearby, a tomb donated by a wealthy friend, Joseph of Arimethea, a member of the ruling council of elders in Jerusalem – Joseph’s own tomb which he had paid good money to have chipped out of the solid rock that underlies Mount Zion. And then, as the sun was going down, a huge boulder had been dropped in front of the tomb in a trench so the 2000 pound rock blocked the entrance. A guard of 4 shifts of 4 men each was placed upon the tomb and the Roman governor’s seal was placed across the entrance, announcing that any who broke the seal would incur the wrath of the powerful Roman governor, Pontus Pilate. And all of the dead man’s friends that were still around scurried home for the Sabbath.

It had been a rough day. Their leader and friend had been executed by the Romans, and a great darkness had spread across the sky, a darkness that was reported upon by the great Roman historian Suetonius, writing some 80 years later and quoting an earlier Roman historian. There was a strong earthquake that afternoon just as the man died, and so the Sabbath could not have come at a better time. The Sabbath – a time to rest and reflect, a chance to read scripture and a chance to pray with God.

The Sabbath ended Saturday evening at sundown. And so the women prepared for their visit so they could leave for the tomb at first light. They hoped to persuade the guards to allow them past the seal, to roll back the stone, and to let them accomplish their grim task, which would make them unclean because they had touched a dead body. But they loved the man, and this was something that must be done, just as today, someone must send flowers to a funeral and words must be said that are traditional, somber, and appropriate. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And so they went to the tomb.

Mary Magdalene was one of the women, but she went alone, and planned to meet the others at the tomb. Apparently Mary Magdalene could not sleep, and arrived very early in the chilly gray darkness, even before daylight. The tomb was open, no guards could be seen, and so she stopped, turned around, and ran to get Peter, the leader of the gang of followers, a strong, rash fisherman. A fisherman who a few nights before had said he would never leave the man, but who had slunk in the shadows the night of his arrest and claimed he never knew the man. The fisherman was grieving – whether more over his own actions or the death of his friend and leader, we will never know.

Peter and another disciple – probably his friend John, the man who wrote down the account of these events, they ran back to the tomb. When they got there, they looked into the tomb and discovered that the mummy wrap lay there without a body in it. Even the head wrap lay there without a mummy wrap. The wraps had not been unwrapped from the body, the wraps had not been sliced from the body, and – by the way – the head wrap was not “neatly folded”. The Greek word used means it was twisted or wrapped, not folded. No, it was as if the body had dematerialized and moved through the mummy wraps of body and of head.

Mary, very distraught, stood outside the tomb while the men investigated and then went home. She wandered around the garden area a while and then put her head into the tomb. There she saw two men who said, “Woman, why are you crying?” She told them, “Because they’ve taken my Lord and I don’t know where they’ve put Him.” You can imagine her grief – someone stole the body of the man she respected and loved more than anyone else in the entire world, the man who had freed her from the demons that formerly possessed her, the man she had seen speak to thousands. She turned away and ran into the man she thought was the gardener. He asked her the same question, “Woman, why are you crying?” And then He asked her a very important question: “Who is it you are looking for?”

In our lives, we are all looking for someone. I remember when I was three years old, my mother took me to Alden’s, a big box department store in Marietta, OH. Somewhere during the trip, I became separated from her and lost her. I thought she must have left me behind, so I went to the front of the store and then out into the dark, rainy night. I stood outside for a very long time, yelling for my mom and crying. A stranger found me in the parking lot and took me back into the store, where a woman asked me my name, and then paged my mother, who, honestly, had NOT yet missed me – I guess the whole, long-drawn traumatic experience had only taken about 5 minutes. She came to the service desk and everything was all right.

When we get older, we look for a spouse. We spend huge amounts of money making ourselves attractive to the opposite sex. We date and we date and we date some more, looking for that one person who will love us, who will spend the rest of their life with us. Unfortunately, for many people, that search doesn’t stop with a first marriage, but the search continues. A second marriage? Perhaps a third or even a fourth? Who are we looking for? Perhaps we’re looking for the wrong person.

At some time in our lives, we ask the question about ourselves. Who are we looking for in ourselves? “Who am I?” we ask ourselves, and we look long and hard to find this out, answering it in a variety of ways. Ask yourself who you are right now, and see what your answer is.

Did you define yourself by your job? Did you say, “I am a master bricklayer, the best insurance agent in town, a retired electrician, a 5th grade teacher?” Or did you define yourself by someone else? “I am Jessie’s mom, John’s wife, Sarah’s husband, Martha’s grandmother, Bill’s little brother?”

Or did you define yourself in another way. “I am nobody. I am worthless. I used to be somebody. I am a survivor. I am an alcoholic. I am lonely. I am better than those around me.”

Who is it you looking for? Why are you looking for someone?

We are all looking for someone. We look for someone because we were made to be in relationships. People were not made to live alone, one to an island, like castaways from sunken ships. People live in groups – groups of two and four and twenty. Groups of a hundred and a thousand and a hundred million. Communities are how we know who we are. Relationships help us find a place in our lives. Even the hermit on the mountain soon finds that he has adopted pets in the woods and fields around his hut. It is hard to even imagine a person who lives completely alone without even a pet mouse, or a family of plants to care for, for we are so completely defined by our relationships that it is the most important question in your life. Who is it you are looking for?

Mary thought she knew. She thought the man she was talking to was the gardener, and in those days a woman shouldn’t be talking to a man, so keeping her eyes down, turning slightly away from him, bending her head down so he would not get the wrong idea she mustered up courage and so she asked Him, referring to the body of her Lord and Teacher, ““Sir, if you’ve removed Him, tell me where you’ve put Him, and I will take Him away.”

Even in death, this most important relationship in her life kept Mary going. Even though she knew that He was dead, her relationship with Him meant that she was going to suffer great hardship, do all sorts of things a person should not have to do, and she was willing to do all those things because she had never, ever met anyone – or anything – that meant as much to her as her relationship with this man.

”16 Jesus said, “Mary.

She whirled around “RABBI!” she responded and she must have clutched at Him, for He said, ““Don’t cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to My brothers and tell them that I am ascending to My Father and your Father—to My God and your God.”

Mary, you see, had found the One that she was looking for.

She had found the One who loved her, she had found the One who had the power to protect her, she had found the One who could comfort her, she had found the One who would always, always be there for her. She had found the One who gave her life meaning, she had found the One who was never dull, she had found the One who could make her laugh and the One who gave her joy and hope and peace. In this relationship, she found the answer to her life’s journey. In this relationship all the hurts of her life were healed. In this relationship, she found she could gain the strength for all of her other relationships. Here was the One who defined her, who answered all of her other questions: Purpose, meaning, her ultimate destination.

And this is the Jesus Christ we talk about and introduce people to even this morning here in this building. Our fellowship is not about the person sitting beside you or the woman two rows back ,or about what the man three rows up on the other side thinks about you. Our fellowship is not about each other and how we treat each other. Our fellowship is not about our friendships, although we have great friendships. Our fellowship is about our individual and group relationships with this Man, the man who God raised from the dead, and what He taught us.

Because that Man, you see, was more than a Man. As He walked around on this planet, He taught us with great wisdom – turn the other cheek seventy-times seven times, love your neighbor as yourself, pray for your enemies, give the man who wants your cloak your shirt also. He showed us that all people are loved by God, no matter how much society looks down upon them. He told us and showed us how deep that love was when He told His followers what would happen that terrible night that He was arrested, tried, and eventually executed. He told His followers about this in plenty of time for Him to leave town – but He didn’t leave town.

While He taught us, He performed miracles, miracles that everyone recognized were miracles. He turned water into wine, walked across a lake, chased demons out of people, healed the blind and the lame and the deaf, and brought several people back from death. Not merely people who might have fainted, but at least one man who had died and been put in the tomb for four days. His miracles are written down right beside his teachings. They are inseparable. If you want one, you also get the other.

And He claimed to be God. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. Over and over Jesus made a claim of divinity – He claimed to be able to forgive sins and everyone around said, “Who is this? Only God can forgive sins.” He claimed to have been alive at the same time as David a thousand years before – the crowd picked up rocks to stone Him for claiming this divinity. He said, “I and the Father are one” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”, and when asked if He was the Messiah, the Son of God, he answered, referring to Himself: “ From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” And the council voted to convict him of the crime of claiming to be God.

And so, this Man that Mary sought and found, this Man that a billion other people have sought and found, this Man that you are seeking, was not just a wise Man, but was actually God walking upon the earth, for God endorsed everything that Jesus said when God raised Jesus from the dead. And because of that endorsement, we can believe Jesus when He says that those who follow Him will have eternal life.

This is the Man that we all have been looking for – the Son of God, God Himself, our Creator in a human body, walking among us, teaching us, and giving us hope that one day, all will be made right. The One we have been looking for is waiting, ready, ready to speak to you, to walk with you in the Garden the same way He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, and the same way that He walked with Mary in a different Garden.

For He is indeed the Gardener, and is the Owner of the Garden, and put us in His Garden for His enjoyment. And one day, those of us who follow Him, who look upon Him as our leader and master, who have become friends with Him, will walk in a new Garden with Him in a New Jerusalem, a city of light and hope, a city overflowing with the Tree of Life, a city where the gates are always open because there is no fear.

We will be there one day, because this Man that we have been looking for has promised us eternal life. And so we shall live forever, leaving behind in our distant memories the things of this world, barely remembered, as dimly as childhood fears of being left behind. For we have found the One we are looking for, and everything is all right.