Seek and be found

This year I found what is now my favorite Easter card. It shows a woman running excitedly downhill from the empty tomb, shouting to a male disciple: ‘For the tomb is empty! We must bake a lovely spiral ham!’

We all come to the empty tomb and see something different, it seems. We’re all looking, but we don’t always know what we’re looking for.

In the garden, in the cool of the early morning, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, Whom are you looking for?

This question repeats throughout the Gospel of John. Jesus asks it of his first disciples at the very beginning of his ministry. Later in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks it of the soldiers who come to arrest him. He answers the question too: I am he – or I Am, the name that God claimed with Moses in the early days of Israel. And now the risen Jesus stands before Mary Magdalene. And he asks her, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?

So the same question that sought us out on Good Friday seeks us out today. Whom are you looking for? What do you seek? We’re drawn here on Easter morning, looking for joy, love, light. Each of us longs for something to connect to outside of ourselves. But we might not yet see that Jesus, the challenging, self-giving Jesus of the gospel stories, is what we’re looking for.

So many of the people around Jesus look at him and see something else – a king, a buddy, a miracle worker, a criminal. Mary Magdalene, too, is looking for someone else. She is in the garden looking for her friend, her rabbi, who is dead – she’s looking for the body of one she has already lost, is already grieving. So when Jesus approaches and addresses her, and she turns around to talk to him, she doesn’t see what she is looking for. Only when he calls her name are her eyes opened to see the one who is so different from what she expected. He is not just the one she has lost. The resurrection has happened, and now Jesus finally and fully shows who he has been all along: one who knows her, and who calls her by name. One who loves her beyond all measure, and who is ready to lead her and all of us into abundant life.

I saw a description of a medical case from over a century ago, surgery that gave sight to a boy who was born blind. When the doctors took the bandages off and waved a hand in front of him, asking, ‘What do you see?’ the boy replied, ‘I don’t know.’ Because he didn’t – all he saw were bewildering shapes and shadows. He had never seen, so his mind didn’t know how to process the new set of information his eyes were receiving. Although the boy now had the power to see, he still had to learn how to see. ‘To give back sight to a congenitally blind person,’ the surgeon said, ‘is more the work of an educator than of a surgeon.’ Light was there to be seen – but the boy couldn’t see it until his brain learned to understand what that light was.

Perhaps that goes some way toward explaining why we don’t always see what is right in front of us.

Peter and John also see the empty tomb that morning, but they don’t see Jesus. They come because Mary calls them, racing each other to get there first. One at a time, they look in the tomb, and see that it is empty, that the graveclothes are lying there. And then they both turn around and go back home.

Yet Mary sees the angels in the tomb, and she sees Jesus. Why?

Perhaps it’s because Mary Magdalene had been healed by Jesus. He had saved her life, freed her from seven demons, from the powers of darkness that held her captive. She knows in her very being that he has the power of life.

Or maybe it’s because as a woman, Mary was always on the outside of the group. She has no power and leadership in the world as it is. But she knows from Jesus a love she has never felt before from anyone, and so she will know him anywhere.

Or maybe it’s simply because she stayed. She stayed at the cross when most of the disciples fled, keeping vigil until Jesus was dead. She stayed and saw the worst that could happen – looking squarely at the torture and death of her beloved Lord on the cross. And now, two days later, she stays at the tomb. She lingers long enough to see the whole beautiful, wonderful truth.

So here we are, coming to see for ourselves. We’re looking for something too, for love, for signs of new life, for God. Maybe we see it on this lovely morning, with the flowers and the hats and the happy people. But Easter Sunday is just one day – once we go back into the rest of life, we might find it harder to see God at work in the world around us. We suffer illness and old age, broken families and uncertain futures. We see around us war and violence; people standing in lines for food; families torn apart by deportation; the waste of creation. We don’t have to look very hard to see all of this in our own lives and in our own community, even here in beautiful Pauma Valley. We could see all of it and just turn away, seek instead whatever distraction is closest to hand.

But perhaps we might linger there, as Mary does, to look squarely at all of that suffering around us, how we crucify ourselves and creation over and over again. And as we look, we might remember what Jesus told us. That he calls us to love one another and to love our enemies; that he tells us not to be afraid; that he calls us to serve one another and bring peace and mercy to this world. We remember that God is faithful, and Jesus is with us, even to the end of the age. We remember these words from scripture, in our worship and music; these words we hear repeated to us in the life of a faith community. These words form us, educate us, shape us to understand what we are seeking.

And all the time that we are seeking, God is looking for us – looking at us, standing there and waiting, knowing us through and through. Slowly educating us to learn to see and recognize his love. And when we are ready to hear, in the midst of our grief and fear and broken dreams, God calls us by name. In unexpected form, in voices unheard, around a corner we have never looked before, God is there – knowing us, loving us, opening our eyes. Greater than what we were looking for; a whole lot different than what we could make up on our own. God sees us – sees all of us – and loves us utterly.

Wherever you are in your seeking, you are welcome here today. Whether you have heard and known for years the voice of Life who calls you by name; or whether you are responding only now to the slightest stirring, a nudge from within you or from someone you love; you are welcome. We are all in the end looking for the same thing. We are looking for the One who is looking for us. Seek, and you will find; and be found, and known, and loved, always.

Whom are you looking for? God says. I am, here on the altar, and in the midst of the suffering world around us. Here in your heart and there at the furthest corners of existence. New life springs forth again and again, for every one of us. Like Mary, Jesus tells us to go and share this good news. May God call you in new ways this Eastertide, and may you see and know whom you seek. Amen.