Are you still looking?

“How very beautiful it is the first person on earth to see Jesus after his Resurrection does so through tears.  And perhaps it’s the tears-or perhaps it’s the twilight or simply the impossibility of the reality and the fact that she’s been seeing his face everywhere anyway all weekend-but when Mary first sees the Lord, she mistakes him for a gardner!  This moment alone makes me want to follow Christ for the rest of my life (I’m weeping as I type). How can we fail to love such a Lord?  Here is the alpha and omega, creator of the rolling spheres, the one whose resurrection from the dead heralds the bright dawning of a new dispensation.  The Earth is quiet as Angels worship, but he himself is mistaken for a humble, bumbling horticulturalist with dirt beneath his fingernails at the start of a working day.”

“The first words of the new covenant are a question.  Not an announcement, not an answer, but a quietly considered question addressed to a weeping woman: “Why,” Jesus wants to know, “are you weeping?” and for anyone like Mary, anyone like you and me, who is churning through the darkness of Maundy Thursday and the despair of Good Friday to reach this garden tomb, it’s a stupid question.  But it’s also a profound question and, with hindsight, even a funny one, too.” (Pete Greig in God on Mute)

Today as we celebrate the life our savior has given us we don’t have a need to weep. He doesn’t want us to live with guilt or shame for our sin and brokenness. Christ freely offered his life as gift to us. That gift is offered with more love than you could find anywhere else. Today there is new life, new hope, and great rejoicing.

Are you ready to stop weeping, waiting, and regretting? Are you still looking for a savior or mistaking him for a humble gardner? Christ stands before us today, no longer dead on a cross, but alive and offering new life to us. Receive that gift and let its goodness transform you and your life in new ways.