Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, April 3, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
And here is Mary again. She was at the tomb. She saw the man in the white robe. She fled, terrified, with Jesus’ mother and Salome and between the three of them, they said nothing. Then, when she was presumably alone, Jesus was there with her. We don’t know, from this account, what was said, or if he even spoke to her. It doesn’t seem as though maybe she caught him in a crowd somewhere. Or just thought she saw him somewhere. The use of the words “appeared to” indicate that he wasn’t there, and then he was, whether it was instantly materializing or if he just came around a corner and met her. Do those details matter? Only to our modern, too-many-crime-scene-investigation-show-watching minds. The only thing that matters is that there was an encounter, and a woman who loved and was deeply grateful to Jesus was convinced that Jesus had, in fact, risen as the man in white had said.
Yet no matter how convinced she was, she failed to convince anyone else. Not only did the others not believe it, they “would” not believe it.
How often do we face the same sort of obstacles in our own lives? How often have we tried to express a spiritual experience of one sort of another and been met with skepticism even by those who love God as much as we do—even those who are desperate for a sign, like the mourning and weeping disciples? How often have we ourselves been the skeptics, secretly rolling our eyes when others tell us of their faith lives, even in moments where such testimony is so needed?
Of course we would all like proof. Of course we would all like to see his hands and his side for ourselves, and have it proven by whatever scientific standards we might require. Perhaps we need to let go of our need to control—to judge truth by some artificial standard of our own making—and open our minds and our hearts to what the people around us are saying.
When have I been inspired to faith by the least likely source?
