Every week our church has communion.

And every communion, we hear the Memorial Acclamation:

Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.

That covers the crucifixion, which was Friday; the resurrection, which is today, and the second advent, which is yet to come. So we can become accustomed to the story that Jesus died but rose from the dead, and we can forget what it must have been like for those who were closest to him.

They believed he was the anointed one, the messiah.
They saw miracles and healing.
They heard a message of love.

And then the government, at the urging of some religious leaders, publicly executed him.

The lost a teacher.
They lost a movement.
They lost a friend.
They lost hope.

And then they lost the body.

The stone had been removed. The body was not there, but the linen wrappings were, as well as the cloth that was on the head.

You might think that, after all that had just happened, they would not be much more upset by the body going missing. But think about a time when you were under a lot of stress, and then one relatively minor thing pushed you past the breaking point.

That’s what happened to Mary of Magdala.

She was bearing up well enough to go visit the tomb shortly after Jesus was crucified. She may have been in shock. But she was still functioning.

And then the body was missing, and it was too much.

She was weeping outside the tomb when she sees two figures inside the tomb, and they ask why she is crying.

She doesn’t answer that Jesus was crucified.
She doesn’t answer that the movement had ended.
She answered that the body was missing. That was the trigger.

That was, as they say, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And then she saw someone she didn’t recognize…

…until he calls her by name.

She doesn’t recognize Jesus by his appearance. She recognizes Jesus because he recognizes her.

There are phrases like “we are the hands and feet of Jesus until he comes again.” They can come a little too easily sometimes.

But if people will see Jesus in us, it won’t be because we look like Jesus:
not light-skinned, flowing blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus with a Roman nose,
and not olive-skinned, curly dark-haired, dark-eyed Jesus.

It will be because we recognize them.

We may not know their names, but we will see them as they are, as they know they are, as whole, real people with real human problems, just like all humans have. And people will recognize the Jesus in us when we legitimately love them.

And we can love people when we recognize the Jesus in them: the Jesus who said that the way we treat the hungry and the naked, and the sick, and imprisoned, is the way we treat him.

Instead of looking for Jesus to arrive from a long way off in space, we can look for Jesus in the people around us, and can be Jesus to them as well.

That’s the way that, even today, we can have our seeing Jesus moments.

Amen.

Let’s sing NCH 181 You Are Salt for the Earth, O People

* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue

* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.