But this time I saw something new (to me) in these familiar passages.
Confusion.
Imagine the confusion felt by those closest to Jesus after His death.
Think of Mary, mother of Jesus, for example. An angel had come to Mary many years before, telling her: Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:28-33).
Mary believed all this. She trusted. She followed. Her Son would be great . . . He would reign forever . . . His kingdom would never end.
But then Jesus was beaten, degraded, humiliated, murdered. Gone.
Imagine the despair.
Imagine the CONFUSION.
If Jesus was dead, what did that mean about all she had believed? It must have seemed like a contradiction to everything she had trusted and lived out of for so long.
I always thought the tears of the disciples and the women were tears of sadness. I never realized their tears must also have been tears of frightened confusion.
The confusion was so great that after Jesus had risen, when He appeared to Mary Magdalene, she did not even recognize Him: At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus (John 20:14).
And the disciples: They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead (John 20:9).
In their minds, this was the end.
If only they had known.
But they didn't know. And what a beautiful and perfect example that is for us today.
Our understanding is so small. Our pain is amplified and we are made frantic by our confusion. And in this way, our fragile faith is tested to its very limits.
These days, as I shed my own tears of confusion and despair, I can rest and know the pain and loss I am experiencing is not a contradiction to the steps I've taken in the past year under the conviction that I was following Him.
Even if I can't yet make sense of it, I know God is at work for a greater purpose.
What I have thought of as the end is really the beginning.
And the day will most certainly come when I will arrive at the tomb only to find it empty, to hear the gentle voice of my Savior . . . and all will be made clear.
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Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"
"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."
Jesus said to her, "Mary."
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).
Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.
---John 20:1-18
