So I write now because I had a thought and I have had lot's of thoughts about lot's of different blog ideas of the past weeks but this one struck me and I knew if I didn't write now I wouldn't write it. So I am looking for the sermon image for the contemporary service on Sunday morning (for those of you who might for whatever reason not know Sunday is Easter). Pastor Tom is preaching on Matthew 28:1-10 when Mary and Mary go to the garden and find the tomb is empty and Jesus' body is gone. My goal in these sermon graphics is to get something that illustrates the point of his sermon with out being uberly cheesy and this week unfortunately is a toughie.
So I begin at the beginning looking for a graphic of an empty tomb and don't get me wrong there are LOTS of them to choose from but none of them look real. I mean don't get me wrong most of the images that I am looking at are photographs taken of real places or structures that have been built but there is always something off to me or something that looks like it has been greatly photoshopped to make it more "glowy" (that's a theological term, right?). So I move on.
Image search after imager search, and I keep slightly changing the parameters, angel in the garden brings up, you guessed it tiny baby concrete cherubs that are meant to keep the squirrels and armadillos and rattlesnakes company amongst your flowers, so ehhhhh (that was a buzzer sound if you didn't catch on.)
So finally after several tries I put in "Mary Magdalene tomb" now this pulls up a good deal of rather promising looking images. A lot of them are paintings or other works of art that depict a man in a flowy (another great theological term eh?) white robe, and a woman on bended knee it's all kind of flowers and puppy dogs kind of images, you know what I mean really idealized.
But I begin to think at every image I look at, this man looks surprisingly like Jesus. Yes, I do know what Jesus looks like, what I haven't told all of you is an ancient seminary secret we got to see a real photo of Jesus!!! Ok just kidding but each of these images depicts this man in the white clothes as that traditional image of Jesus long brown hair, beard, just really obviously supposed to be Jesus. I think every church has a copy of this picture somewhere.
So I'm thinking didn't Mary Magdalene not know she was talking to Jesus? I mean clearly this man is Jesus, duh. So I just did a little research to check out my Bible memory, in the Matthew version of the empty tomb (which is what I am trying to represent) an angel tells Mary that Jesus is not there and they fled from the tomb quickly. I seem to want to think that I was always taught this was Jesus they just didn't recognize Him, but I think it is just my blending together of the gospel accounts. In Mark we get pretty much the same story as we get in Matthew but in Luke we get the angel and we get them not recognizing Jesus at first.
For me, in these pictures at least, it was really easy to spot that that man, was Jesus. I don't know about you but I pretty much can recognize all of my friends by they're looks, but I don't know none of them have ever died and come back to life before. All of this to say how did his disciples and closest followers not recognize Him at first? It's difficult for me to believe although those disciples were pretty dense, Jesus kept saying he was the Son of God but they had trouble grasping that one too.
So I wonder, do we/would we/ could we recognize the face of Jesus if he appeared in front of us today? Would I turn away in disbelief if the Son of God approached me? I am now in the ranks of His faithful followers dedicating my life and my purpose to teaching others about Him and His teaching of God's love for us, and this weekend especially remembering his gift to us of death and resurrection, but are my eyes open enough to see Him living in this world? I pray that my eyes might be open wide enough that I would not be blinded by fear, unbelief, or hurriedness that I don't see what is right in front of my face.
I hope that this weekend as you remember the Last Supper, the crucfixion and finally the resurrection you have a chance to fellowship with God, mourn the loss of Jesus, and celebrate the gift of love we were given on Easter morning!
No comments:
Post a Comment