Sharon Smith, Maria Bellamy, Brittany Nicholson, Allison Quillin, Amanda Smith
Devotional Plan for: Week of May 10 - May 16
The Gospel of John and Frederick Dale Bruner's The Gospel of John: A Commentary, were the primary resources used by our Pastoral Team this week.
Monday - Read John 20:1 – 20:18
John 20:1 – 20:18 FDB: "Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, while it was still dark outside, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and sees the stone taken away from (the front of) the tomb. So she runs and comes to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and she says to them, 'They've taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they've put him!' So Peter and the other disciple set out and were making their way to the tomb. The two of them were running together, and the other disciple outran Peter, running faster, and got to the tomb first. And stooping down and looking in, he sees the grave wrappings resting there, but he did not go in. Then Peter arrives too (following the other disciple), and went right inside the tomb; he sees the linen wrappings resting there and, in addition, the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not resting with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. So then the other disciple (who had gotten to the tomb first) went in; and he looked — and he believed. You see, they were not yet acquainted with the Scripture that said he had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their places again.
But Mary stayed right there, just outside the tomb, crying and crying. Then as she was crying, she stooped down and looked inside the tomb herself, and she sees two angelic figures sitting there, dressed in white, at the head and at the foot of the space where Jesus' body had been placed. And they say to her, 'Woman, why are you crying?' She says to them, 'They've taken my Lord away, and I don't know where they've put him.' "When she said this, she turned around again, and now she is looking right at Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it is Jesus. Jesus says to her, 'Woman, why are you crying? For whom are you looking?' She, thinking he is the gardener, says to him, 'Sir, if you have taken him away, please tell me where you have put him so that I can come and get him.' Jesus says to her, 'Mariam!' She turned around and says to him in Hebrew, 'Rabbouni!' (which means 'My Teacher!'). Jesus says to her, 'Please do not keep holding on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But do this: Go tell my brothers, "I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God!"' Mary Magdalene comes, and announces to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord!' and that he had told her these things."
How long do you hold onto faith in dark times? Christians are often spurned as "unreasonable" people, blindly believing that which they have no evidence for. Oftentimes, Christians come by this reputation deservingly; we act as if we believe in Jesus despite the fact that there is no evidence.
Mary Magdalene, in this passage, displays unbelievable Christian faith, but it wasn't unreasonable. She had come to believe Jesus of Nazareth was a special man, tasked by God to be the Messiah, savior of the world. She not only heard compelling teachings and unfathomable wisdom, but also saw his authority over the world through healing many people or having insight into someone's life without having met them before. Mary saw evidence that Jesus was Messiah, and so she put her trust, or faith, in him.
But, he dies. Men had come before Jesus and claimed to be Messiah, so perhaps he was one of them. Mary, though, had seen too much. She saw the undeniable God-given power of Jesus, and so she hangs on to some sort of hope. Notice that Jesus is absolutely and definitively dead, buried in a tomb, yet she arrives at the tomb early in the morning three days after his death. What must have been going through her head? Sh
