An Easter Journey: Where Is He?

John 20:1-18
Easter Sunday 2011

Have you ever tried to find Waldo? Do you know Waldo? The three-year-old in our family hasn’t graduated to Where’s Waldo? yet, but he is positively entranced by searching for Goldbug. Goldbug is a tiny yellow character hidden away in every double-page illustration in Richard Scarry’s delightful book Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Occasionally Goldbug is hidden in plain sight; but in most of the illustrations, he is only partly visible, sometimes barely visible at all. But he is always there for you to find if you have the powers of observation and the patience. “There he is!” “There he is!” “I see him!” our three-year-old shouts exuberantly when he finds him. For older kids, there’ Where’s Waldo?

Waldo is a character with brown hair wearing a red and white striped shirt, a red and white cap with a red ball on top, and round black glasses who appears—or disappears, as the case may be—in stunningly intricate two-page illustrations by British illustrator Martin Handford. If you haven’t had children in your home in the last 20 years, you may not know who Waldo is or what he looks like. But Waldo is present in every illustration, hidden in plain sight, always there for you to find if you have the powers of observation and the patience. Where is he? Can you find him?

In this morning’s familiar gospel lesson for Easter Sunday, it is Jesus of Nazareth who is the missing person. Four times in fourteen verses, the question of where Jesus is occurs in John’s account of resurrection morning. “We do not know where,” says Mary Magdalene breathlessly in verse 2 after running from the garden tomb to Peter and to John, who in turn run to the tomb to see—or not, as the case may be. “I do not know where,” she says through her tears in verse 13. “For whom are you looking?” asks the one whom Mary took for the gardener in verse 15. “Tell me where,” Mary says.

Up until resurrection morning, people who were looking for Jesus knew where to find him. In Luke 4, the crowds were able to find Jesus, even when he slipped away at daybreak to “a deserted place” (v 42). In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, the crowds take boats from the city of Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee to find Jesus in the fishing village of Capernaum (v 24). On the night he was betrayed in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to those who came for him, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me” (Mark 14:48-49). The way the gospels tell the story, whether Jesus was in the Galilee or in Jerusalem, it was not all that hard to find him. But on that first Easter morning, the enterprise of finding Jesus changed completely.

According to the gospel of John, it did not come without warning. In the seventh chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come” (vv 33-34). That set at least some in the crowd abuzz, and they “said to one another, ‘Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, “You will search for me and you will not find me” and “Where I am, you cannot come?”’” (vv 35-36). So even though the resurrection of Jesus Christ broke on the world like a cosmic curveball, the gospels insist that Jesus tipped his hand before it was thrown.

Jesus said to Martha while her brother Lazarus was still in the tomb, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25); but those worlds sounded for all the world like a metaphor or a symbol of some sort, like words that meant something other than what they said. But that is precisely the power of a metaphor or a symbol: it is and at the same time it is not the very thing of which it speaks. The communion cups were being passed around in this very room some years ago when a first-grader in big church for the Lord’s Supper for very first time watched the tray come down the pew on which he was sitting and pass him by. He looked at the tiny cup in his mother’s hand and looked up at her and asked with eyes wide, “Mommy, is that really blood?” Startled, his mother whispered, “No, of course not. It’s grape juice.” The child paused a moment and then asked, “Then why did he just say it’s blood?” “We’ll talk about that later,” the mother whispered, as she hoped that later never came. The power of the cup of salvation is that it is the precious, saving blood of Jesus Christ; and at the same time, it is as common as ordinary grape juice or table wine. For those who have experienced it, resurrection is both a symbol, a metaphor, and the very thing itself.

Listen to what novelist and non-fiction writer Anne Lamott wrote about resurrection. “People who think we Christians are idiots or delusional for our beliefs get hung up on the Good Friday part—the part where Jesus is suffering, everyone is bad, God is mad. I try not to bog down in it, though, and not because of what [comedian] Lenny Bruce said, that if Christ had been killed in the modern era, we Christians would be wearing electric-chair charms on chains around our necks. It’s because I got sober, against all odds, and then I started hanging out with people who were trying to get sober too, and over time I got to watch a number of the walking dead come back to life—as I came back to life. So I believe in the basic Christian message: that life happens, death happens and then new life happens. I believe in resurrection. So sue me. Or go read something else” (http://www.salon.com/columnists/lamott.html).

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen,” the women at the tomb were told in Luke 24:5. So, if he is not there, where is he? My middle brother loves to tell the story about his freshman year in college when he was approached by an erstwhile collegiate evangelist who confronted him with the question, “Have you found Jesus?” To which my brother says he replied, “I didn’t know he was missing. I’d be happy to help you look for him if you would like.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ means that you don’t need to go looking for Jesus on a college campus or in a deserted place or in the Galilee or in the garden of Gethsemane. The resurrection authorizes and empowers Jesus to say, “Remember, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

By the power of resurrection, the risen and living Lord is the One of whom the psalmist sings, “Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in [the Pit], you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:7-12).

By the power of resurrection, even in our darkest hour, our darkest hour of a devastating diagnosis or a terminal prognosis, even in our darkest hour of divorce or the death of a loved one or the end of a dream or the loss of everything we may have hoped for or worked for, even in that darkness, the risen and living One is present with us. Even there the hand of Christ leads us; even there the right hand of Jesus holds us fast.

If that’s not working for you right now, let me suggest that you look where Jesus said he would be. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 28:20). Jesus did not say, “Where the thousands are, you will find me.” Jesus did not say, “Look for the crowds in the hundreds, and I will be there.” Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Look where Jesus said he would be, among “the least of these” whom he calls his brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40): the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the inadequately clothed, the sick, the imprisoned. Just as you did to one of the least of these, you did to me, Jesus said. You will find me even where Anne Lamott did, among the walking dead coming back to life, together trying to get sober or together just trying to make it through the hour or the day or the week or the year of crisis, whatever the crisis might be.

The book of Colossians tells us that Christ is the “firstborn from the dead” in whom “all things hold together” (1:17-18). But the apostle Paul reminds us that the Risen and living One is every bit as present where things fall apart. In 2 Corinthians 13:4 Paul writes, “For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but . . . we will live with him by the power of God.” That’s why Paul can write, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

In her darkest hour, Mary Magdalene stood weeping in the garden until she heard him call her name. And then she “went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18). What I’m saying is that Easter means that if you have the powers of observation and the patience, and if you will put yourself where Jesus said he would be, you, too, can discover, “There he is!” “There he is!” “I see him!” “There he is!” Amen.


Photo by E. L. Malvaney, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.