Until He Called My Name

There is something terribly sad about this story. Recognizing the pain and sadness of Christ's suffering, has led the church to struggle with one of the Great theological mysteries: Why did Christ have to die?

In the Middle Ages the emphasis was on the atonement, the idea that God who was justifiably angry, had to be appeased. The idea is that all the people were sinning against God, and God demanded "Somebody's gonna pay for this!"

But does a god who cannot or will not forgive until he is bribed with some sacrificial offering sound like the God we know? Are we talking about the same God who took human form and suffered for our sins, the same God who weeps for his people whenever they stray, who searches through the dark night for every lost lamb. That doesn't seem to make any sense.

Later, the church, perhaps influenced by Eastern philosophies, began to talk about the atonement as being necessary because of some preset law of nature that required a price be paid, something like one of the laws Newton discovered - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Where there is sin, there must be an atonement, a payment made as a countervailing force. This law, they theorized, was set up by God in the beginning (when God set up the laws of physics, like gravity) and God could not or would not suspend that law.

But why not? After all, when Christ rose from the dead the law of death was changed forever. Surely the all-powerful God of creation, could revoke a law of retribution at any time. With just a word. "Let there be light" - "Let there be forgiveness." But if that's the case, why did Jesus need to suffer? Why put the disciples through this grief?

There is only one explanation that makes sense to me. Of course it's not the only explanation, but it's the one that I can understand: I believe that God chose to suffer and die and rise from the dead in order to show us something: in order to show us how much we were loved, to show us how far that love was willing to go, in order to get our attention, in order to reveal God's nature to us.

Of course, you still have to wonder, wasn't there an easier way to do that? Couldn't God have just appeared on a mountaintop somewhere and said, "I love you. No matter what. You are forgiven."

I'd like to think, that would be enough, I'd like to think, that I would gratefully accept that message. But then, Peter thought that he would never deny the master whom he loved so much. Apparently it takes all of this to get the message through to us.

Consider the disciples on Easter morning. These people had followed Jesus for three years. They had seen his miracles, heard his teaching, they had read and studied the prophets including Isaiah who talked about the Suffering Servant who would be despised and rejected. And on top of all that, on numerous occasions, Jesus, the master whom they loved and trusted, had told them that he would have to suffer and die, and then be resurrected. He told them again and again; he told them in plain language; he spoke often of his death. And yet on Easter morning, they still did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

The gospel writers all draw the same picture: The disciples are shocked and bewildered by Jesus' arrest. The disciples are terrified by his trial The disciples are deeply grieved by his death They are confused and scattered, uncertain where to turn, what to do now. They are wholly unprepared for a risen Lord.

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb on Easter morning. In her deep shock and grief she is terrified to find the stone has been rolled away. She doesn't even look inside. She runs to get Peter and John.

She assumes that someone has stolen his body - perhaps the Jewish leaders have removed his body so that there will be no rallying place for his disciples to gather, no place where they might come together in mourning and have their grief turn to anger, no place where an assembly of mourners might turn into an angry mob. Or perhaps common grave robbers have stolen the body, looking for any wealth that might have been buried with him.

After Peter and John leave, she sits by the empty tomb, crying. She clearly doesn't see the empty tomb as a sign that he has risen from the dead even though he raised Lazarus from the dead, even though he has told those close to him to expect a resurrection.

While she is crying, she bends over to look into the tomb. Is she checking to see if it's true? Is she not even sure that the tomb is really empty? When she sees two angels inside the tomb, she doesn't even seem to be surprised! She doesn't ask, where did you come from? How did you get in there? Instead what she says to them shows that she is still certain that Jesus is dead. "They have taken away my Lord and I don't know where they have laid him." In her mind, she sees Jesus only as a cold dead body.

So it's hardly surprising that when she turns around and sees him standing behind her, she doesn't recognize him. She assumes he is the gardener, the groundskeeper and hopes that he knows where Jesus' body has been carried. Even when he speaks to her asking "Why are you weeping?" she still does not recognize him. Even though this is the teacher she loves, the one who first loved her, loved her when she was unlovable.

Only when he speaks her name, does she finally understand and accept the truth.

Finally, she understands and is filled with the incredible joy!

God wants each of us to have a moment like that, to understand and accept this truth: that God loves us - more than we can imagine loving anyone, enough to come down from heaven and meet us where we live, enough to search for us when we hide from him, enough to forgive us, enough to suffer and die for us.

But we are hard to reach. God tried appearing on the mountaintop, but we didn't understand the message.
God tried telling us he loved us through all of the prophets, but we didn't believe it.
God tried telling us through Jesus' preaching, that he was forgiving and loving and always ready to welcome us home, but the message was so unbelievable that we rejected it and the messenger.

But God is so determined to get that message through to us, no matter what it takes, that he suffered and died to show us how far he would go to prove his love Then he rose from death to show us that nothing can defeat that love - not even our total rejection of him.

And then he calls us each by name so that no matter how blinded we are - blinded by sin or grief or our own self-loathing - no matter how blind, we will finally understand.

This is the good news:

This is a message none of us could understand, until and unless the risen Lord called us by name.

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