Introduction:
There are times when we do not feel 'at home'. On visiting a refugee camp, for example, an aid worker will find people suffering and in their eyes will likely see pain, humiliation, disappointment, anger. No matter how caring the aid worker is, can a refugee ever feel 'at home' in such an environment? Probably not! Throughout the world authorities find that when people don't feel at 'home', when people don't feel welcomed or safe, they will generally try to move to a different place hoping for a better life. This, unfortunately, often means more of the same again!
Jesus was homeless
Not long after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph felt very vulnerable and, guided by an angel, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt until the danger from Herod was over. At his birth, Jesus experienced the power of sin and its consequences to interfere and ruin people's lives. As a young child he would have picked up his parents' stress and unsettledness. As a grown up Jesus also experienced some of these feelings, for example, he was not welcome in Nazareth where he had been brought up and, He would sometimes talk about birds and foxes having nests and holes to call home and yet Jesus himself had no place to lay his head that he could call home.
Jesus was not welcomed
John's Gospel (Chapter 6:66) tells us that many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him because they found his teaching too hard to take! Through the days before his crucifixion Jesus definitely experienced being unwelcome, lonely and threatened, except this time there was not going to be an escape route to Egypt! In Judas' suicide we see powerfully the consequences of the power and darkness of sin to interfere and ruin peoples lives. If Jesus found it so hard to feel 'welcome and wanted' during his life then we might as well ask what hope do we have of doing any better?
Dead-end or life-line
You might also be wondering why am I being a prophet of doom on Easter Sunday when it is meant to be a very happy hour not a depressing one! The point is that, soon enough, Easter and the celebrations will be over and then what? Well, there's a quote which says Rather than death being a dead-end to life, Christ reverses that for his people into a life-line. Isn't that wonderful news? To the lonely, disappointed, abused or persecuted? When Mary and Joseph heard that they must escape into Egypt they may have wondered what kind of help that was, to move yet again, into the unknown? But had they ignored God's voice they might have experienced a dead-end but obeying God's Spirit, however strange the request was, meant that they received a life-line. We can take courage that however vulnerable, lonely or unwelcome we feel in this world - specially because we follow him - we are comforted by the fact that Jesus is now preparing a place we will be able to call home for the rest of eternity. There's more to life than a dead-end! There's a life-line found in Jesus! How do we know? because Jesus came back for us! He didn't leave us as sheep without a shepherd!
Mary's life-lineMary of Magdala was one of the women who found out that Jesus was alive. When she realized death had not held Jesus she began to understand all that Jesus had ever said and that it had all turned out to be true! Things like... whoever hears my words and believes has eternal life and has crossed over from death to life. In today's Bible Reading in John 20 the voice of the risen Jesus brings comfort to Mary, amazing comfort because she now knows for certain that her faith has been based in a powerful, real and living God! Powerful because her sin put his body to death but God's Spirit made him alive again! Mary had not only seen the Lord but she had also experienced something profound.
Romans 10:9 says that... if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead ..then you will be saved! This woman Mary, who had experienced so much sin in her life, who was suffering the consequences of that darkness still threatening to ruin her life for ever, had now found salvation! She does not say much in this reading but I am interested in what she does not say. If, when it came to it, Mary was not going to accept that it was Jesus risen from dead who stood in front of her, she would not have called him Jesus but she recognized him. She gave him his respectful place. Rabboni. Yes, she had not only seen him but she had now accepted him.
Your Life-line
You know what's exciting about all this? that anyone who receives Christ into their lives will receive power to become what God has in mind for them! That's mind - blowing. Are you currently finding out what God has in mind for you because whatever it is, it will be mind-blowing! From my own experience of God and from the witness of so many other followers of Jesus it will be better than anything you might be sorting out or planning for yourself. God helps you follow him and will help you obey some of the seemingly crazy things he might ask you to do.
Who will otherwise turn your fear into courage? Your despair into hope? Your weakness into triumph? Can you find these things elsewhere?
Let's look at Mary of Magdala's experience of the risen Lord. She now had to go and tell everyone that she had seen the Lord. Surely that was a crazy command from Jesus! Indeed when she did tell the other disciples, they had the cheek to ask her if she had been drowning her sorrows and gotten drunk! In fact, her testimony , became extremely effective because she had met the now risen Jesus. Her once weak testimony now became a persuasive one and a tremendous change could be seen in her. A woman who for years had not felt 'at home' in her own town, amongst men, uncomfortable in the presence of the church authorities, now feels very much at 'at home' and instead of standing at a dead-end she stands ready to give her life to her Saviour in devotion, commitment and service. It seems that we can live on earth and feel 'at home' after all. It is good with God's Spirit at our side, following the example of Jesus and faithfully showing the effects of the risen Lord in our lives. Amazing stuff!
Conclusion:
As we go out from this hall let us go determined to show that effect in our lives-having met the risen Lord today why not share our profound experience of him with those around us who do not feel 'at home' anywhere. For a variety of reasons they don't fit in at school, at work, socially inept. Families, children, youths, individuals who show in their eyes sadness, humiliation, terror in some cases. We are in a privileged position of bringing to them our witness just as Mary did after meeting her Saviour. Will you? Will you be the hands, the lips, the feet of Jesus and like him and Mary and countless followers ever since be there for the unwanted? Not easy is it? we find it easier to judge their behaviour, we easily loose patience with them or give up on them as the losers of life. What did Jesus do for them? He came back.
Let's sing about showing by works of power - through God's Spirit - that Jesus is Lord!
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