We’ve just been focusing on the tumultuous events of Holy Week. We considered the disciples’ confusion and despair as the week came to a close with Jesus’ death on the cross. That was followed by the equally cataclysmic event of all events, the not-experienced, (not even anticipated!), resurrection of Jesus! The disciples were astounded at the news that he was alive again just as he had told them – Jesus, the Messiah, their Lord and Master, had risen to life again!
Now that a new chapter had begun, indeed, a new age for these men Jesus had chosen, the big, burning question must have been something like, ‘What now?’ or ‘What will our relationship with Jesus be like?’ even, “After our failure to support him, will he really want us?’ That first day seeing Jesus must have been massively disorienting, so soon after the unthinkable things they’d seen and heard and lived through the previous week!
At the very outset, Day One of this new era, Jesus chose Mary Magdalene as the first one to receive his reassurance. She may have been the most fragile of them all and in need of that encounter to dispel any fears of abandonment the Enemy would attempt to re-plant in her heart. More than that, though, Jesus was displaying the unchangeable, compassionate, character of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Fittingly, in the First Nations Version of the New Testament, the name for Jesus is ‘Creator Sets Free.’ Beautiful! So plainly descriptive of Who he is and what he has done. Everyone, without exception, who knows Jesus and is striving to live for him, has been miraculously rescued, set free, by the Creator, Jesus, the Son of God. It’s a central truth of salvation that what we’ve received is entirely by God’s grace, and because of the intensity of His love, His mercy, His desire to forgive, His choosing us first.
I love that Jesus, having decisively won our age-long battle with sin and the grave, continued to be intimately concerned with Mary’s lonely and desperate, if unvoiced, pleas for proximity. And he chose to meet her first. As Isaiah prophesied centuries before: ‘He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.’ (42:3). He still sees. What a Savior! PD
Don graduated from Regent University in 1988 and moved to France for seven years, coming back to the US briefly to marry Sue in 1990. The work in France included working in a Christian School and helping plant a church before returning in 1995. He’s been pastor of Peninsula Vineyard since 1999. He enjoys counseling, especially married couples, traveling back to France (with Sue), reading, doing Sudoku puzzles and sleuthing out good, dark chocolate. Don serves as the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church Peninsula, in Newport News, Virginia.