“Who Are You Looking For?”

This was a sermon I wrote for Trinity UMC in Frederick as part of A Sanctified Art’s series “Seeking: honest questions for a deeper faith.” The focus on hiding and seeking was inspired by Rev. Katie Z. Dawson’s Easter sermon kernel idea on A Sanctified Art’s Facebook Page.

Scripture: John 20:1-18

Sermon:

Let us pray:

Patient teacher, this Holy Week we read of a time of confusion and fear, culminating in this Easter morning moment. So through the words of my mouth and the meditations of our own hearts, help us to understand the power of new life once more. Amen.

I love playing hide and seek or peek-a-boo with small children. I love the way my toddler Zekie counts, peeking through his fingers, 3-2-1-6-7-8-9-10! I love how he and other kids think that if they can't see you, that you also cannot see them. Like they disappear. I love their delighted laughter when their eyes are opened and they are found again, or when they find you. I read a news article about a scientific study of peek-a-boo: apparently, scientists and researchers were trying to figure out what makes this game such a fundamental part of human existence--- it crosses cultural boundaries, historical eras, everything. As part of their study, “most of the time the peekaboo game proceeded normally, however on occasion the adult hid and reappeared as a different adult, or hid and reappeared in a different location.” Trick peek-a-boo. Older kids loved this, loved the surprise, but it turns out that the younger a child is, the less funny they think trick peek-a-boo is. Developmental psychologists believe that the reason why younger babies don't like trick peek-a-boo is that the game “isn't just a joke, but helps babies test and re-test a fundamental principle of existence: [object permanence, to use science-y language, or] that things stick around even when you can't see them” (See Tom Stafford, “Why All Babies Love Peek-a-boo,” 18 April 2014, BBC Future, accessed 27 August 2016, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140417-why-all-babies-love-peekaboo.). Even when we disappear, or we think we disappear, we are not lost forever. That’s the hope, anyway. 

The empty tomb was not a hide-and-seek game, but Jesus asks Mary Magdalene, “Who are you looking for?” I mean, the answer should be pretty obvious, right? It’s almost like asking the same question to a grown-up wandering around the house saying, “I wonder where the baby is,” while said baby giggles loudly from under a pillow that doesn’t cover them up at all. Except instead of listening for giggling, Mary Magdalene is looking for a dead body- one she knows doesn’t contain Jesus anymore. It’s just the closest thing she can get, and in her grief she just wants to be close to her teacher. Mary Magdalene did not know how to live having lost Jesus forever. And so she seeks after him. 

She thinks his missing body is a sick joke messing with her fundamental principle of existence, that is: Jesus should be here. This first Easter is not a happy story full of baby giggles. Mary Magdalene comes to the gardens by the tombs shrouded in her grief. She thought Jesus’ body was gone, and she couldn’t find it; all the while Jesus was right there in front of her. She didn’t need to seek him. She just needed to look in front of her face.

But so many things in our lives keep us from finding Jesus even when we are seeking him. Mary Magdalene went to get her friends to help her search. Peter and the beloved disciple come look in the empty tomb, but they end up leaving, just as sometimes our friends do because they are going through stuff too. Maybe they are going to search in their own ways. And then even angels speak to Mary Magdalene, trying to direct her to where she should look, but she can’t understand them. Finally, Jesus stands right in front of her, his “hiding” on par with the skill of a 3-year-old, but still she can’t find him. When we can’t imagine hope or goodness anymore, we won’t be able to see that hope or goodness even when it is right in front of us. And so we are stuck.

A year ago next Tuesday, we were due to have a baby. I was supposed to be as big then as I am now, but that baby had died back the November before, our fourth loss for a third different reason. But, as is pretty obvious now, we tried again. When I told my neighbor, who is also a pastor, that we were pregnant again, he told me I was brave. I can tell you I didn’t feel brave. I just felt desperate and didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to give up- and that sounds like a good problem to have, right? Except Mary Magdalene didn’t know how to give up but she didn’t have hope either, because when she saw her Lord die she thought the only possibility to be near him again was to go to his tomb. Sometimes our seeking of God, or love, or hope, or new life is stymied. We keep seeking, but we have lost the imagination for what we are looking for. When Jesus asks us, “Who are you looking for?” we don’t know. We just want something different, anything different. So maybe we look in the wrong places. Maybe we look for the wrong things. Maybe we keep looking, we just don’t remember what we are looking for anymore.

We often read this Easter story as one about the object permanence of God: that our fundamental principle of existence is that we can’t lose God even if we try. But Mary Magdalene didn’t actually find Jesus, even when he was asking her where he was, because she was looking for the dead. She was looking for her teacher and Lord but thought he was just an empty body now. She wasn’t looking for hope or new life or any possibility other than the worst. 

But it almost didn’t matter what she was seeking, because Jesus was actually seeking her. He asked her who she was looking for to see her heart, but then he called her by name to tell her that he found her. Even when we are the ones who have disappeared into grief, like Mary, or fear, like me throughout most of this pregnancy, or any of the other number of things that swallow us up- we are not lost forever. Peek-a-boo! God has found us, called us by name, and sent us to go find others. May we know that even though it might feel like God is hidden from us sometimes, we are never hidden from God. “Who are you looking for?” Jesus asks Mary Magdalene. We don’t need to ask God that question. God finds us and loves us. Hallelujah! Amen.