Encountering the Risen Christ #2 - Hope
Description
Senior Pastor, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, continues the Encountering the Risen Christ series looking at Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Christ. He emphasizing how Jesus brings hope and restoration in our suffering by reminding us that our current struggles are temporary compared to the eternal restoration God promises.
Summary and Application
In a world often filled with suffering and uncertainty, where do we find genuine hope? Dr. Kurt Bjorklund's message on Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Christ offers a powerful perspective on finding hope in our darkest moments.
The Contrast of Perspective
The message begins with a fascinating comparison between two paintings. Peter Bruegel's "The Procession to Calvary" depicts a dark scene where Jesus is so small you must search diligently to find Him amidst the chaos. In contrast, the Bosch School's "Christ Descent Into Hell" portrays Christ as large and prominent, with evil appearing small beneath His feet.
This visual contrast perfectly illustrates our spiritual reality. When we're in the midst of suffering, Christ can seem distant and small while our problems loom large. Yet the truth is that Christ is greater than any challenge we face—we simply need to adjust our perspective.
Mary Magdalene's Encounter with Hope
Mary Magdalene's story exemplifies this journey from despair to hope. Finding Jesus' tomb empty, she was overcome with grief. In her suffering, she initially failed to recognize Jesus when He appeared, mistaking Him for a gardener.
This moment carries profound symbolism. Jesus is indeed the "Great Gardener" who will ultimately restore everything that's broken. When Mary finally recognizes Him, her sorrow transforms into joy as she proclaims to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord!"
The Best is Yet to Come
The message includes a touching story about a dying man who requested a fork be placed in his hand at his funeral. Why? Because at church dinners, when plates were cleared away, people were often told, "Keep your fork—the best is yet to come," signaling dessert was on its way.
This simple illustration reminds us that for believers, our current sufferings are temporary. The best truly is yet to come—not just a momentary reprieve, but an eternal restoration where God will make all things new.
Hope in Every Circumstance
The message emphasizes three foundations for hope:
Jesus is the Great Gardener who will restore everything
God works in His timing, not ours
God is present even in our sufferings
Our ultimate hope rests in Jesus' death and resurrection. We don't earn our standing with God through our own righteousness but receive it through faith in Christ. This truth gives us hope regardless of our circumstances.
Practical Application Questions
What areas of your life currently feel overwhelming, making Jesus seem small and distant? Take time to identify specific challenges where you need to adjust your perspective to see Christ as greater than your problems.
How might viewing Jesus as the "Great Gardener" who will restore everything change how you approach your current suffering? Consider writing down one specific way this perspective could transform your attitude toward a difficult situation.
The sermon mentions that "God is present even in our sufferings." When have you experienced God's presence in a painful circumstance? If you're currently in a difficult season, what spiritual practices might help you become more aware of His presence?
Remember, as believers, we can face our challenges with the confidence that, like Mary Magdalene, we have encountered the risen Christ who brings hope and promises restoration. The best is truly yet to come.
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Last weekend we began a series that we're calling encountering the risen Christ, and in some ways that sounds very churchy, very predictable. Oh, yeah. We're gonna encounter the risen Christ. But the idea behind this is that Christianity makes an incredible claim and that is that the God of the universe came to earth, died as a sacrifice for people, rose to life, is alive today and that you and I can encounter this living Christ. And in John chapter twenty and twenty one, we have these post resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ and so we are looking at these appearances to see what we can learn about how we can encounter the living Christ today.
And so although in some ways it's a very, it kinda sounds churchy, there is nothing in many ways that is more significant, more drawing than to say how do I encounter the living God? Because ultimately Christianity is not just a series of principles or beliefs that we have where we say I believe these things, I practice these things, I do these things. It is a relationship with the God of the universe. And so, we're going to look today at an appearance that takes place in John chapter 20 verses 11 through 18 and this is where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene. So in John 20 verse one and following, Mary is one of the first who goes to the tomb and when she goes to the tomb, she says the stone is empty.
She runs back, tells Peter and John who run to the tomb, they see it and then they go to their homes and she's here crying at the tomb when Jesus appears to her. Now Mary Magdalene, what we know about her is that she is from Magdala. Mary Magdalene is a town right there so she's a historical person that people knew. And then what we know about her comes from Luke chapter eight verses one through three. She was one of several women that we're told Jesus had cast demons out of and she's one that he had cast seven demons out of and then there's a little line that says at the end of verse three, and these women supported Jesus out of their own means.
In other words, she was somebody who was saying here is some of the money that I have, that I've made, what whatever it is, and I am supporting Jesus out of this. And she had had these demons cast out of her. Now, to have demons cast out is a spiritual condition, and seven probably here is meant to represent, a fullness. Seven's often a number of fullness. It could have been seven literal demons, but it might be this is just saying she was so demon demon, oppressed, con, constrained that there's a sense in which these demons had complete control of her and this would have meant that she would have been sociologically isolated because people would have said we don't want to deal with her, we can't deal with her, she's so hard to deal with, we can't deal with her and she would have had some physical challenges probably as a result of this.
And I believe that demons are still active in our world today. In fact, if you read through the Scripture, Satan is said not to be omnipresent. In other words, Satan isn't everywhere at once so when somebody says Satan is oppressing me or the devil made me do it, it's possible but the devil can't be active in my life and your life at the exact same time. It is his demons, his minions, his fallen angels that are still working to oppress the faith of the people who want to believe in God today. Now, I also believe that although there are times when that oppression is obvious and very clear, and certainly people will talk about this in mission spaces all over the world, I believe that how CS Lewis wrote about this in the Screwtape Letters is probably a better understanding which is it is more subtle, it is more nuanced, it is more in the work of our our minds than it is an obvious oppression but it makes it no less real today.
So when you come into this story in John twenty eleven through 18, these are the things that that we know about Mary Magdalene. There are some who have said that she was also a prostitute and this comes from the idea that in Luke eight we're told about these women. In Luke seven there was a woman who was a notorious sinner right before this but there's no reason to say these two are the same and so she probably was not that. She was just this woman who had been demon oppressed, sociologically isolated, physically oppressed as she had experienced the healing and the deliverance of Jesus Christ. And so she goes to the tomb, she's here crying, she looks inside, she sees the two angels there and their question to her in verse 13 is woman, why are you crying?
Why are you crying? And probably what was happening is she was crying in part because Jesus was one of the first people, if not the only person who had really seen her, seen her in her brokenness, loved her and cared for her and extended kindness and comfort to her. We see in Genesis 50 where Joseph's brothers came basically to ask for food and he revealed himself to them that this is the brother they had thrown into the pit, they had sold into slavery basically out of their hatred and we're told that he extended kindness to them, that he comforted them. This is a moment when you've experienced genuine kindness and comfort from somebody, especially from God in this case where she says this is somebody that I love and, and, and somebody has dishonored his body by taking it away. And then in verse 14, we're told this.
It says, at this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize it was Jesus. So so so now you get this appearance of Jesus and she doesn't see that it's Jesus. And this is probably a way of communicating something about the reality of her pain. Maybe it's just that she didn't recognize Jesus. Maybe it was the tears in her eyes that clouded her sight.
Maybe it was just so off of her expectation radar that there was no way that she thought that this could be Jesus, but what we know is that when we are in the middle of hardship and pain in our lives, often it's very difficult to see God in our lives. And do you know where usually we experience hardship in our lives? It's actually the same two places that is probably common for Mary Magdalene. And here's what I mean. In my years of being around church, church people, the two biggest objections I hear to God are usually this, if God is good then why did I get sick or my loved one get sick or we have this physical challenge?
And the other one is often something along the lines of if God is good, then why am I experiencing this isolation? Why did I marry and the marriage not work out? Why am I not married when it's the desire of my heart? Why did my kids turn against me? Why did my marriage end in divorce?
And and it's this kind of question and it's the ache of loneliness and sometimes even when all those things are right, there's still this ache of loneliness that we experience and, and, and when we're feeling alone or we're feeling as if we're facing a physical challenge, often our, our response is to say I don't see God in this anywhere. I don't recognize his hand in this anywhere. And in verse 15, what we see is we see that she's crying and Jesus asked her again, woman why are you crying? Who is it you're looking for? So now Jesus speaks to her and then it says this, thinking he was the gardener she said sir if you've carried him away tell me where you have put him and I will get him.
So he speaks to her and she still is saying I think this is the gardener. Now now this phrase has bugged me for a long time, this thinking he's a gardener. Why are we told that she thinks he's the gardener? This isn't necessary for the story in the sense she could have talked to anybody in this moment. It wouldn't have had to be she was thinking it was a gardener but this is something that John includes in his gospel very intentionally.
He's writing this probably a couple of decades after the event which means he's had time to reflect on it, to craft his words, to say what is it that I that that I want to say. He's also under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and he is saying that she thought he was the gardener. Why is that important? Why is that here? Because this could have been told without that little phrase.
Well in John chapter 18 verse one, when Jesus is arrested, here's what we see. Says when he had finished paying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley and on the other side there was a garden and his disciples went into it. So Jesus goes to this garden which has been called Gethsemane. In fact, the other gospel writers call it Gethsemane. You've probably heard that phrase.
But in the gospel of John, it's never called Gethsemane. It's only called a garden. Why? Why? Well, a garden is one of the images that's used throughout the Bible.
A story begins in a garden, the Garden Of Eden, where God created people to be not sick and not in isolation. In fact, when he made Adam and Eve, he said it's not good to be alone. He wanted us to be in community. He wanted us to experience the flourishing of human life but sin came into the world and people were cast out of the garden. And in John, what we get, the gospel of John is we get these signs about what Jesus is doing that show that he is the restorer of everything that's broken.
So in John chapter two, we get his first sign, his first miracle and it's enumerated. It said, this is the first sign that he did and he turned water into wine. And then in John chapter four, we get what said to be the second sign. It was a healing. And although the signs after this aren't enumerated because He counted one and two, probably what He wants us to do is just count these signs and each time He says, this was another sign, this was a sign.
So in John five, He heals the paralytic, it's a sign. In John six He walks on water, it's a sign. He feeds the, the, the people, the 5,000, it's a sign. In John nine He heals again and it is a sign. And in John 11 He raises Lazarus from the dead and it's a sign.
And if you're keeping count, that's seven signs. And now you get to John 20 and it's the first day of the week, the eighth day, and he's doing something new. And here's another sign where Jesus comes back to life. It's like he's saying, I am doing something altogether new. And in John chapter 19 verse 41, we see this.
It says, at the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. So do you see what John's doing here? He's taking this theme of the garden. He's not using the word Gethsemane and he's saying there was a garden and this is where the disciples went. It's going back in a sense to Genesis and saying this is what what what is happening.
Jesus is now the gardener in a sense mistakenly by her but she says, I thought he's the gardener. And in a way, what this is pointing to, I believe, is that Jesus is the great gardener, the one who is restoring everything that is broken. In fact, if you go to the very end of the Bible, to Revelation, what do you see? You see the garden city of God where God is restoring everything. At the end as the great gardener, he is saying this is what I am doing and here's what this means in your hour, my hour of sadness and desperation.
Often we may feel like we can't see Jesus because of our tears, but God is the great gardener who is going to heal everything that is broken with our physical bodies, heal our relational world, and make us absolutely connected. Now, if this passage ended right here, verse 15, I think it would be a pretty good message. Jesus is the the great gardener. He's restoring everything that that that that is difficult for us or will restore. But this isn't the end of the passage.
What happens next is in verse 16, we see that he addresses her by name. It says, Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. In John chapter 10 verse four, we're told that Jesus knows his sheep by name. And what this means is Jesus is saying, I see you, I still see you, I know you, I love you.
It is his use of her name that is showing his pursuit of her and God still pursues us. He pursues you. He wants you to know that he knows your name, he knows where you are, he knows the pain that you've been through and that he is the great gardener who is going to restore everything that is broken if you are one of his children. And yet so often in our tears it's hard to see that, hard to believe that God is pursuing us and sometimes it is his name calling us by our name like he does for Mary here. Sometimes it's letting us run to the distant country like he did in the story of the prodigal son where he waited patiently while, while, while the son went and sowed his wild oats before he came to his senses and came home.
Sometimes it's discipline like with Jonah, when Jonah wanted to to run from the presence of God and he caused the great storm and the great fish to spit him up on the land in Nineveh as if to say, I am pursuing you. And then she says this phrase teacher, meaning I know that you will lead me, that you'll guide me. But then there's another phrase that comes that that's a curious phrase. Verse 17 says this, after it says, thinking he was the gardener, verse 15, sir, if you carried him away, Jesus said to her Mary, verse 16, then Jesus said to her in verse 17, do not hold on to me for I have not yet ascended to the father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I'm ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.
Now this again is a little bizarre. So so so first it's she thought he was the gardener, it was Jesus. Jesus is restoring what is broken and now it's don't cling to me. What's going on here? I think, again, part of what we're seeing is that God is saying I want you to know that although I'm restoring and I'm restoring in some ways now, the ultimate restoration is still ahead.
Don't cling to me. Don't demand from me everything here and now. The ascension is God saying I'm going to my father and I will restore but everything is not the way that it will be when the garden is completely restored today. You know, so many times what we want is we want everything now. I I you think about it, when it comes to health, when it comes to isolation, what do we want?
We want our health now, but do you know what's true? And that is everybody, sooner or later, runs into a health crisis. I mean, think about it. No matter how healthy you are, sooner or later, your body will break down, meaning you are just talking about a timing issue about when your body starts to break down. And I realize that that may not be like, oh, that's great news, thank you for that.
But the point of that is that what Jesus is in part doing is He's saying don't worry about it. And here's why this is such incredibly helpful thinking because what it means is when our health or the health of somebody we love is not in a good place, we can say God will restore. This isn't the end of the story. This isn't everything. This is a few years compared to eternity and when our health or the health of our loved ones is where we want it to be, we can say this is awesome.
This is a taste of what is in ahead of us. When our families or our relational world is broken and shattered, if we've gone through a divorce, if we've gone through a, a fracture of a friendship or a relationship, we can say this is not how it should be but there's coming a day when God will restore. He is the gardener and we were created to live in relationship. And when it's all good, you can say this is a taste of what God is doing in our lives and what he will do when all things are restored. Somebody reminded me recently of a story I told, years ago.
It's a story that I borrowed from somewhere and that was there was a pastor once who visited a man who was dying in his congregation and the man said, hey pastor, I want you to do something for me. And he said, okay, you know, what would you like me to do? And he said, I'd like you to go to the funeral home and when I'm buried and laid out and people come up and visit my casket, I want you to ask them to put a fork in my hand and I want you to ask them just to have it there. And he said, Okay, you know, sure I've had weird requests before but I I can do that. And he said, can I ask you why?
And he said, well yes, he said, actually it's not the only thing I want you to do for me. He said, but when you then speak at my funeral, he said, what I want you to do is I want you just to say you all went past the casket and you saw the fork in, you know, this guy's hand. And he said, he asked for this because throughout his life whenever people would say keep the fork, he always knew there was something better coming and he wanted everyone to go by his casket and say there's something better coming. You see this idea that Jesus is the ultimate gardener is His way of saying yes, I have come to save you now but there is still something better coming. This world, this life is not the end of the story.
And then he says this in verse 17 again, he says I'm going to go to my God and your God, to my father and your father. This is his statement of inclusion. He's saying I want you to know that I am including you. You will be part of this family. You will be completely included.
And then he says, go and tell my brothers. And she goes and tells him, verse 18, it says, I have seen the Lord. And she told them all the things that he had said to her. You see, hope that isn't expressed is probably not rooted deeply inside of us because we do have days that feel hopeless but it is the hope of what God is doing, that God can heal today, does heal today, but if he chooses not to, there will be ultimate healing. That God can work in our isolation here and now, but if he chooses not to, there's coming a day when he will address that isolation.
Maybe it's a little bit like this. Have you ever been on a boat ride on a little boat that that that was on a choppy sea and it's a very unpleasant experience after a while? If you are on that boat ride and you're going across a a a channel of water to an island that is going to be a beautiful vacation spot for you, you are on that that boat and you can encourage the people with you by saying, hey, it's just a short ride. This is a little unpleasant, but we're about to get to a beautiful place. But if you're on a boat, and the boat just is out at sea driving in circles, and it's choppy, and when you're done driving in circles and you run out of gas, you're just gonna float for a while and you're too far to swim to land and then you're gonna kinda, you know, just end up in the sea, it's pretty hopeless.
And that that journey is miserable. There's no hope. Do you see the difference? When you say there's coming a day when Jesus is the gardener and is restoring, then you can live with this sense of saying, yeah, it's a little choppy today, it's not what I want today, But there's coming a day when it will be restored. So let me ask you today, where are your tears?
What are the things, maybe not that you literally cry about, but bring sadness to your heart? Can you affirm that Jesus is the great gardener who will restore everything? Because if you can, you can have hope. Can you affirm that it is in God's timing, not in ours? If so, you can have hope.
Can you affirm that God is present even in our sufferings? If so, you can have hope. And if you're here and you're saying that, that seems far fetched, the whole narrative of Jesus' death and resurrection points to our ultimate hope. That is all of us who cannot earn our way with God because we're not, righteous enough, good enough, can look to Jesus' death and to His resurrection and say here is my savior and my standing and standing and status with God is based on Jesus, not on me. And because of that, we can have hope.
I saw an article in Plow magazine recently, and it was an article talking about two different paintings and I'm not an article talking about two different paintings. And I'm not normally somebody who peruses art to find spiritual significance, so this, caught me a little bit. Peter Bruegel had painted a painting called The Procession to Calvary, and this article talks about it. Here's a a rendition of it. It's hard to see, but this is kind of the point of it.
And this is his procession to Calvary is is everything is dark, everything's hard to see, there are are demons and there are forces that are working against it and Jesus is so small that you have to look and look and look to see Jesus in the midst of it. That's the point of this painting, at least according to Plow. I realize that's always open to interpretation. And then they compared it to a second painting which was from the Bosch School, which is called Christ Descent Into Hell, and here's a picture of this. And here you have Christ who's big, easy to identify, and evil beneath his feet is small.
And here's what the article said about these paintings. It says there's a passage in C. S. Lewis's Great Divorce in which Lewis, now safely in the real world of heaven, is shown hell by his companion known as the teacher. The teacher uses a blade of grass to point to a minuscule clack crack in the ground.
All hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world, he says, but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the real world. Lewis is unimpressed. It seems big enough when you're in it, sir, he says, but the teacher is unfazed by his argument. And yet all loneliness, angers, hatred, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of joy that is felt by the least in heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Lewis is not wrong.
This is now Plow talking outside of Lewis. Hell, as he says, seems big enough when we're in it, just as Christ seems small enough when we have strayed from him. Christian theology tells us that evil is a privation of good, but none of us have ever seen a privation of good. Instead, we've seen death, trauma, illness, injustice, pain. We've seen our own sin, pride, vindictiveness, selfishness, and a willingness to deceive and to withhold forgiveness.
The wounds caused by these evils have taken up their place in our interior lives, and there is no use pretending that they are smaller than they actually are. Instead, we must follow the example of Lewis the teacher, not trying to make them smaller, but adjusting our gaze to see how small they really are compared to the promise of heaven. Now here's what that's driving at. Two works of art. When we're in a dark place of hopelessness, Christ seems small and all the things of this world seem huge.
The evil things seem huge. But when we can see Christ, the risen Christ, encounter the risen Christ, he becomes big and the the the destructive things of this world become small. Not that they aren't significant, but we see them for what they are. And where hope is found in this life is in saying there is a God, Jesus is this God, Jesus is the restorer, the garden is ahead, hope still reigns and no matter how choppy or difficult or how oppressed I feel today, there is something coming that is better. And that will give us the strength to move forward whatever it is we're facing today.
God, we ask today that you would help each of us to bring what it is that is hard for us today. Whether it's an issue of isolation, an issue of health, ours, or somebody we love, something else altogether. And God, I ask that as we bring it to you, we would be able to see you being big and not the problems as being big, and that that would bring hope. God, I pray that that for those of us who are maybe gathered and still trying to wrestle through if Jesus really is God, If we really do need a savior that even in this moment there would be a recognition that says he is the one who has seen me and accepts me and loves me and has made a way for me to be right with God. And even just in this moment, a step of faith that says, God, I trust Jesus as my savior.
Because then we can enter into this hope, and we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thanks for being here, have a great week.
