To Encourage You

John 20:15-16 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher).”

One of the most striking aspects of the above account is how Mary Magdalene did not recognize Jesus as He stood and spoke with her after His resurrection at the garden tomb. He, whom she knew very well, was talking to her and she thought it was the gardener.  Similarly, when Jesus appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and spoke with them, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). In one other place this same thing occurred.  In John 21 we find Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, James and John fishing on the Sea of Tiberias.  They had fished all night and caught nothing.  Then Jesus called to them from shore, but “the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. . . this was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”  

In each of these accounts, the disciples of Jesus apparently thought that He was someone else when it was actually Him standing right before them and speaking with them. This is most clear in the account of Mary Magdalene, for she thought that Jesus was the gardener, the one who cared for the garden tomb.  This makes me wonder how often Jesus has spoken to each one of us in one way or another, yet we also have not recognized Him.  Mary had been searching for the body of Jesus, i.e., His dead body, yet here He was, very much alive, standing right beside her and talking to her and she didn’t realize it.  Do we miss this same thing when we are with the body of Christ?  

Today, the body of Christ is very near us.  If we are a follower of Jesus, we are actually a part of it, and if we worship together with other believers, we are actually worshiping with His body right there next to us.  This isn’t some dead form of His body, or something other than His real body. We are told that the Church is indeed the living body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27).  When we are with the body, we are with Him. When we are ministering to the body, we are ministering to Him. And when we are hearing from His Word in the body, we are hearing directly from Him. 

But do we really recognize this? Do we believe it?  Do we think the body of Christ is really something else – e.g., just a gathering of people, perhaps like a social club, or a gathering of friends, when it is so much more than that?  Over and over again the Bible tells us that the Church is the body of Christ, and every person individually a part of that body.  Jesus has told us clearly that “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).  Are our eyes really open to this?  Do we recognize His presence when we gather with the Church? Do we realize that as other believers minister to us that it is actually the Living Christ that is ministering to us? Do we realize that when we use our own spiritual gifts to minister to others, it is actually the Living Christ working in and through us?  And how often has a spouse, one of our children, a friend, Sunday school teacher, or pastor said something to us that we thought was “just” our spouse, child, friend, etc., when in reality it was so much more than that?  

These are such wonderful truths, but do we recognize them, embrace them, and truly live them out – or do we, like Mary, only see something else when our Lord is right there next to us?