Vision

“If we were standing at Jesus’ tomb on that first Easter, at the time when the tomb went from occupied to empty, what would we see?” I asked.

“We might see different things,” Dr. Langford said.

Thomas A. Langford was a Religion professor at Duke University, and later he was Dean of Duke Divinity School.  Like so many others who had the privilege of learning from him, I held him in awe.  And because I saw him as a titan of theology, I dared to ask him the hardest question I wrestled with.

His answer baffled and frustrated me, as honest answers from brilliant people often do.

How could two different people, standing at the same place at the same time and watching the same event, see two different things?  

The answer, of course, is that they are two different people—and our vision is determined not so much by what we observe but by who (and what) we are.

The evidence of this is all around us:  a political candidate appears to one voter as a champion of truth and to another as a scheming liar.  This divergence in observation occurs not only in judging things we can’t touch, like character, but in noticing actual physical events; it’s almost impossible to see what we believe is not possible.

Almost.  

Peter and John, two men who held unique positions among Jesus’ disciples and had followed him constantly for three years, ran to the tomb when Mary Magdalen told them she had discovered his body was gone.  John outran Peter and go there first; reluctant or afraid to go in, John peeked inside and saw the tomb was empty.  Peter arrived and entered; he found no one there.  When Peter stepped out John looked in again and saw an angel.

He saw an angel.  The story becomes even more extraordinary.  John saw a heavenly being, but he didn’t see a physically resurrected Jesus—not yet; that would come later.

But Mary Magdalen, when both men had left, encountered and even spoke with a man she found so real and tangible that at first she assumed he was a gardener.

So the question I have this morning—the question Dr. Langford steered me toward so many years ago—is:  Would I have seen him?

Would you?

What is there about my own pride, fear, cynicism, that would keep me from encountering Jesus as Mary Magdalen did?

Would I have come to the tomb as John and Peter did, leaving baffled and disturbed?  Or would I not have come there at all?

So here is another profound paradox of the Resurrection:  Jesus reveals God to us—and reveals us to us.

-Randall