Finding Joy in Grief: Lessons from Mary's Encounter with Jesus

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Here we are, Chris, we are here. Oh, this is a good day. It is Yes, is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made. Okay, yeah, you know that song. Absolutely, it's a flashback from the eighties, and it's the song we sang in Saint Croix. That's true, that's true. It's in my mind. It's in my mind. So we went to a church as a converged partner in Saint Croix just a week ago, and on Sunday morning, he got up and he sang that song and I looked over at Chad and I said, this reminds me of me being in the eighties. Ye. Yeah, Well, hey, today is a special day because it's dead Joke competition day. This is my daughter's favorite segment. Okay, well this is for you. Then I want I want to Tory, this is for you. But I want to let you know that I go home after I record these and when I see her, like tonight, I'll see her and I will say Tory, and I'll say, we have another Dad Joe competition and I will pull these out and I'll just go through these one by one. And she likes them. Oh, she loves them. Okay, loves them? All right, so you should go first. Okay, what's the difference between a bad joke and a dad joke? I don't know the first letter? Okay. No, I liked that one. Okay, So I've cleared my kash of cookies, but I don't see how eating three hundred oreos is going to make my computer work better. Oh that's hilarious. So my cash of cookies is three hundred oreos. Goodness, you don't have to explain it. Explain not to me anyway. So here's funny. All right, here we go. Ready, my wife told me to take the spider out. Instead of killing him, we went out and grabbed dinner. Turns out he's a nice guy, even a web designer. That's ridiculous, you went dinner guy. I like that one. Hey, I like my jokes. That's so rare for jokes, I like. Okay, So I don't want to brag, but I finished a jig jigsaw puzzle in a week and it said two to four years on the box. Oh no, that's good. I like that one. That's really good. Here, that's took me a week to finish a two year old's puzzle? Was it like twelve pieces? Right? That's so good? All right? Number three Finland has just closed their borders. No one will be crossing the Finish line. Okay, come on, that's three for three for me. That's pretty good. I like it. So did you know that my family on my mom's side immigrated from Finland to the US. I did not know this. Yes, and so my whole life I thought I was finished until we did one of those twenty three of me things. Yeah, and it turns out while my family had lived in Finland and they all only spoke Finnish, they're all British and Scottish, and uh, they're all they're all English, Scottish and Irish. Wow, isn't that funny? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, there's no Finish fish if you were claiming something that you weren' yeah. Yeah. So I'm not genetically finished. But you know, our people immigrated from Finland and they had lived there for generations, so pretty crazy. Can you still claim Finnish? I guess you can't. Well, you can say my people came from there. Yeah, I guess difference. I mean they eat dried fish and stuff, right, right, Okay, so here you go. My boss told me that as a security guard, it's my job to watch the office. I'm on season six, but I'm not really sure what that's got to do with security. My favorite, my favorite one. It is so good. I'm not really sure that security. It's so good. Wait into seven, it's the best. Oh my goodness, Okay, here we go. Number four. A man walks into his home to realize that all of his lamps were stolen. He was delighted, delighted. No, that was a wamp. This one's going to be too that gummet. I started a band called Blanket. It's a cover band. Oh that's really bad. That's a rough one. That's a rough one. Okay. By the way, we don't we don't read these until we read this. That's right. I've never seen these. I've never seen these, so so these are legitimate reactions. Number five. I threw a ball from my dog. It's a bit extravagant, I know, but it was his birthday. And he looks great in the I like that one. He looks great in a Texio. It's really good. But he's a good boy. He's a good boy. Do you ever put your cats? You ever put your cats in a in a costume? No? Never. So so we have two dogs at home, Gucci and we have two dogs at home, Gucci and Chanel. And my wife sometimes will put costumes on him, like at Halloween, and Chanel loves it. She goes run around. Bonnie put a shark on on her and she's running around showing off for her costume. If we put a costume on Gucci, he's so ashamed. He goes and hides. He like hides underneath stuff, or he goes for some reason. Whenever he's scared, he gets in the bathtub. So go get in the Bathtub's so funny, all right. I also have a joke, a dog joke for my last one. Why did the man name his dogs Rolex and time X because they're watchdogs? Yeah that's rough, just better. So we have three. We had three bummers out of ten. That's pretty good. We had. We had we had seven pretty good ones. Yeah, it's pretty good. I'm all teared up. Man, dude, that that is so funny. That is the funny. You go, you go, he's a good boy. Up picturing like the whole ball. It's so good, it's great. Okay, all right, it's time to move on. So we have this thing. Jeff loves slogans, and one of his slogans is we take ourselves. We take our faith seriously. We just don't take ourselves too seriously. That's correct, And it's a slogan because it communicates, Hey, we're allowed to be goofy, right, that's right. So every time that we are goofy, he's like, hey, there's nothing to do with my faith, that's right, right, So don't well, the joy of the Lord, I think, has everything to do with our faith. Right. We're just joyful people. We're not miserable people. So we can laugh at ourselves. We can laugh at ourselves, that's right. We can laugh at at funny things in the world around us. There's a lot of difficult things, and we're serious in those difficult moments. But it's okay to laugh if you and I don't get to laugh doing stuff like this, and at church we never get to laugh because it's all we do, right, right. And also, to be honest with you, for those people out there who maybe don't have laughter in their church, I'm not saying it's a bad experience, because there's all different types of churches for all different types of people. I don't want to disrespect any culture of a church at all, but I have to tell you when you do enter into a culture in a church where laughing is aloud, it's there. There, it's it's it's a I think laughter should be a value. Yeah, I think I think there's purpose, you know, not meaningless laughter necessarily right, not not you know, but but but but to actually have joy, purposeful joy and planned laughter in the auditorium or in the sanctuary. I think that that is a good thing to associate your faith with joy. Yeah. And the wisest man in the world besides Jesus King, Solomon, had many things to say about laughter and joy. He said, laughter works like a medicine. That's right, A joyful heart will heal you those kinds of things. There, there's it's very healthy for you. And people who can't laugh tend to struggle with a lot of other uh uh uh mental issues. Right. So learning to laugh, learning to find joy and things can begin to release you sometimes from the heaviness of the rest of life, right, right, It's not saying that the other things aren't important. It's saying that you can get a reprieve from it, you can enjoy the good things. Well, sometimes people get the point where they can't see any joy in anything, right, it's because they've taught themselves not to find joy and not to laugh. And medicinally right like laughter, actually you can you can break down the actual physical and mental and emotional benefits of laughter. They do studies on laughter and they talk about how how good it is for you in every way. Yeah, yeah, so it laughter long term alters the chemical imbalances in your body. It releases endorphins and all these things. People, if you have a good belly, laugh in the daytime, it's good for your heart, it's good for your your every every system in your body. Just about it's good. So so hey, it's fun, listeners, Let's find something to have joy about, smile about, and maybe even laugh about it. Go back and rewind our dad jokes today. There you go. Anyways, So Jesus appears to these women again, this is another thing that if you and I were trying to make up a religion, we would not have Jesus appearing to women. Well, not in that culture, not in that culture in that day, that's right, Yeah, twenty twenty four, it'd be more feasible, right than the year. Yeah, but we're we're talking Peter James and John guys in that day. Because of the way their culture worked, they would not have had their new God appearing to women first. So anyways, here it is in Matthew chapter twenty eight. We'll unpack that why we said that in this a moment. But in Matthew chapter twenty eight, verses nine and ten, it says as they went, Jesus met them and greeted them, and they ran to him, grasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, don't be afraid. Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there. In Mark chapter sixteen, verse nine, in the longer ending of the Book of Market says, after Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday morning, the first person who saw him was Mary Magdalen, the woman from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went to the disciples, who were grieving and weeping, and told them what had happened. But when she told them that Jesus was alive and she had seen him. They didn't believe her. Yep. And then in John chapter twenty, it says Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in, and she saw two white robed angels, one sitting on at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. Dear woman, why are you crying, the angels asked her, Because they've taken away my lord, she replied, and I don't know where they've put him. She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn't recognize him. Dear woman, why are you crying? Jesus asked her. Who are you looking for? She thought he was a gardener. Sir, she said, if you've taken him away, tell me where you've put him, and I'll go and get him, Mary, Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, rabboni, which is Hebrew for teacher. Don't cling to me, Jesus said, for I haven't yet ascended to the father. But go find my brothers and tell them I'm ascending to my father and your father to my God. And your God. Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told him I have seen the Lord, and then she gave them his message. So this seems just a touch out of place because it was after this that Peter and John run down to the tomb, you know, So as we've been doing a chronological maybe we should have done this passage before the Peter and John running to the tomb. But anyways, yeah, it's still an important portion of the story, Yeah, for sure. And yeah, that is interesting, isn't it. So are you saying that the book messed up? I'm saying that the Life Applications Study Bible chronological study Bible is maybe slightly out of order chronologically speaking, Yes, in my expert opinion. Well, yeah, because clearly Peter and John running to the tomb happened after the women came back and told them, Yes, because they wouldn't have had any reason to run down there. Yeah, but it is kind of mixed up a little bit because because because Matthew just kind of sums it up really or Mark sums it up really really quick, that's correct. But anyway, needless to say, this is actually my favorite part of the resurrection story really. Yeah, John chapter twenty Verses eleven through eighteen in particular, so you know he Jesus has this personal interaction with Mary, and so Jesus is talking to Mary, but he has not yet revealed the fact that he is Jesus. It says to us in detail that she supposes that he's the gardener. Right, so once again we hear we have Mary who her first expectation is, hey, maybe that's Jesus in the shadows, right like that, so that clearly she wasn't looking for the resurrected Jesus. But she's crying because she's she's grieving over the fact that Jesus's body is not there. And then here's Jesus, knowing that she doesn't know who he is, and yet very tenderly he looks at her and interacts with her and says, dear woman, why are you crying? And by the way, dear woman was the most affectionate thing that you could say to somebody. So it wouldn't have been uncommon for somebody to extend an affectionate term to somebody who is grieving, especially not at a tomb. Sure, so it could have been a stranger and not a very close friend, right, yeah, right, So like in other words, like you know, oh, dear one, you know, if you're they're there, right, you're you're grieving over a loved one. That's that's common, right. But but dear woman is a very affectionate It doesn't seem like it for us because we say woman and you're thinking that's how you can read it, but that that's that's not how it was. Dear woman is a very affectionate term. And he says, why are you crying? And then and then of course, you know, she expresses her pain, you know. And then he says, who are you looking for? You know? And so Jesus knows it's him. He knows that she doesn't know yet, right, and yet he's still leading her along the way. And then and then it says that he says her name, excuse me. And then this is when she realizes it's Jesus, and she cries out Rabbini. And so there's there's such a great sermon in there, because Jesus knows us by name, Jesus knows our grief. Jesus walks with us in our grief. Jesus could have just been like, hey, one of my disciples, you know Mary and the others go tell everybody. But he didn't do that. He wanted to meet Mary in her grief. He wanted to look her in the eye and comfort her and and and let her know that he was alive, that he was the resurrect to Jesus. And so he says, he calls out her name. And guess what. God calls out our name. God knows us by name. God, God looks you in the eye and he and he doesn't just say, hey, here's the answer to your problem. He says, let me be with you in your grief. Why are you crying? I understand that. Who are you looking for? Right? And so Jesus, Jesus isn't an unsympathetic god, right, He's the God who cares. He's the God who knows our name. He's the God who calls us out. And that, for me, is my favorite part of the entire story. I love that. And you know, she was blinded by her grief, which happens a lot to us. Right, She's blinded by her grief, and in that moment she couldn't see Jesus. He was there. It's not like he had abandoned her. He was there. Right there, he was engaging with her. She couldn't understand him, she couldn't see him. And you know, I think that that's true. Sometimes people they're in the middle of a divorce, they have a child die, they lose a job, their dreams come crashing down, and in their grief, they can't see God, they cannot find Jesus, and so they feel like they're alone. But it was in his word that she discovered who he was. Right, So I always encourage people to listen. One when you're grieving, it's a bad time to make a decision. Don't make a decision when your decision maker is broken. Right when you get the worst news of your life, when you get the worst circumstances show up in your life, don't make life altering decisions in that moment, pause and wait and listen for God's voice. So God's always calling you. Jesus is always calling you. He's calling you by name. But she discovered who he was, or realized who he was. She realized she was in his presence when his word was spoken. And you know, it reminds me of the Book of Romans, where it says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, right, and so when you don't know what else to do, don't make a big decision. That's fantastic, that's good. Don't make a big decision. Get into the Word. And sometimes I'll be honest with you, I've had really bad times in my life when I thought, you know, I opened the Bible and I just can't even find a thing to read. I just and then I'm looking I'm just looking at black letters on white pages, and I and so there have been many times where I would go and I would listen to you know, I have a couple of my favorite preachers I like to listen to, and I would just listen to their messages on the issue I'm going through in the moment, and it would be you know, I listened to a couple of pastors that are are very significantly deep Bible type teachers I love. Well, I'm not gonna name them now, I guess, but and I would go and just hear them talk about God's word in an area or in the circumstance that I'm in and be pulled back out of the dark places I was in when I couldn't see Jesus. Right, there's something to that. So a podcast like this can keep keep you in front of God's word, or God's word in front of you, I think is an important thing. Having a few you know, Okay, let me say I listened to Mark Job sometimes on Moody Radio. He's the president of Moody. I'm glad you said it because people would be like, yeah, I want, yes, yes. So I really like Mark Job. He's a he's a he preaches different than I do, right, He's kind of verse by verse guy. I just I like his preaching. I listened to David Jeremiah. Sometimes I'll listen to a couple of others. But for me, it just gets my attention and reminds me again. It gots where Rick Warren has been a mentor to me for a long time. So sometimes when it comes to hopelessness or struggle, I really lean into what Rick has to say about those things from God's Word. And you know, so preachers who use a lot of scripture is important for me. It's great. And then the other part that I really love is it says she cried out to him and said Rabbini, and then the next phrase, Jesus says, don't cling to me for I'm not yet decended to the Father. But then he gives her instructions and so so don't cling to me means it's giving us a visual aid of her running to hug him right right, or grabbing his garment or falling down at his feet or something where she is. In other words, she's wanting to reach out and to touch him. She's wanting to connect with him right And of course he would, but he says, no, no, no, hey, hang on, you know, you can touch me later. You know, I'll appear to you in the middle of the room and then we can hug each other. Then you can touch you know, my hands and my feet, my side and everything else. But but for now, there's something that is going on with Jesus, because he says, I have yet to ascend to my Father, and apparently that was a thing, and he doesn't explain that. By the way. Yeah, but there's there's like either a holy thing or there's like there's a consecrated thing. There's something going happen. There's happening there, there's the supernatural in the natural, there's something happened. Some theologians would say that this is a different event that somehow between the time of jesus resurrection and the time he was going to go meet disciples, he had to send to the Father. That's what some would say. Others would say, what he's saying is, don't hang on to me, because remember he'd already promised the Holy Spirit m and he's saying, I'm going to ascend to the Father. This isn't going to last very long. So it's not like I'm back forever, right, I'm going to send to the Father. So he could have been talking about the ascension at the end of the Book of Matthew or the beginning of the Book of Facts, right, So some theologians say it's just one ascension. What he's saying is I'm not here permanent. I'm only here for a few more days, so don't hang on to me. The Holy Spirit's coming. Others would say that there was some kind of a special thing that happened after the resurrection that apparently Jesus couldn't do while he was in the tomb, which which doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, well, actually, I got to be honest, That's what I would immediately assume is that there's a there's another event here. Well, yeah, because because what happens. Okay, for instance, why couldn't he go to the Father while he was in the Hey, he's got a lot of things happening, right, So who are you? And this is my thinking, my only of thinking, is who are you to try to even pretend to understand all the things that Jesus had to do? Uh? You know there's isn't there a story of nobody? Right? So am I? Yeah? Yeah? So that's how dare you? How dare you? Who are any of us? So the point is is that, like I'm sure you've read these things where people talk about how people sometimes believe that Jesus went and battled in Hell. Well, yeah, that's in the that's in the I think the nice Seene Creed or that one of them. Yeah, so there's theories about that, you know, during during the time that he died on you know, three hours to go on Friday and right on Sunday mornings. So those and I like to sort of say, hey, if it's one hour on Sunday and it's three hours on Friday, that's four plus twenty four that's twenty eight hours, right, So he's in the tomb for about twenty eight hours ish, and so the uh and so the point is what happened during that twenty eight hours? Where did he go in his spirit? Right? Because when you die to the absent from the body to be present with the Lord. Who's to say he could have been, you know, bopping from here and there the whole bunch of times, right, like nobody knows. So so you know, to say, uh, yeah, I could logically assume, well that's fine. That's just an opinion, you know. We we can just say, hey, this I can conclude. I think that was a lot of words to say, yes, there's either one ascension or two ascensions. Well, that depends on how you define ascension. And that's what so no, no in this, Yeah, there's this ascension, don't cling to me. I have yet to send to my father. If that's a separate ascension from the Book of from from Acts chapter one, ascension to Heaven or the end of John I mean, Matthew, Okay, then there's two ascensions that Jesus mentions or or the definition of a sin is just to go up right, But what you're doing is you're guessing there might have been a whole bunch What I'm saying is the Bible only mentions either one or two. But that's what I'm saying. But the event of the ascension is a physical Jesus. Yes, And I would say that there. I don't think that necessarily he when he was in the tomb, if he went to his father, didn't have to be a physical Jesus. Yes. So what I'm saying is the Bible only mentions two ascensions or one ascension? Right? So the question in this statement is is he talking about one or two ascensions? Yeah, that's the thing. And also, as I was pointing out, was that some theologians say there was only one ascension and Jesus Is is saying don't hang on to me because I'm not going to be here very long. Sure, or he's saying don't touch me because I'm going to Heaven. Yeah, I get it, I get it. I know as I'm saying. So we said a lot of other words that convoluted what I was trying to say on this one thing. This one thing was it was one or two? Yeah? Right, that was it? Or more? Yeah, there's only two the Bible mentions. What I'm trying to tell you, you're trying to add things that aren't in there. Yeah, there's only two that are mentioned before one. I believe there's more than one. Okay, yeah, I believe. I believe there's more than one. I believe that Jesus skadaddled and went back up to his father because he told Mary that he has he has other business to do, right, he has he is his father's business. Uh. He says, I am ascending to my father and your father, my God and your God. Don't touch me. I'm not yet. And then when he appears to disciples in the room later on, he says, touch me. Yeah, So what changed? Yeah? So that's that's good Baptist preaching. The problem is you have to you have to reject Matthew twenty eight that says she grasped his feet. She'd already touched him. Where's where's that? Matthew Chapter twenty eight, verse nine and ten. We read it as Jesus went, he met them and greeted them, and they ran and grasped his feet, so they'd already touched him. So what I'm saying. So sometimes good Baptist preachers and me included, would preach the idea that, oh, he couldn't be touched by sinful people yet because he needed to go to the Father and offer the sacrifice on that on the thing. But that's just not true. I wasn't. I wasn't thinking at all that he was. He was untouched. Yea. The because the very nature of him saying, don't clean to me means she was cleaning to him. Yeah, she's hanging on, but he was not wanting to be great. So the point I was making something emotions just say, hey, I'm not going to be here for a long time. Right, there's more, there's more going on, right, don't We can't just stand here and keep hugging. You've got work to do. Go tell my brothers go right, and that's it, and I'm gonna send back to heaven. And the reality is it could be any one of those. Yes, yes, so it's one or two times. But anyways, the big picture is she heard his voice, and when she heard his word, she turned from grief to celebration. Oh yeah, right, and that that's that's the point of this. And you know, so when you're in the middle of grief, you need to spend time in God's word. And sometimes it's hard to read the word when you're in grief for me, but it's it's easy to hear the word. And by the way, those things are interesting and fun to talk about because we're fun. We're gonna have enough time in in eternity because there will be no time for us to talk about, for me to clear these things up for you. The only one assension, all right, we're gonna go, all right, Well, that's our time and we will see you next time. On the Baba guys,