Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up Lord, come and quench this thirsting of my soul Lord. Fill my cup and make me whole.
” I give you my spirit without reserve to fill not only your cup, but your whole soul. My grace has no limit and continues to cover every aspect of your life. But it is good for you to continue to thirst – although you already have everything I can give you in Christ. Yet you are not experiencing it completely. There is always a gap between what I have actually given and what you perceive in your everyday life is from Me and I am continually bringing you closer so that gap may grow smaller and you can really experience the grace you have already received and are continuing to receive from me.”
We continue to read, with wonder at the incredible, supernatural happenings after Jesus’ death on the cross. I am reading John 20:10 – 23.
The emphasis in this section seems two-fold. We have read how Mary Magdalene found the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid, empty. Her first reaction was that the body had somehow been stolen. However on closer examination the grave clothes were still there, not haphazardly tossed aside, but neatly folded. What had happened to the body then?
In today’s section we have the answer to that question, but maybe not completely as we would have expected it. While Mary, distraughtly weeping next to the tomb, looks up she sees two angels sitting in the tomb. We are not told what their significance is because almost immediately she hears a voice behind her. Turning around she does not recognise the figure standing there. It is only when he speaks that she realises it is actually Jesus.
She immediately wants to fling her arms around him in loving relief, but Jesus backs off and keeps her at a distance. Was He being cruel? Of course not, He could never be cruel. This interaction and much of what follows, demonstrates two things. Firstly that Jesus is really alive. Not only is His tomb empty, but He is present with His beloved disciples. But that is not the complete picture. He now has another physical nature. Mary could not touch Him.
None of the gospel writers could describe this new nature accurately. But among other things He was capable of appearing and disappearing at will. He could even, as we will read next week enter a room with a locked door. Yet at the same time He could sit with the disciples on the beach and eat a breakfast. Could this, somehow predict how we will be with our resurrected bodies?
We are not to know yet. What is important is that by rising from the dead Jesus had introduced a new era. An era where every believer has the hope and expectation of also being raised again after we die here on earth. This is the most powerful story in the whole of God’s story recorded in the bible. It is, apart from the creation story, the one place God demonstrated how great His power is cf Ephesians 1:19 ff “That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms”. The NIV translation does not do justice to the Greek which uses 4 different words for power here, to reveal how mighty that power is.
Friends, maybe you have become so used to the resurrection story that you have lost some of the wonder of it all. Let this passage reawaken your wonder. God is busy with things that are far, far greater than we can conceive and you are part of that What a mighty God we serve!
Bless you all, till next week.