He's Not Here

Lectionary passage Matthew 28:1-10

Jesus is everywhere, right? Actually, Matthew records one place where Jesus no longer was: the grave. Jesus was no longer in the place where he was buried. We often go looking for Jesus in the place where we once knew him to be, the place where we last encountered him. But just as Jesus had already moved on from that garden tomb, he’s so often ahead of us in resurrecting a new reality far better than what we had hoped, dreamed or imagined. But those (who at least wanted to tend to where Jesus body had been) discovered the evidence of Christ’s resurrection, and they ran into Christ face to face. He redirected their focus from where he had been placed after his death to where he was at work: here and now, so go and tell! We don’t need to rehash where and how our hopes and dreams for life got buried, we can focus on how hopes, dreams, and lives get resurrected in the kingdom that is alive and active in the here and now!