God’s work depends on the power of God
On this beautiful Easter morning, we hear in the Gospel of Mark that after Jesus died on the cross, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus’ body in the tomb.”
I can just imagine Mary the mother of James texting the other women, then driving her mini-van over to pick up Mary Magdalene and Salome…I imagine they were quiet in the car as they drove to Stop and Shop… the grocery seemed bizarrely full of life as they stared at the spices on the shelf…. picked out the best spices… paid for them… put them in their reusable bag… and then drove back home.. I wonder if they laid awake in their beds texting each other about how horrible it was that Jesus died… “I can’t even believe it. We were there and somehow it doesn’t seem real.” …
Last year at this time COVID was real and yet not real to so many of us. Life felt like one long snow day but there was no snow outside, no blizzard….
I imagine the women texting that they they should meet up before the sun rises to go to Jesus’ tomb to anoint him with the spices … they set their alarms for 5am, turned their phones off and tried to sleep. As the alarm went off, they checked their Facebook feed and the news… it was one negative story about Jesus after another… so they turned on the flashlight and threw on some clothes in the dark. Mary found the bag of spices tucked away and got in her cold car… she picked up the others and again they drove in silence only this time they were driving to Jesus’ tomb… the world felt so different…. These women were not operating out of the power of positive thinking. These women were some of the only people who remained at the cross as Jesus took his last breath. These women fully expected that Jesus was dead and his body was lying in the tomb…They went to the store. They bought the spices to anoint his body, because they could not conceive of any positive outcome. Jesus was dead.
Especially at times of stress, shock, and grief…. It is not only difficult to think of a brighter future… its sometimes even unhealthy… sometimes we need to sit in the darkness for just a moment…
Our culture and sometimes our churches preach regularly to us that if we think positively, then all will be positive…we just need to believe for a miracle and it will be so… As Kate Bowler puts it in her podcast,
“The world loves us when we are good better best… the self-help and wellness industry will try to tell you that you can always fix your life…eat this and your won’t get sick… lose this weight and you’ll never be lonely… believe with your whole heart and God will provide… keep this attitude and the money is yours…”
But like the faithful women who stayed at the cross… some of us have gone out and bought the
spices…
As some of you know… my little family has raised backyard chickens for the taste of farm fresh eggs… at the start of the pandemic… I thought of our chickens as less of a nice healthy addition and more of necessity…. Sometime in May we decided to go out buy extra chicks… because… you know… there might be a time when we couldn’t buy eggs in the store anymore…
Needless to say, I was not thinking positively… When the pandemic first hit, I had us eating out of expired cans of food in a couple years… and while I would like to think I was the only one with a negative view of our future… we were not alone in our apocalyptic nightmares… chicks were selling out less than an hour after the store opened… supermarkets sold out of yeast almost immediately…because as my friend said, “who knows if bread will ever be made again?”
In a culture that tells us that we need to think positively in order to get positive outcomes… we can feel as though our worries, our grief, our concern is problematic… even unacceptable… We should deny our negative thoughts, shove them down and replace them with positive thoughts so that everything will be positive…
But here’s the thing… Even though the women had gone out of their way to buy the spices… even though they fully expected Jesus’ body to be lying in the tomb…. Even though they were not thinking positively….
Jesus still rose from the dead.
Even though you may not be thinking positively about a situation in your life…God will still show up in your life to carry you through a dark time, to give you strength, and to cause a good work in you..
Even though we might be thinking negatively, God will still bring all things together for good…
Now I’m not justifying thinking negatively all the time or suggesting that God wants us to be negative.
In fact our scripture calls us again and again to trust and believe that God brings all things together for good… God wants us to live fully believing that God will provide and all will be well. And when we live believing in God’s abundance and goodness, life is in fact easier and more joyous… Imagine if the three women had trusted and believed that Jesus would be resurrected as he had said, it would have saved them so much effort, time, and money… They could have bought food for a celebratory meal rather than waste their money on spices they would never use.. They could have slept in on Sunday morning and just waited for Jesus to walk through their dining room wall rather than wake up in the dark and run off to the tomb that Jesus had already left.
It’s much easier and more joyous to expect the good and hope for a miracle.
But sometimes we are in such a dark place… in such a dark time… that all we can think of is the darkness… the loss, the grief… the heartache…. Trying to think positively and thinking of any other outcome feels like a betrayal, it feels wrong, or maybe too vulnerable, too risky…what if it doesn’t work out and we aren’t prepared.. what if Jesus isn’t going to be raised from the dead and we never anointed him…that would be wrong…
God wants us to focus on the good in our lives and give thanks for all we have, but even when we cannot believe that all will be well… even when we have gone out of our way to buy the spices in our lives…. fully expecting no other outcome than the worst one… God still works miracles… Even though the women were thinking negatively God still raises Jesus from the dead…
Why? because… God’s work does not depend on the power of our positive thoughts….
God’s work depends on the power of God alone.
So if you were in a really negative place when the pandemic first started…or you ever find yourself going to that negative place in your mind,
Remember that these women who were some of the most faithful followers of Christ… were in a pretty dark place.… they went out and bought the spices assuming Jesus was dead… and despite their negativity, Jesus rose from the dead anyway…
Remember that God will give you new life… God will create a new vision, new direction, new hope whether you expect it or not…..
This Easter, Remember that it is God who brings all things together for our good… Amen.