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,