Scripture: John 20:1-18
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
One of my favorite photographs of all time is the famous “pale blue dot” photo taken by NASA in 1990. NASA launched the Voyager space probe in 1977 and used it to study the planets Jupiter and Saturn within our Solar System. By 1990, its mission was long over, but NASA sent one final instruction to it as it travelled out near the very boundary of our Solar System. They told it to turn around and face the direction it had come and then snap a photograph of the planet Earth.
The end result is a largely blank picture with one tiny little blue dot near the right side. That tiny dot is our home, photographed from almost 4 billion miles away. It’s so small it barely registers on the photograph; you can hardly see it. And yet nearly all of the human experience has taken place on that tiny insignificant little speck in that photo.
It is hard even for those of us with an enthusiasm for astronomy to fully grasp just how massive our universe truly is. At the Green Bank Observatory not too far from where I used to live in WV, there is a scale model of our solar system. A sign marks where the sun is, then a few feet down the road is another for Mercury, and so forth for the other planets. Pluto is roughly a mile away from the sun under this scale and according to the tour guides on site (I’ve been there many times) the next closest star, if it were part of this model, would be in Hong Kong.
And that’s just the local neighborhood, astronomically speaking. Our galaxy, if we were to try to traverse from our home to the other side and if we had left when the dinosaurs were first walking this planet, we would still not be at our destination. And our galaxy is one of thousands in the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies of which we are a part. And there are thousands of such superclusters of galaxies throughout the universe.
In the midst of all that, we humans do not even measure. We are such a tiny part of all that universe that we may as well not exist at all. It is so huge and we are such a miniscule part of it that we can scarcely even imagine it. And yet that is the universe our God has created. When he spoke at the dawn of time, that is what came into being. Why did he make it so big? I don’t know. Maybe because he could and that, in and of itself, is saying something.
And yet on this Easter morning, we contrast that magnificence and that wonder of what God has done in creation with this intimate scene outside the tomb of Jesus Christ. The same God that created all that exists is now incarnate in the form of this man Jesus. The same God who did all that comes up behind one of his most devoted disciples and calls her by name: Mary.
And that too is a moment of wonder and magnificence. The same God who was so big as to create a universe so massive we humans can barely comprehend it knows each of us by name. By rights, we should not matter. By rights, we do not register as being an even remotely important piece of this machine of creation. And yet God knows us by name.
You know, I’d be impressed if the President knew me on a first name basis. Or some celebrity. Anyone important. I mean, who am I? I barely register as somebody on this insignificant planet, let alone in the whole universe. And yet God knows my name. He knows yours. We matter to him.
We shouldn’t. We should be nothing. No more worthy of attention than the dust mites crawling through the carpet at our feet. And yet, not only do we matter, we are precious to this God we worship. So precious that he put this whole plan into place so that we could be with him.
The plan began from the moment of creation. God knew he had to do something about sin or we would be forever parted from one another. So he came to an insignificant man named Abram and gave to him a promise: a promise of land, of offspring, and most importantly of a blessing that would come from him for all people. From that insignificant man, now named Abraham, came a people, a people chosen to show the world a new way of life. And they often strayed from the plan God had for them, so he brought to them prophets who would try to get them back on track.
And then, when the time was right, God came to them himself. He became incarnate, he became human, and was born of a human mother, a descendant of Abraham. He was named Jesus, or Yeshua in his native tongue: “God will save” is what it means. He grew up, taught the people the way of God, showed them how much they matter to the creator of the universe with signs and miracles. But they didn’t understand. He wasn’t what they wanted. He didn’t deal with the petty concerns of insignificant human politics. So they killed him.
Our ultimate act of revolt and rebellion against our Creator. We nailed him to a tree and watched him die. But God knows us very well. He knew it was going to end that way. He knew we’d do that. We’d like to pretend in this day and age that we’d be different, but no. We’re still too caught up in ourselves. If Jesus had come in this day and age, we’d murder him just the same. That’s what we humans do. It’s what happens when you think you’re the big shot in a universe where we really barely register.
God knew we’d do it, so it became part of the plan. Taking upon himself all of our sins, our mistakes, our outright rebellion, he took those to the grave with him and left them there. And on the third day, he came forth once more from it, alive, resurrected. And his first action is to come upon Mary and say her name.
It was the moment God was waiting for through all of history. To come to one that he loved and call her to him by name. All the division of sin and death that has kept him apart from us was gone in that moment. Everything that he did, he did for her and for you and for me. Everything that he did was so that he could be with us.
Astonishing really, when you think about it. We should not even register on a cosmic scale are the greatest desire of the heart of the one who created that cosmos. We are the recipient of the greatest love story in the universe. The God that created all things doing everything in his power to be reunited with his one true love: us. That’s really what all this is about: the covenants, the manger, the cross, the tomb, and the moment when God and humanity come together at last. Just as it was for Mary on that first Easter morning, so it will be for each one of us. There will come a day when he will call us by our name and we will be his at last. Amen.
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