So Mary Magdalene visits the tomb, and finds him gone. She goes to Peter and tells him, we learn that the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved run faster, Not sure what he believed because we are also told they haven’t figured out whats going on yet. That doesn’t happen till Emmaus. However, presumably after a bit they are a bit shocked, and then the men, they go home. Rather typically leaving the women to it.

This encounter from here on it is between Mary and Jesus.

Mary doesn’t go home, and presumably after a while, peeks into the tomb.

She sees angels, the Angels who are in on the whole gig, rather cattily if you ask me say to her.

Woman, why are you weeping?’

and then turning around she sees Jesus.
They have that conversation where her brain doesn’t recognise the person in front of her for a bit. We all have that, people you don’t expect to see turn up at work, or in the supermarket, and because our brain has filed them as footy chums, or people we meet in church our brain doesn’t go “oh its Sarah” from church turned up at my office! How much more if they are dead!

Until they go Hello mike….

Jesus does exactly this and says “ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!” it’s got an exclamation mark.

Which means it was said emphatically!

In the same way as we say oh no look at this mess!

So Jesus has twigged whats happened with Marys poor distraught brain and gone MARY!

He could have added come on, get with the schedule it’s me 😊

Then he says
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
Then he says what we are going to talk about today….

Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘
I am ascending to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”

This is a massive statement
Up until now Jesus has called his disciples , followers, servants, friends, people who he loves.

Now he calls them by a new name, Brothers, and by the way he said this to a sister first.

How does this change things?

. A seismic change in relationship as understood by Jesus.

Think, we can have followers, people who admire us, the world is full of celebs and acquaintances.

Instagram accounts can have millions

I once had 25000 followers on a west ham fansite

Never knew any of them, cared about the number as it related to hits, and created more followers.

Brother, Father

Brother is family, blood relative, family comes first.

We like to think we would die for our family, jump under a bus, suffer for them, support them, they are truly part of us. To bring up a child includes a massive commitment from the day they are born. Family is a great way of looking at us, who of us doesn’t have a family member we find hard work and yet love and would do anything for?

what wouldn’t you do for family.

You forgive family, even as imperfect people we forgive family.

And in a similar way that your family is in you and you are in your family, so Christ is in us and we are in Christ. I would say at levels beyond cells and Genes like family, how much more embedded and intertwined is us is our lord.

I think it would be harder than to try and take the milk out of your tea.

So we forgive family as imperfect as we are

Imagine if you are love embodied, how fast would you forgive, how perfectly would you forgive.

This forgiveness opens the gates of eternity to us because we are now God’s family.

We live in relationship with God, and nobody can affect that. God has claimed us as family, he made us, he is in us as we are in him.

When you walk out of here today remember as Paul said in romans 8
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That’s whats happened today, your worth your value, your inherent preciousness is now defined solely and singularly by God. Nothing can alter that, when you see things that try and shape you to a size 10, ir to some trend, or to look younger, or to match up to others value system, or measuring stick, when your boss thinks your lesser than someone else in his team, when life tries to tell you that you are lesser, through abuse, through addiction whatever, through sin, or lust, or anger, or being poor, or when others leave you, or when people put you down..

From the moment Christ calls you brother,

Your value is steadfast, unchanging, unchangeable eternal, perfect. Your inherent worth can no longer be affected, why
Because you have the greatest power in the history if everything ever on your side,
That same someone who is willing to die for you is on your side,
you have the prince of peace working for you,
the king of kings ruling over everything justly on your behalf ,
the bread of life being given to you,
the redeemer saving your very soul, the wonderful counsellor to ask for guidance.
The lamb of god, taking away your sin by being willing to go to slaughter for you.
The everlasting father, your father, your brother waiting for you when your time comes.

What is this world compared to that, what is this faith that we share other than a faith imbued by hope every single day no matter what happens to us.

In Nordic countries they have an expression when things go wrong, when the bus doesn’t turn up, or the train is late whatever they say…

hope dies last.
Hope dies last

We however are different

As Christ’s family hope never dies.

Hope never dies and that means we are people of hope.

Hope for today, hope for tomorrow, hope for whatever calls us just over the horizon, that which we could never hope to achieve by ourselves.

That hope is the hope we share as Christians

remember that whatever happens now or in the future.

you have hope, because Jesus calls you brother.
The thief on the cross shows us how we get to be he brother, he never went to church, was never baptised, never confirmed, wasn’t ordained of licenced, he was a thief, a sinner, a man we would think twice about entering our homes. And yet he was first into paradise alongside Jesus.

Bu knowing who he was, by calling him his true name.
And for that, all that

He asks for one thing in return
tell people about him.
For me that’s my lifes aim, the goal he has set me, the thing I try to engineer as best I can, in sermons like this with the street and rail pastors etc.

For you, you decide, and remember, if you have worries or doubts, or think it’s a commitment, or hard to do. remember its family that’s asking you? Jesus is family now.

What has family done for you?
What wouldn’t you do for family.

And he wants you to tell he people he is risen!

Alleluia
He is risen indeed!

Amen