“Go, tell
his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
And where
is Galilee?
Galilee is
where it all began. The calling. The
healings. The teaching. The small towns full of hungry, hurting
people. The crowds. Controversy.
Feeding. Misunderstanding. Clueless disciples. Smart demons.
“Galilee” is where life is lived.
Whatever he was and wherever he came from, Jesus of Nazareth joined the
human race in its everyday life of growling stomachs and dead children and
quarrels. And it is right back to
Galilee that the risen Jesus returns.
You will
notice of course, that Mark’s story of the resurrection is not what you
sometimes hear, and lacks some of the elements we’ve come to expect. No conventional angels here with bright
wings. No long and moving story of Mary
Magdalene and him whom she supposed to be the gardener. No appearances of the risen Christ. Only a declaration that he has been raised
and two promises—that he is going ahead and that they shall see him in
Galilee. Was it the messenger in the
tomb that affrighted the women so? Or
the message? Or the peculiar absence of
the corpse whom they sought? We only
know that they ran from the tomb and told no one anything.
End of
Mark, but not end of story. Galilee is
still there, not only as beautiful real estate on the rim of the Sea by that
name, but as a place in your life.
Galilee of the Nations, the place where the crowded ways of life cross,
the intersection of all sorts of journeys.
Galilee is where you live.
Galilee is in your heart. And if
you would discover the timeless Christ, the Author of life and the ground of
Being, you will discover him in the thick of your life.
Is there no
other option? Can we not wait at the
tomb and hope that somehow he will appear?
Can’t we look backward into the past and do our best to recover the
faith of a prior generation and claim that as our own? Can’t we take a course in God and become
mystical or find him with crystals or incantations? Try.
But I think you’ll find that the Risen One will most likely show up in
the details of your life. It is
precisely where you hurt, where you resist growth, where you are whiplashed in
controversy, where you are passionate, where your heart leads you, what moves
you to tears, what causes you to roll on the floor laughing, what excites you
and what takes your breath away—those things are the Galilee where you will see
him.
Maybe you
are thinking just for a split second that, if that is the message, you might
just turn and run from it, so frighteningly mundane it sounds. We frequently believe that the spiritual
life must be something special, so out-of-the-ordinary that we could not
possibly find it where we are. So we
suppose that, if we are working in a law office in Washington, we should resign
and go feed the poor. Or the monk in the
monastery imagines that Christ is more really to be found among the
homeless. Changing the set is never the
issue. Nor, for that matter, is changing
one’s mind. It is a matter of going to
Galilee as agenda-free as possible. You
have no idea where Christ is going to appear, nor how that appearance might
change you, nor where the encounter might take you or send you.
But the Galilee to which he has gone ahead is whatever is
going on in your life. If you need to
change, you will know. If you need
simply to speak your truth, you will know.
If you need to struggle with the pit of uncomfortable truth in the
middle of your soul, you will know that too.
Learn to listen to your life.
Whatever it turns up, pay attention.
For there in Galilee you will see him, as he promised.
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2015
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