We all have a deep internal longing to know God better and more. So where do you go when you want to seek a spiritual experience?  Longing for this is pushed to the side very often or filled with other endeavors and sought excitement.  We tend to get ourselves in trouble when we don’t realize we are seeking something spiritual, and we don’t turn to the inner voice to instruct on what the next steps should be and instead go with what the moment offered.  But we can learn a lot about seeking spiritual transformation and a closer relationship with the of God within our own souls.  So let’s look at the resurrection scripture from this morning and glean what we can on how to seek this transformation, because ultimately we are seeking life, new life, resurrected life, and renewed and renewing love.  What better example of new life do we have than the empty tomb?

Before Mark 16 which Mike read, Jesus was tortured to death on a cross.  After his death, a Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus and had it sealed in a tomb with a large boulder placed in front to secure it to keep bandits out. A day goes by and in the morning of the second day three women come to Joseph of Arimathea’s garden where the tomb was located. Have you been smart enough spiritually to carve a garden out in your own life that represents a place to go when you are seeking Christ?  Do you give enough time for this?

The women had wanted to embalm the body by putting spices and oils on it, because the next day it would begin to decompose and smell horrid. Those are the events that have led up to where our scripture begins, and we walk into the scene with the women on the way to the garden.  They are worried – they don’t know if they can find someone to help them roll the stone away.

Here is our first thing that impacts our own spiritual transformation and renewal and always will.  We can witness transformation and renewal if we stay with it, but there will be obstacles and excuses, lots of them when you first start out.  You have to decide like the women did to keep going, and deal with it when they get there.

When they get there, the tomb is open.  Always expect the unexpected in seeking spiritual transformation and renewal.  We can let the unexpected scare us off, or we can stay with it and persevere. Spiritual transformation is scary stuff, or more people would do it instead of throwing themselves into work, or play, or drugs, or other more usual pursuits and super-normal pursuits.

The women in the garden again choose to stay with it, and they walk into the empty tomb, and what is there but a stranger.  You will always encounter something new when you are going through spiritual formation or renewal.  It rarely comes in an expected package.  You have to be open to finding something you might not want.

To recap to now – When you go to this place you have made for spiritual formation, there will be excuses and obstacles.  You have to agree with that of God within you to keep going if you are led to keep going, and deal with the obstacles when you get there.  The experience itself might be intimidating and hold new perspectives.  The old points of view no longer work.  So you have to be willing to change and keep following that voice leading you from within.

And when you get to where you are supposed to be, it will be different than anything you imagined.  Remember that you can be anxious or you can be excited – they are the same emotion, just interpreted differently.   You will probably have to work with a new paradigm and with new people — but spiritual renewal is on the other side of these very hard changes. And maturing spiritually is what life is about.

In Mark we have two endings to this chapter. In first ending the women are told by the stranger they find that Jesus has gone to Galilee and that they are to go ahead to find him.  The women then take time to process what has happened, what they have experienced.  Spiritual renewal is sometimes a process you have to trust, and just let it unveil itself at its own pace.  You can’t push it.  You may have to do what the women did in the first ending of Mark – Just process it and reflect on it yourself.  Sometimes you have to just sit with it for a while until it feels real to you.

Verses 9-20 in Mark 16 give us the second ending. So you may get choices in your outcome like we have here, but you will get to spiritual renewal no matter which one you choose.    In the second ending of Mark, Mary is confronted by Jesus, and she goes and tells the disciples, but they don’t believe her.  This is a hard one for spiritual renewal —

People get used to you in their reality in one way.  Sometimes you have to do what the inward Christ suggests even if you are not supported or not believed.  It is horrible being somewhere without support, but sometimes you have to accept what you know to be true and let go of the expectation of support and belief.  It would be and is grand when our support systems function in a healthy  way, but think about it a little more.  If you have changed, and you have tried something new, it was scary to you or daunting at least.  Other people may not have the context to provide you with support, and you just have to let it go. The disciples weren’t bad people or disloyal people.  Like the unsupportive people in our lives, they are people and have that of God in them.  Pray God leads them and move on.

Jesus gives us an example of doing this in the second version.  People are surprised that he has risen from the dead. At first Mary didn’t even recognize him.  Then the two men on the country road did not recognize him.

Finally, Jesus goes to the eleven disciples that are left, there is no more Judas — and Jesus confronts their lack of belief in him and his resurrection.  Like Mary did, sometimes, you have to let God do the heavy lifting with your support systems.  Mary tried telling these disciples that Jesus had appeared to her.  But they didn’t believe her.  She obviously moved on to do something else because she is no longer with the disciples, and she has left Jesus himself to confront them.

Sometimes our family and friends won’t know how to react or respond to us with our new growth or knowledge or new wisdom. We will be different. But we have to let their responses and reactions go.  Mary’s job was to tell the disciples, and she did that.  It wasn’t her job to convince them.   So know what you are told to do, and only do what you are called to do, or be. Don’t try to be anyone else or even like anyone else.  Do your job, and maybe the Universe will bring a new mindset to those who can’t support you without them changing first.  And that is their life — so as they say, “You do you,” and let the Inward Christ handle all of the rest.

And it will be so wonderful to have made this trek to a more mature spirituality.  But unlike reality, tomorrow you will be doing something else, and it might not be an empty tomb, but you might have to go through the same steps all over again.  They will be the same steps because that is how spiritual transformation works.  But be open to it.  You have to first get up and go searching for your Jesus in the garden.

• How do you long for spiritual renewal?
• What practices of spirituality help you on this trek?