The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,  Amen.

Fred Borsch, former seminary dean and former bishop of L.A., is an unassuming man, small in stature, very polite and very kind, and an old personal friend to many in this parish.  He is an all-around good guy.

Fred tells a story of visiting a parishioner’s home once when he was a young priest.  He tells it like this:

The four-year-old had tugged the door open and now stared at me.  I knew Billy from the Sunday school class at the church where I was the curate.  I had come calling to see if I could visit with his parents.  Wide-eyed and without turning his head, Billy shouted to his mother, “Mom, Jesus is here!”

I can just imagine Fred’s reaction.  “No, no!  It’s just me.”

Obviously, this is a story of mistaken identity.

Or does the four-your-old get it right?

***

The stories we read in the Bible are filled with stories of mistaken identity.

This morning, we hear of the two disciples who come to the tomb looking for Jesus’ body, and they are very distraught to discover it missing.

They are seeking a dead body in a tomb, when they really should be seeking a living Christ.

They mistake the meaning of the empty tomb, believing it to be bad news for them, but little do they realize that this is the foundation of the Good News for the World.

***

Mary comes to the tomb also, and she makes the same mistake, weeping because she believes that Jesus’ body has been removed.  She turns and sees Jesus himself, not dead but standing behind her, only she does not realize who it is.  She thinks that he must be the gardener.

He asks her why she weeps, and she says to him: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him.”

It is only in the moment when he calls her name, “Mary!” that she recognizes to who he is.

Mistaken identity.

***

How do you see your own identity?

There is a very theologically profound bumper sticker that I know many here in Carmel Valley can relate to.  It says: “God, please make me the person my dog thinks I am.”

But perhaps the dog is right all along.

We know our brokenness.

God knows our true identity.

We know that we are sinners, but with the good news of Easter our identity is forever changed.  We are not merely sinners—we are forgivensinners.

God never asks us to be someone other than who we really are.  Rather, that is precisely who God asks us to be—who we really are, men and women created in God’s own image.

We know that we struggle to live as people created in God’s image, but God calls us his children nonetheless.  That is our identity in God’s eyes.

***

What would it be like if we lived this way?

What if we told ourselves daily not that we are sinners, but that we are forgiven sinners?

What if we looked in the mirrors and saw a child of God looking back at us.

What if we believed we could be the person our dog thinks we are, who is also the person God sees in us?

If we did, we would discover that the empty tombs of our lives are filled with surprises.

Jesus is present, and we didn’t even know it.  Jesus is present not only in the stories of the Bible that took place nearly two thousand years ago—but Jesus is also present here today,

right now,

in this space.

And—perhaps even more importantly—Jesus will be present when we leave this space and go back out into the world.

***

The more we live in this hope, the more we will find that it is true.

Christ is alive, and Christ will use each one of us if we let him.

Like Fred, we may be shocked and even embarrassed when this happens.

But Fred himself humbly acknowledges the insight of the four-year-old when he quotes the powerful words of Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours;

No hands but yours, no feet but yours;

Yours are the eyes through which [Christ looks compassionately into] the world;

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good,

And yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

Christ is alive.  Alleluia!

—Amen.