I just returned from a week-long mission in Thanet, a coastal area in Southeast England. Our community spent Holy Week there, getting involved in local church services and events, meeting people, and sharing in daily life. Being in a more rural area– in that sense, closer to my home context of the Berkshires– gave me the chance to reflect on the meaning of Christian hope.

Throughout my week in Thanet, I was surrounded by vicars who were passionate about their communities and churchgoers who headed up amazing projects, from ecumenical services to children’s ministry programs. But I experienced a deep sadness that I attribute to the broader community atmosphere in which we were situated. Though I rarely had a chance to feel isolated during the week, I knew there were folks living in close proximity for whom the message of the Gospel doesn’t seem possible, relevant, or perhaps even meaningful in any way. I also felt that there were people in the church who may struggle to have a sense of hope, who may not be able yet to see how Jesus’ resurrection means something tangible for them. It’s a great story and a good excuse to have sweets, but the empty tomb isn’t always a straightforward experience of joy.

What kind of hope does the resurrection of Jesus bring when it follows directly from his acceptance of the cross? What kind of hope is it to say that God probably won’t deliver us from all our suffering immediately, but he wants to share in it with us?

I was struck on Easter morning in Canterbury Cathedral by John’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. In particular, I was moved by the encounter that Mary Magdalene has with her risen Lord.

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”‘ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”

John 20: 11-18

At the start of this passage, Mary doesn’t have much hope that Jesus could have risen. As I heard in a sermon recently, it’s not yet a possibility for her that Jesus is the one standing there, talking to her. She is not grieving because she’s actively hoping he’s alive; she seems to be grieving because there’s an uncomfortable uncertainty about where his body is.

What I take from Mary in this story is that no matter how empty or hopeless she feels, she keeps looking for Jesus. But finally, it is his initiative of searching for her that opens her to deeper joy than being able to find the body of her Lord or to “hold on” to him. He emboldens her to keep walking in a world of uncertainty, a world where we may not recognize Jesus at first but we have to keep searching, and keep trusting that he is ever searching to show us a deeper joy than we feel is possible.

So this Easter, as I felt confusion and emptiness around me, I met Mary Magdalene outside of the empty tomb. I took solace in knowing that I had a kinship with this woman who, though already a devoted follower of Jesus, needed a new conversion this Easter morning. I walked alongside this Mary who neither ignores nor succumbs to her pain, but allows it to bring her back to the Jesus who was crucified. And with her, peering into the tomb, I wait for the new hope that God will show me on my journey. I take courage in the fact that our projects of what hope could look like– finding the body of Jesus, for example– often pale in comparison to the hope God offers. It’s not an abstract hope, but a hope that requires meeting Jesus exactly where we are, for exactly who we are. The familiarity of Jesus calling Mary by her own name, but in that, renaming her hope, is something to sit with.

Tomorrow I leave for my 30 day silent retreat, a time to sink deeper into praying with the life of Jesus. I have no clue what I’ll come out with on the other side, but I appreciate your thoughts and prayers. I’m grateful to God for my journey so far, and pray that he reveals more and more the unexpected shape of hope.