1) "I had to relearn how to preach. I was a preacher that had to relearn how to preach. I used to not use a single note in front of me... and now I am dependent on what is right here... the scar on my head became the most frustrating sign of the damage within... as a pastor the power of a name... and I lost them all." [38:35 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



2) "God wants me to tell you whatever the Brokenness is that he's mended it and it's beautiful... kintsugi... the art of mending broken pottery... you take the broken and you create Beauty out of the Brokenness." [39:57 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



3) "When Jesus came back he came back with his scars. God rose Jesus from the grave and he could have made him 100% without blemish but he brought him back with the scars of what he went through to save us... God mends us and creates something new and beautiful." [41:23 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



4) "God speaks and acts and moves in ways we cannot imagine but if we're distracted by the grief and the fear and the sorrow and the pain we miss it just like Mary almost missed it... if we're not careful will allow the fact that we've been stuck in the season of Silence to allow us to miss the movement of God." [43:33 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



5) "The season of Lent is... a time to reflect on our own lives on our relationship to God also to reflect on the fact that we are not in control... our world makes it very easy to feel like we have control of everything... it's easy to forget then in the end we are powerless." [26:24 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



6) "Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them I have seen the Lord then she gave them his message... her grief pushed her into the desperation of finding Jesus so much so that she missed the real Miracle which was Jesus standing before her." [31:53 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)



7) "When Jesus called her by name and said Mary, the name broke through the grief and the pain and the tears... it reminds me that in our times of prayer when we've been dealing with silence... if we don't embrace whatever is going on inside often times we might miss when God moves." [35:01 ](Make clip | Crop for social media | Crop + Caption)

All right, so, um, friends, we have been on a sermon series. Today is the last week where we've been looking at Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter, the life of Jesus, and pulling from his prayer life and how we can learn ourselves, specifically in seasons where we don't hear God, where we lift our prayers and God doesn't respond.

If you would like to follow um notes in the sermon, you can do that either in the church app by clicking the worship tab or by going to our website and clicking the e-mag. But today we close out this series thinking about how the silence does eventually end.

Lent, with the weeks leading into Easter, is what we're in right now. The season of Lent is called a season of preparation. It's a time to reflect on our own lives, on our relationship to God, and also to reflect on the fact that we are not in control.

We start with Ash Wednesday, where we reflect on the fact that life is temporary. It's hard to always hold on to this because our world makes it very easy to feel like we have control over everything, especially in things in our world where it's so instant. I can rent a movie from my television. Oftentimes, I can watch movies in my home that are showing in the theater.

Anyone remember how long it took us to get movies on VHS at Blockbuster back in the day? You know, when it came in the theater, it felt like six months before we could get it on VHS and watch it at home. You are staring at me. I know some of you remember that. Okay, thank you, you're awake.

We waited anxiously when it came out on video, and we could watch it at home and not have to pay what seemed like a fortune back then to go to the theater. And now I can just click that button and watch it right from my couch. I don't even have to deal with the late fees.

And there's the instance of delivery. You know, Amazon had the two-day delivery and then the one-day delivery, and I discovered this week there's an overnight delivery. I could buy something Saturday and have it at my house by 8 a.m. Sunday morning. That's a dangerous thing. That's like shopping instant gratification to its extreme.

To be sitting there at 10:00 at night and have something by 8:00 a.m. the next morning, we can have about anything fixed. I mean, if you have enough money, you can fix any car, any phone, any pair of jewelry, or shoes, or clothes, any old computer. Almost everything in the world can be fixed.

It's easy to forget then, in the end, we are powerless. But when it comes to our health, I think we are reminded of this fact, are we not? Because we all come to a point where someone we know gets sick, and we are reminded how little power we have.

This is actually the point of Lent: to remember that in the end, God has the ultimate power at the end of life and that this life is temporary. So as we think about this idea of Passion Week and God's silence, the good news is that God is silent for a season, but at the end, he will speak.

He gets the silence through the end, like we have seasons of seeking and seasons of hoping and seasons of waiting, but it will always come to a close when God gives us an answer. There's hope that the silence will not last forever.

To talk about that, we're going to look at the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb on Easter Sunday. Now, before we go into the passage, I want to give you the context of Mary Magdalene because there are multiple Marys in scripture, and it's so easy to confuse all their stories.

Now, Mary Magdalene was a dedicated follower of Jesus but not considered one of the twelve disciples because only men were the twelve disciples. Women were not considered disciples, but she followed Jesus everywhere. The early church actually made her a saint and called her a disciple of the disciples.

We're not told much about her. Jesus healed her at some point, but we're not even given the story. It's like a footnote when they describe which Mary they say, "Mary, the one Jesus cast seven demons out of." That's it. That's all we know. But yet she was with Jesus often, and she was at the cross. All four gospels name her as the one that showed up to the tomb first.

Now, also to state that Mary Magdalene is not the Mary that broke the bottle of perfume on Jesus's feet. She did not anoint him at Bethany before he was arrested on Maundy Thursday. Those are two different Marys.

So now that we kind of understand who Mary Magdalene is, let's look at her meeting Jesus according to John.

John 20:1: "Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been. 'Dear woman, why are you crying?' the angels asked her. 'Because they have taken away my Lord,' she replied, 'and I don't know where they have put him.'

She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn't recognize him. 'Dear woman, why are you crying?' Jesus asked her. 'Who are you looking for?' She thought he was the gardener. 'Sir,' she said, 'if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.'

'Mary,' Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, 'Rabboni!' which is Hebrew for Teacher. 'Don't cling to me,' Jesus said, 'for I haven't yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'

Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, 'I have seen the Lord.' Then she gave them his message."

Because of Mary's grief, because of her pain, because of her tears, she saw one miracle but didn't see the other. See, when she got to the tomb, she saw two angels and an empty tomb. That was a miracle. To see an angel is quite a miracle. I don't know about you, but I have never seen an angel. So if I saw a glowing robed figure, I would be taken aback. If I saw the empty tomb where I expected Jesus to be, I would be taken aback.

She saw both, but her grief pushed her into the desperation of finding Jesus so much so that she missed the real miracle, which was Jesus standing before her. She even blamed Jesus as the one who took himself.

Think for a second: why was she so determined? We don't know what was motivating all of her. We're not told in the story, but we can maybe put ourselves in her shoes from the little bit we know. Maybe she was afraid that without Jesus, these seven demons that he had cast out were going to come back.

Maybe she was afraid that as a disciple of the disciples, one who only got secondhand teaching from Jesus, that she hadn't gotten enough. Maybe she was worried that without the dedicated teachings of the twelve, she didn't get those intensive sessions that the twelve got, the special teachings Jesus only gave to them.

Maybe she was worried that she hadn't learned enough from her teacher and that she didn't have the knowledge that she needed. Maybe she just loved him so much that her heart was so broken that she couldn't imagine how she was going to proceed because the person she believed God had sent to save and liberate her people was gone.

Whatever was motivating her, and maybe it was a combination of them all, was causing a grief so much that she saw Jesus and thought he was the gardener.

Now, let's just pause there for a second. He had to have not been glowing, right? I mean, obviously, if Jesus was in a white robe and glowing like the angels, she would have at least thought he was an angel. He had to have looked like an average person for her to see him as the gardener. Think about that one for a moment.

But when Jesus called her by name and said, "Mary," the name broke through the grief and the pain and the tears and the brokenness and all that was going on within her, and she saw him. It didn't necessarily remove the pain and the fear and all the struggle; it just broke through, and she could acknowledge what was going on, and she could see, and she was overjoyed.

It reminds me that in our times of prayer, when we've been dealing with silence and whatever has driven us to pray to God and driven us to ask for answers and all those things, that if we don't embrace whatever is going on inside, oftentimes we might miss when God moves.

Only through the brokenness can we often get to where we're going. There's beauty in brokenness. See, sometimes we resist that brokenness. We try to pretend it's not there.

I've shared throughout the years here the different pieces of my story of the accident that I had, but I haven't talked in depth about the true side of the brokenness. There's some irony because five years ago, I was working really hard to be a healthy person. That's really hard for me.

I always say that if God wanted me to be physically active, he would have made me have coordination because I can't throw anything straight. I also can't catch when you throw things at me. I go like this because I'm going to get hit in the face before I catch it.

They say keep your eye on the ball. When I was a kid, I kept my eye on the softball until it hit me in the eye. It's just true. God did not make me coordinated. But I was working really hard to be healthy, and I was eating well and going to the gym and doing all these things to have a balanced life, right? Taking time for myself and my family and trying to balance the work life.

I'm in the gym and had a trainer trying to teach me how to do things because I didn't know how to do this stuff. I said to him one day, "Yeah, I've never put much stock into being athletic. I always say I'm athletically challenged."

And I said, "But God has given me a good ability to process things in ways that other people don't see it. I don't know where I'd be without my mind." You got to be careful what you say, friends, because no joke, one week after I made this comment is when I hit my head and busted it open.

I'm laying there recovering from my concussion, going, "Faith, why did you have to say you didn't know what you would do without your mind? You couldn't just kept your mouth shut and not tempt Murphy's Law?"

Like those things stay inside your mind. You don't say them out loud and tempt everything. I spent so long having to recover my mind. I had to relearn so many things. I had to relearn how to preach. I was a preacher that had to relearn how to preach.

I used to not use a single note in front of me. It's one of the things I was so proud of as a preacher, that I could just preach out here and just be fully engaged with people. And now I am dependent on what is right here.

And what came as the scar on my head became the most frustrating sign of the damage within. I lost every name I had learned. I would be talking to a person, and I'd have so many names pop into my head, and I never knew what it was.

As a pastor, the power of a name—you heard Mary's grief be broken because her teacher called her by name. That is important. When we call people by name, I lost them all. To this day, I still can have names get mixed up, and it kills me when I do it.

I struggled for so long, and then two years ago, I went to a conference, and they told us to pair up with people. I got paired with a stranger, and we were supposed to pray a word over the next person. I have no idea what I prayed for that stranger, but what she prayed for me, she said that God gave her the image of a kintsugi bowl.

Now, this is a fake kintsugi cup because they're very expensive, and I can't afford one. But kintsugi is the art of mending broken pottery. It's Japanese, and you take gold or silver or platinum, and you take the broken and create beauty out of the brokenness.

She told me, "God wants me to tell you whatever the brokenness is, that he's mended it, and it's beautiful." She goes, "I don't know why that picture came to mind, but you needed to know that."

This is why I'm telling you this story. We're going to pick up in chapter 20, verse 19, right where we just left off.

That Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them. "Peace be with you," he said.

As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord. Friends, when Jesus came back, he came back with his scars. God rose Jesus from the grave, and he could have made him 100% without blemish, but he brought him back with the scars of what he went through to save us.

Those wounds in his hands and his side were his testimony of what he had done. It is how he proved in his resurrection that he was him. Many times, when we've gone through the hardships and the waiting on God and the praying through the silence and the waiting for a word, and we get to the end, the work that God does in us does not remove the scars.

God mends us and creates something new and beautiful. It's not as it used to be. It's not as it would have been if we hadn't gone through it, but what we have now is a new form of beauty that's been mended by our Lord.

You see, Christ is the witness that in all things, things can be mended, and things can be restored and redeemed, and that there is hope and answers at the end of the silence.

After this stranger spoke this word to me, I got much better at accepting what I call my new normal—accepting that it's okay that I'm dependent upon notes, that it's okay that sometimes my memory is worse than others, and that it's okay that one eyebrow is shorter than the other.

It's okay, but it's also okay for all of us that we have stories in our lives that carry scars within because an external scar is a sign of what's been done with it. God speaks and acts and moves in ways we cannot imagine, but if we're distracted by the grief and the fear and the sorrow and the pain, we miss it.

Just like Mary almost missed it. She almost missed the real miracle, which was Jesus standing in front of her because she was so distracted by the fact that he was gone. If we're not careful, we'll allow the fact that we've been stuck in the season of silence to allow us to miss the movement of God.

The silent seasons feel painful, but they're the work that allows us to get raw so that God can mend. I don't know where all of you are in your spiritual lives. I don't know what's going on right now with you unless you've come and told me, and that's often just a couple of people that do that.

We tend to often be guarded about these things in our lives, but God wants to mend you back. That's the hope.

So my question for you today is: do you feel like that hope exists for you? Do you feel like God wants to answer the prayers that you have? Do you feel like Christ is present to mend you back together?

Because Mary was there praising Hosanna. She was there at the Last Supper. She was there at the cross, and yet she still almost missed Jesus at the tomb. Are you seeking, no matter what, that God is going to answer and he's going to move and he's going to act and he's going to do amazing things?

But are you almost missing it because you have an expectation of what the answer is going to look like? I hope you ask God these questions today. We have to ask questions that are specific enough that we can get answers, we can hear where he wants us to go, that no matter how long we wait, we can still see where he's moving.

And if you have something you want me to help you pray for, please let me know. Let me journey with you. If you need support, let's pray together now.

Almighty God, the beauty that comes from your mending can only come from you. I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for all that you do. I'm thankful for all that you are, and I'm thankful that in you, all of us are as you want us to be.

God, today show us where you want us to go, whether it be in new places or to be still. God, maybe we're not in a place that we need mending. Maybe we're in a place that you've already done that work, and you need to take us to someone else to help. If that's the case, show us that.

But as we come to your table, Father, I pray that you connect us and you mold us and renew us and fill us by only your power and your strength. God, I pray that in all things, we be united with you.

Lord, help us to be faithful like Mary, but also, God, to see what's happening before us so that we may be called a disciple of the disciples. We pray this in your holy name. Amen.

Friends, this table is our Lord's and is open to all people. It doesn't matter if you're part of our church, if you're part of any church, if you're here. Christ invites you. The only requirement is that we confess together our sins.

So I invite you now to say this confession with me:

"God of Heaven and Earth, thank you for sending us Jesus Christ. In your name, even though we profess to follow him, we confess that we too often deny him in times of trial. Forgive us and heal us, we pray. Help us to put our faith not in the princes of this world but only in the Prince of Peace. In Jesus' name we pray."

Lift anything to God in your heart you'd like to lift to him today.

God, we ask that you hear the things we pray to you silently in our hearts. You know what we need to lift. You know our needs in our lives, and we know that you receive all things. We thank you for your love, for your continuous presence.

We ask now that you receive everything and that you will bring us into community with one another. We pray this in your holy and powerful name.

And friends, hear this word of forgiveness: in the name of our Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Amen.

The night before Christ was arrested, he took bread and he broke it. He said, "This is my body given for you. Eat in remembrance of me."

He also took a cup. He said, "This is the blood of the New Covenant. Drink just as you eat in remembrance of me."

Almighty God, send your spirit upon this bread and juice and upon us in this room. Transform these acts into your body and blood of Christ and fill us with your spirit so we may be your people in the world. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Friends, just a word of instruction: I'll invite those who are going to help me with communion to come forward. As they do, when you're served, you'll receive a small piece of bread to dip into the cup if you'd like.

No one has to touch your bread, and we will have gluten-free options. We'll have both gluten-free and prepackaged communion right here in the center. This table is open to everyone. There is no requirement of age or relationship to our church.

And if you're online, we encourage you to participate with us as well from home. I'm going to serve my helpers, and after I do so, I'll invite everyone forward.