A stranger from a strange land

In Rembrandt’s Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb, a painting of the post-resurrection Jesus with His disciple Mary Magdalene, we encounter Christ-as-gardener—shovel in hand, wearing a broad-brimmed field-worker’s hat to keep the hot sun at bay—His gardener’s utility knife in His belt. Two angels sit atop the tomb, relaxed but seemingly as surprised as Mary that Jesus manifests Himself in this strange, incognito manner. He may have just said, “Mary!”—His mouth open and expression intimate—and she turns, startled from her grief, to suddenly recognize her risen Lord.

He is a stranger—strangely known to her—and has come from a strange land, the land of the dead, the land of shadows, Sheol. Jesus will appear disguised to other disciples over the course of the next few weeks as well—as though in His resurrected body He is somehow transfigured yet oddly normal—a stranger walking along the road, a fellow fisherman on the beach cooking breakfast, a common worker tending the grounds of a cemetery. He looks normal, but not like the itinerant preacher from Galilee. They do not immediately recognize Him at the shore of the lake, on the road to Emmaus, or when Thomas famously demands proof of His identity. In each case He is initially hidden, but finally revealed in His resurrected body—still bearing the wounds of His crucifixion.

The risen Jesus is their Lord—yet somehow both familiar and unfamiliar.

In a sense He has become Everyman. Rembrandt’s insight into this profound mystery—Christ as Everyman—is compelling to see. He uses golden yellows and warm earthy reds in the painting conveying an atmosphere of calm, luminous shade, offering a beautiful but hazy scene of Jerusalem and the Temple in the distance, and an old couple walking in the cemetery in the early part of the day—any day, every day. In the composition Rembrandt places Jesus in close proximity to the background Temple—indicating that Christ is now the Living Temple—the place where the living God dwells among men.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

And yet His rising equates to a strange transformation that leaves us wondering: Where do we meet Him now? As He says in Matthew 25, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” He is the prisoner, the widow, the thirsty child, the sick and the indigent and the sojourner. One calling out to us for help—still the Lord Jesus but mysteriously present in those needing us.

Rembrandt’s Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb (with detail) Rembrandt van Rijn

We meet Him in the garden. At the grocery store. At the gym. At the table of friends and strangers. In our dreams and in our mundane lives. He meets us in the surprising guise of anyone who needs us, anyone we encounter today—while it is still called “today” as the writer of Hebrews says.

We encounter Jesus in the everyday as Everyman—in His post-resurrection manifestation we know Him despite His hiddenness. “Didn’t our hearts burn as we walked the road alongside Him as He opened the Scriptures to us?” He was unrecognizable as they looked at the exterior but revealed in the breaking of the bread. Rembrandt’s masterpiece points us toward a deeper way, the way of love and service and dailiness—the miraculous in the mundane. Not in the lofty and ecstatic transfiguration on the mount, but in the millions of tiny daily commitments and meetings with others as we are offered the opportunity to serve.

As the Israelites were fed the “bread of heaven”—manna, pane quotidiano in Italian—we are offered the daily bread of His presence in those around us. Like Mary in the painting, we now turn from our grief and in surprise meet the risen Lord in the person next to us—the Body of Christ—fulfilling Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” in John 17: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

One in Christ, we remain in the world for the life of the world—bearing witness to His perfect love. Love which moves us outward, toward a wounded world badly in need of healing and hope and refreshment. As in Rembrandt’s masterpiece, we need no special occasion or visionary encounter—rather, we are invited to meet Him here and now, in the immediately following moments in which He manifests as a common workman at His task, as a housewife, as a stranger in a moment of vulnerability and need.

Turn to Him now and offer yourself. Give Him that cup of cold water, visit Him in prison, walk with Him on the road, and listen to His voice while it is still called “today.”