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Who are you looking for? · Faith at Work

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: Happy Easter to everyone.
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  SPEAKER_00: I am Pastor Harry Jarrett.
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  SPEAKER_00: Very excited to have everyone that is here with us this morning.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've created quite a stir this morning, it seems.
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  Everyone seems much more surprised to see me in a jacket and a
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  tie than they are
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  SPEAKER_00: that Jesus actually rose from the grave.
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  SPEAKER_00: Laughter
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  SPEAKER_00: But this is far less a miracle than that.
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  And so we have gathered this morning to celebrate that he is
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  risen and you can say
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  SPEAKER_00: he is risen indeed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way, most of us were asked a question and asked
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  SPEAKER_00: told that it was the most important one we would ever face.
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  SPEAKER_00: You probably heard it first as a child,
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  SPEAKER_00: from a very well-meaning adult,
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  SPEAKER_00: leaning down with great seriousness,
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  SPEAKER_00: asking,
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  SPEAKER_00: what do you want to be when you grow up?
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it followed you into adolescence,
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  and into college applications,
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  into career counseling offices and life planning seminars.
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  SPEAKER_00: It showed up in graduation speeches and self-help books and quiet 3 a.m.
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  SPEAKER_00: moments of personal reckoning.
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  SPEAKER_00: What is my purpose?
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  SPEAKER_00: What should I do with my life?
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  SPEAKER_00: What should I do?
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  SPEAKER_00: What path should I take?
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  SPEAKER_00: What am I here for?
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  SPEAKER_00: Rick Warren built a purpose-driven kingdom on those questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: And these are not bad questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are, in many ways, genuinely important ones.
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  SPEAKER_00: A life examined by these are better than a life lived on autopilot.
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  SPEAKER_00: I am sure that you would agree.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I want to suggest this morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: on this Easter morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: that they are not the most important kind of questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are not even close to the most important questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the reason so many of us are exhausted,
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  SPEAKER_00: disoriented,
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  SPEAKER_00: and quietly bereft,
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  SPEAKER_00: even when we have achieved what we set out to achieve,
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  SPEAKER_00: is that we have been answering the wrong question.
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  SPEAKER_00: The most important question in life is not what.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is who.
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  SPEAKER_00: Who?
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  SPEAKER_00: And it took an empty tomb,
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  SPEAKER_00: a weeping woman,
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  and the voice of the risen Christ in a garden to make that
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  clear to humanity.
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  Consider for a moment what what questions actually do to us
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  when we make them
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  SPEAKER_00: central in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: They make us first the architects of our own meaning.
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  SPEAKER_00: When purpose is primarily a matter of what I am going to do with my life,
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  SPEAKER_00: then I am the one who must construct it to sustain it,
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  SPEAKER_00: to defend it.
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  My identity becomes the sum of my choices,
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  my achievements,
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  my productivity.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when I cannot produce something,
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  When illness comes or failure arrives or careers are destined
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  to evaporate,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have no ground left to stand on.
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  The what that I built my life around turns out to have been
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  resting on nothing more
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  SPEAKER_00: durable than my own efforts.
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  The what questions also tend to make us relentlessly future
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  oriented in a way that
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  SPEAKER_00: robs us of the present.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are always moving towards the next accomplishment,
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  SPEAKER_00: the next milestone,
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  SPEAKER_00: the next version of ourselves.
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  And there is a particular loneliness in that kind of posture
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  because no achievement
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  SPEAKER_00: once reached, turns out to be the one that finally satisfies us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The horizon always seems to keep moving.
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  SPEAKER_00: The what is never quite enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is something else, too.
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  The what questions,
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  for all their apparent seriousness,
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  are fundamentally impersonal.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are questions about
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  SPEAKER_00: tasks and functions and roles.
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  SPEAKER_00: They treat life as a project to be managed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the deepest parts of us know that life is not primarily a project.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were not made primarily to accomplish things.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were made to belong to someone and for someone to belong to us.
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  This is why the most painful experiences in human life are not
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  usually failures of achievement.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are ruptures.
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  SPEAKER_00: of relationships,
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  SPEAKER_00: loss of someone that we love,
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  SPEAKER_00: the dissolution of a marriage,
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  SPEAKER_00: the estrangement of a child,
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  SPEAKER_00: the death of a friend or loved ones.
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  SPEAKER_00: What wounds us most is not that we have failed to reach our goals.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is that we lost someone
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  SPEAKER_00: And what heals us in the end is not more accomplishment.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is the restoration of presence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone who knows our name and will not leave us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mary Magdalene understood all of this in a way she could not articulate.
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  SPEAKER_00: She had come to the tomb in the early morning dark,
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  moving through grief with a stubborn loyalty of someone who has
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  decided that love
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  SPEAKER_00: does not stop at death.
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  SPEAKER_00: She had watched him die.
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  She had seen where they had laid him,
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  and now before the sun had fully risen,
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  she was back.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she was not asking what questions at the tomb.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was not pondering her purpose or planning her future.
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  She was just remembering who he was and how much he had meant
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  to her and so many others.
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  She had organized her entire existence around a person,
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  and that person was gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: And nothing else in the world seemed to matter at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, the disciples, the guys, they had come and gone.
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  They had seen the empty tomb,
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  puzzled over the folded linens,
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  and just returned home.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Mary, she stayed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because she stayed, she was the first person
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  SPEAKER_00: to hear her name spoken by the risen Christ.
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  Not only the first to discover what had happened,
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  but the first to encounter who he really was.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was truly who he had said that he was.
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  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus appears to Mary, he asks her, why are you weeping?
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  SPEAKER_00: Who are you looking for?
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  Her answer,
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  not recognizing him at first,
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  was,
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  well,
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  I am looking for my dead friend's body.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in response, he speaks her name.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mary.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in that one word,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does several things at once that no achievement,
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  SPEAKER_00: no purpose,
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  SPEAKER_00: no what could ever do.
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  SPEAKER_00: First, he establishes his own identity.
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  SPEAKER_00: The one who speaks her name is not a stranger,
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  SPEAKER_00: not a theological concept,
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  SPEAKER_00: and not an idea about God.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is a specific person who knows her specifically,
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  who has walked with her and taught her and seen her at her
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  worst and called her
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  SPEAKER_00: forward nonetheless.
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  SPEAKER_00: The resurrection does not produce an abstraction.
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  SPEAKER_00: It restores a relationship.
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  The risen Christ is the same Christ who knew her name before
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  the tomb,
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  and he still knows it.
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  SPEAKER_00: He also establishes her identity.
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  SPEAKER_00: He speaks her name.
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  SPEAKER_00: To be called by name is to be told, you are not anonymous.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are not a category.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are not a category.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are not merely one of the mourners at another failed revolution.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are Mary.
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  SPEAKER_00: You are irreplaceable and known and the one I came looking for.
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  SPEAKER_00: The resurrection is personal before it is cosmic.
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  It reaches into specific grief of a specific person and speaks
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  her back into life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he establishes the answer to the deepest who question of them all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Who was Jesus?
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mary oriented her life around this person.
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  SPEAKER_00: She had followed him in Galilee,
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  SPEAKER_00: supported his ministry,
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  SPEAKER_00: stood at the cross when others fled,
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  SPEAKER_00: and arrived at the tomb before sunrise.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everything that she was, she had given in the direction of this who.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the resurrection tells her
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  SPEAKER_00: You were right to do so.
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  SPEAKER_00: The one you gave yourself to is the one who will not stay dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: The one you oriented your life around is the Lord of life itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is the answer that Easter gives to the question of human existence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not,
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  SPEAKER_00: here's your purpose,
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  SPEAKER_00: here's your plan,
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  SPEAKER_00: here is the what that will give your life meaning,
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  SPEAKER_00: but here is the who.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is the one who knows your name.
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  Here is the one who went into the darkness ahead of you and
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  came back from the
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  SPEAKER_00: other side to get you.
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  Oriented your life in relationship to this person and you will
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  find that you have
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  SPEAKER_00: found the only thing that is worth living for.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ is risen.
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  SPEAKER_00: He knows your name.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he is asking you, even now, who are you looking for?