Easter People: Mary

Icebreaker

Rosalind Franklin took a photograph that changed the world — and never got credit for it in her lifetime.

• Tell us about a time you did something significant that went unnoticed or uncredited. How did that feel?

Read the Text Together

Question: Peter and John look into the tomb, see the burial cloths, and go back home. Mary stays and weeps.

• What does it tell you about Mary and about what it means to stay when everyone else has left?

Wesley said Jesus met Mary in the exact shape of her grief — one word, her name, and she knows him. Not a speech. Not an argument. Just her name.

• What does that tell you about how Jesus shows up for people who are in the middle of their worst moment?

Read Luke 24:10–11

"It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it."

Question: Mary knew how the room would react and she went anyway. Jesus entrusted the most important message in human history to the person the world was least likely to believe.

• What does it say about God that he consistently chooses people the world overlooks to carry his most important news?

From the Sermon

Wes said: "There is a version of healing that stops too soon. The encounter was never meant to be the destination."

Question: John says Mary clung to Jesus. Jesus had to say: don't hold on — go. Where do you think the line is between receiving the healing you need and staying in it past the point Jesus is calling you forward?

Application — Moving Toward Action

Wesley closed with this vision: "The risen Jesus has a vision of his church where people never leave hurt only healed. Together we can continue to build that church."

Wesley said it's often our calling that finalizes our healing, meaning that participating in what God is doing now is what finally allows us to let go of what happened then. Is there something: a gift, a relationship, a way of serving that church hurt caused you to set down?

• What would one small step back toward it look like?

Closing

"Will you join us?"

That's not just a Sunday morning question. It's the question for your group too.

Close by inviting anyone who wants to finish this sentence out loud:

"The room I need to go back into is ____."

Pray: Ask God to make his voice louder than every voice that ever told the people in your group they didn't count. And that together we’ll keep building a church where people leave healed.