© By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.

Jack Eckerd is the founder and former CEO of the Eckerd drugstore chain. Jack spent nearly half his time visiting stores, both his own and those of competitors. He talked with employees and watched what happened. One day he noticed a display of bright-red rubber balls that were not selling. He asked his management team about this, but it didn’t know why the balls didn’t sell. He then asked a clerk in the store. She said what should have been obvious to management. She said, “Children buy rubber balls, but these are on the top shelf where the kids can’t get their hands on them.” The balls were moved to the bottom shelf and soon sold out. Sometimes we need to learn to see the obvious.

We need to see the obvious about our planet Earth. Astronaut James Irwin made the fourth manned landing on the moon (1971). Irwin said that as they got farther away, Earth diminished in size. “It shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine.” Six years earlier, Adlai Stevenson saw the obvious about planet Earth and said, “We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil.”

We need to see the obvious about human beings. In the Bible shared by Judaism and Christianity is the statement: “So God created humankind in his image . . . male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Obviously, human beings are members of one family. Furthermore, for Christians, every human being is obviously related to Christ. Christ identified himself with children, saying, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me” (Matthew 18:5). Christ also identified himself with those on the margins of society, saying, “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me-you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40 TM). “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” (Episcopal Baptism Service).

We need to see the obvious about the climax of the Jesus Story-Easter! Mary Magdalene missed seeing the obvious on Easter morning. She looked into the tomb, saw the undisturbed linen wrappings, and, nevertheless, thought Jesus’ body had been moved away. Peter, too, failed to see the obvious when he entered the tomb and saw the undisturbed wrappings. It was John who saw the obvious fact of the transformation of Jesus’ body. It was a body that had been changed and had passed through the linen wrappings like a hand withdraw from a glove.