This unexpected meeting between the risen Jesus and the weeping Mary Magdalene may well be the most poignant episode in the whole New Testament or indeed in the whole Bible.
Mary was a woman with both a painful past and a gracious, indeed miraculous, transformation. Luke’s gospel (8:2) tells of “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.” Mark’s gospel (16:9) assigns this powerful exorcism directly to Jesus himself. Pope Gregory I, in 591 CE argued, perhaps misreading an earlier passage (in Luke 7), that Mary was a reformed prostitute whose sins Jesus had fully forgiven. However we may assess these individual narratives, we can agree that forgiveness and healing were their common theme. Whatever her past, Mary knew herself to be loved by Jesus and she loved Jesus. Jesus had made her anew.
And now she knows him to be dead. She has seen Jesus mercilessly crucified less than 24 hours earlier (John 19:25; Matt. 27:56). She is doubtless traumatized. She knows his corpse was placed in the tomb. But now his body is gone. His people, his friends, his followers won’t be able to give Jesus a proper burial.
Mary runs home to alert Peter and John who themselves then run to the tomb. John, identified here as “the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” seems most impressed by the fact that he can run faster than Peter. Is this a matter of male competition? We can’t tell, but we are told that after finding the tomb empty, the two disciples simply “return to their homes.” They are men: they don’t easily show their feelings.
Mary’s response is very different. “Mary Magdalene,” we are told, “stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ Mary said to them, ‘They have taken away Jesus, and I do not know where they have laid him.’”
What happens next is deeply moving, not only for Mary, but for us two thousand years later. When Mary “had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there.” But she didn’t recognize him. A resurrection miracle of that magnitude would be just too much. Trying instead to make some kind of rational sense of what or whom she saw, she supposed that the person in front of her was the gardener in charge of the tombs. She begged him to tell her where he had put the crucified corpse.
In one word, Jesus changed everything. He named her, in a voice and with a loving warmth that she immediately recognized, “Mary!” Astonished, she turned to face him again, and called him in her native Hebrew tongue “Rabbouni!” or “Teacher,” perhaps the name by which she had long known this very special man who had saved her from demons and forgiven her sins. She tried to hug him perhaps, but he assured her that she had no need to cling to him. He’d be around for a while yet. Instead, she should tell the disciples what she has seen. She does so, telling them simply, “I have seen Jesus.” It’s worth noting that Jesus chose a woman to be the first of his followers to proclaim the good news of the resurrection.
And here’s where it gets even more interesting. We are used to seeing the resurrection as an affirmation of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, as proof of his divinity, and as a promise that death will not be the end even for us. All this I believe to be true. But there is another wonder that is rarely noticed, a question, if you like, that is rarely asked. The question has to do not with the miraculous truth of the good news itself, but with the endearing behavior of the risen Christ after the resurrection, or to put it another way, what did the resurrected Jesus do? And what does he do now?
We have already seen that his interaction with Mary Magdalene was one of deep emotional warmth, that he cared deeply for her and she for him. The risen Christ comforted her in her grief. His resurrection was not just good news for the many, though it certainly was that, but it was also a very specific and personal encounter with Mary as an individual. Nor was this by any means the only such personal interaction of the risen Christ with a beloved individual. Think of the disciple we call Doubting Thomas, whom the risen Jesus invited to strengthen his faith by poking his finger into the remaining wounds of the crucifixion on Jesus’s body. Think of the two discouraged and otherwise unnoted disciples whom the risen Christ met and to whom he gently ministered on the road to Emmaus. And think of the time when the risen Jesus made a good fish breakfast for seven of his disciples on the shore by the Sea of Galilee (John 21). After breakfast, moreover, he took the apostle Peter aside and said to him three times, “Do you love me?” The number three gently matched the number of times that Peter had denied any knowledge of Jesus on the awful night before his master’s crucifixion. This, too, was very personal and the risen Jesus had the sensitivity to raise the issue privately and then to assure Peter that he was still beloved and indeed trusted. “Feed my sheep,” was the gentle reaffirmation of Peter’s calling.
These very personal encounters of the risen Jesus with hurting individuals allow us, I think, to answer the question of how the resurrected Jesus behaved, indeed still behaves. During his life Jesus had healed the blind, the lame, the marginalized, the wounded, the dead, and the demon-possessed. The resurrected Jesus continued—indeed continues—to care for those in need, with an emphasis perhaps on the confused and the anxious and the puzzled. The risen Jesus continues to speak personally to those who hurt. And which of us, at one time or another, does not long to be comforted individually by God.
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, prays that his readers may be “strengthened with power through God’s spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God (Eph. 3:16-19).
I believe that we can say with confidence that Mary’s poignant encounter with Jesus near the tomb was a foretaste of the personal loving relationship that the risen Christ has offered to each of us over the intervening centuries. Jesus calls us by name. We may not hear his voice as audibly as Mary did. But the Holy Spirit speaks quietly to our hearts, calling us into a closer and deeper intimacy with the risen Jesus. May we weep with joy and wonder as his Holy Spirit speaks to our heart of God’s love.
You could, of course, just follow the example of Peter and John and simply “return to your homes.” If so, I encourage you to remind yourself frequently that Easter Sunday is not only a celebration of a miraculous resurrection—breathtaking as that is—but it is also a celebration of God’s willingness, God’s wish, to greet each of us in love and by name. May we follow Mary’s example, and embrace his loving grace.