I don’t know if it strikes you as odd or not, but this first encounter, Mary’s encounter, with the risen Jesus, as recorded by John (20:10-18), seems out of place to me.
I mean, you’d kind of think that Jesus, after everything that was done to Him just days before, would have a different agenda that morning. Like maybe marching off to the temple to confront the religious leaders or Caiaphas, the High Priest. Getting in their face and saying, “Now do you believe me?”
Or zipping off to the Praetorium to say to Pilate, “I told you so.”
You’d think maybe He might stop in on the soldiers who’d spat on him, mocked him, beat him, scourged him, and hammered nails into him, just to say, “Do you have any idea who you were dealing with?”
He didn’t go and sort of show up the center of
He didn’t present himself to any official body for “resurrection verification”.
All of that would have been perfectly understandable somehow, and much more likely to have been part of the story if it were being fabricated, by the way.
But this?
He goes to Mary. And he calls her by name.
Names are important.
It says in John’s gospel that she was crying.
That’s an understatement in English. In Greek, the language that the apostle John first wrote this, he uses a word that indicates loud lamentation, not quiet sniffles. This would have been loud, gut wrenching crying. The kind that makes you have the shudders, on the intake, later.
Mary was of course deeply grieving.
Mary. Mary Magdalene. The Mary who was rescued from no less than 7 demons.
And without getting into a sidetracking kind of conversation about demon possession….anyone of us who have wrestled with our own personal demons knows that the person who helps liberate you from that….they are your Saviour.
Mary adored Jesus. Her heart was consumed with gratitude for Him. She believed He could do anything, because she’d experienced His power in her own soul.
She believed He was God. Of course she did. He’d rescued her. Restored her soul. Reclaimed her life.
But now He was gone.
Have you ever missed someone who’s gone? Maybe they didn’t even die. They just moved away. Or broke up with you.
Psychologists who study grief tell us that the pain of it, is really just that horrible emptiness that’s left when the exchange of emotional energy stops. You miss the emotional energy, the psychological energy that came to you from the other person. AND you have all this emotional and psychological energy that used to go TO this person, but it’s just dumping out into this horrible, cold void.
And it’s painful. Often felt right here, in our chest. And if it’s severe enough, you can catch yourself expecting to see the person you’ve lost coming through the door. Sometimes you walk around a corner and you’re sure you can smell them. You wake up, and there it is, right there and you can’t get away from it, they’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone!
So Mary….she’s wailing with her grief. But added to that was the absence of Jesus’ body.
See in the Jewish culture that Mary came from, the first seven days of mourning were taken really seriously. Those who were in mourning did not wash, work, have sex, or even study their Bibles. These people were serious about expressing, not repressing their grief.
And if the body was missing, and Mary was prevented from showing her final acts of love….that would have been excruciating to her, intolerably tragic. Even tomb robbers usually left the body behind.
So, yeah….Mary is crying. Wailing. Sobbing. Messy, unglamorous, raw.
She’s beside herself. I don’t think the black and white words on the page truly does justice to this scene. Not at all.
I think, when she’s replying to the angels, who are saying, Why are you crying?.... it’s got to have had just whole lot of power in it, tons of anguish. Almost screaming out the words. Why am I crying? They’ve taken my Lord away and I DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY’VE TAKEN HIM!!!!
And she just gets finished screaming at the angels and there’s another person, she thinks is the gardener, asking the same idiotic question.
Why are you crying?
I can’t help but believe that this just might have pushed her over an edge. And she might just then have looked at Jesus, not yet knowing it was Jesus, and growled at Him in a blaming, furious sort of way. If you have taken Him tell me where He is…right now…and I will go get Him!!!!!!!!
And into this chaos of pain and fury, Jesus just says one word. Her name. Mary.
Which, if you think about it, would be exactly Jesus’ agenda for that morning.
To speak her name. To touch her soul and invite her into intimacy, by speaking her name.
Yes! This would have been Jesus’ agenda. If He was indeed who He said he was, that being the same God who
Came down in the cool of the evening to walk with Adam and Eve. That’s Genesis 3:8.
The same God who wanted to rejoice over us with singing and quiet us with His love, that’s in Zephaniah 3:17
The same God who compared His love for us in terms of the intensity of the bond between a mother and a nursing baby, and said that He’d inscribed our name on His hand. That’s in Isaiah 49:14-16.
The same God who, also in Isaiah, that He calls us by name.
Fear not, I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name,
you are mine.
Isaiah 43:1
"I know you by name."
So Jesus, this same God, speaks Mary’s name. Of course He does. And that is His agenda. To invite her out of the pain and chaos, into intimacy with Him.
And the risen Jesus knows your name.
To speak your name.
Speak it softly into your pain.
Speak it loudly into your indifference.
Speak it lovingly into your loneliness.
Speak it strongly into your weakness.
Speak it deeply into your soul.
The risen Jesus knows your name.
And He longs with all of who He is -
Mighty God
Redeemer
Risen Saviour
Beautiful Friend -
To identify with the deepest places of you
And all that your name represents to who you are
And offer you the abundant life He so spectacularly demonstrated on Resurrection morning.
This is first and foremost on His mind this morning. To invite you out of your pain and chaos, into a relationship with Him that is intimate and dynamic and life transforming.
So if you are hearing your name spoken this morning.
Or at any time over this Holy Weekend
Or in the days, weeks, months to come
Turn around
Very likely, you’ll recognize that it’s Jesus
Inviting you
Intimately
And then, what you do after that
Is entirely up to you.
