Jesus Stands Beside Us - Easter Reflection 1

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”  At this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus.
“Woman” he said, “Why are you crying.  Who is it that you are looking for?”
thinking he was the gardener she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
Jesus said, “Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!”  And she told them that he had said these things to her.
John 20:10-18 (NIV)

All of time and space is centred on the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  There have been and can never be more important events in the history of the universe than the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Who was the common witness of both events, Mary Magdalene, a woman!  When all the disciples, except ‘the disciple whom he loved’, had fled; Mary Magdalene, together with Jesus mother and Mary the wife of Clopas, remained with him and stood at the foot of the cross as he died.  Mary Magdalene was the first to go to the tomb on Easter Day and find it empty.  She was then the first person to meet with the resurrected Jesus.  It occurs to me that those who doubt that women should be ordained or allowed to be consecrated as Bishops should remember that it was the women who stood at the foot of the cross when virtually all the male disciples fled and that it was a woman, Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus chose to appear to first.

Our account begins with Mary weeping in the garden because she thinks that somebody has taken Jesus’ dead body away, preventing her from properly preparing his body for burial.  She sees angels in the tomb who ask her why she is crying.  She turns away from the tomb and Jesus, who she does not recognise, asks her the same question, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She does not recognise Jesus.  Why?  Perhaps, as a Sunday school teacher suggested to me many years ago, it was because her eyes were clouded by tears.  Perhaps it was simply that Jesus had his back to her as he spoke (as suggested by the film King of Kings).  Perhaps it was that the resurrection changed Jesus appearance in some way or changed the way people perceived him.  Whatever the reason, Mary did not recognise the risen Jesus.

Jesus speaks her name, and Mary then knows who he is.  It may be the distinctive way he speaks her name (I am reminded of the way Tom Baker always said Sarah Jane Smith’s name in Doctor Who and how odd that same name sounded on David Tennant’s lips) or it may be that God granted Mary recognition, but at the moment she knew Jesus was alive!

Jesus lived!  The one who had been dead on a Roman cross, whose side had been pierced by a Roman spear bringing a mixed flow of blood and water (which any modern medical examiner will tell you is an indication of a body that is definitely dead) was now standing alive in front of Mary.  God had vindicated Jesus, his words, his actions, his mission and the cross by raising him to glorious new life.

That same resurrected Jesus stands by each of us, saying our name and calling us to him; sometimes he is acknowledged and recognised and sometimes he is ignored,  but he is always there, offering us a full and equal share in the glory of his resurrected life.