Jesus Appears To Mary Magdalene
JESUS APPEARS TO MARY MAGDALENE
JOHN 20:11-18
A face-to-face meeting with the risen Christ turned Mary’s anguish into astonished joy.
If in a sense the “beloved disciple” has come to Christian faith because he believes in the resurrection, it is Mary who comes to the first full Christian experience because she meets the risen Lord. For the fact of the empty tomb and the encounter with the risen Christ are the twin bases of the Easter faith.
As the Lord had gone, there was no point in staying at the tomb as far as the men were concerned. But somehow they had not communicated this to Mary. She remains weeping at the tomb as it was the place with which her Lord had last been associated, and she did not now know where to look for him. Eventually she looks into the tomb and sees two angels. When they ask her why she is weeping she answers purely on the human plane. He has been moved from there and she does not know where they have put him.
Turning round she sees the risen Jesus but does not recognize him. To his question about the reason for her tears, she continues in the same vein of trying to discover where the dead Jesus is. Only the use of her name, no doubt in a familiar intonation, makes her realize that it is Jesus. Her apparent desire to cling to him is forbidden. He must ascend to his Father. She must go and tell his brothers about this. So she goes off to the disciples, his newly made brothers in the Christian family, and tells them that she has seen the Lord.
Notes 20:12: it may be that she needed the evidence of the angels which was not needed by Peter and the other disciple. 20:15: a very different kind of seeking from 18:4,7. 20:16: the Good Shepherd calls his own sheep by name (10:3). It helps us to think of him using our names. “Rabboni” is an inadequate confession of faith (cf. 20:28). 20:17: she may have touched him (cf. 20:27). She was not to cling to his body in this state because his abiding presence after the ascension would be a spiritual one (14:18). “My Father and your Father”—they are brothers (cf:1:11) but his relationship to the Father is still unique (1:14).