Chapter 3: Mary

Mary Magdalene did not go with them. She remained standing outside the tomb, weeping.

Through her tears she bent down and looked into the tomb. Two angels in white were sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. They looked at her.

ANGELS“Woman, why are you weeping?”— John 20:13

MARY MAGDALENE“They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have put him.”— John 20:13

She turned around. A man was standing there. She did not recognize him. John's Gospel records simply that she did not know it was Jesus. He asked her the same question the angels had just asked, and then one more.

JESUS“Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?”— John 20:15

She assumed he was the gardener. It was a reasonable assumption — a man near a tomb in a garden at dawn. She asked him directly if he had moved the body and where he had taken it.

Then he said one word.

JESUS“Mary.”— John 20:16

She knew his voice immediately. Three days of grief collapsed in an instant. She turned and cried out in Aramaic.

MARY MAGDALENE“Rabboni!”— John 20:16

The word means teacher. It was the only word she had.

Jesus told her not to hold on to him — he had not yet ascended to the Father. She had a task first.

JESUS“Go to my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”— John 20:17

The first person commissioned to announce the resurrection was not Peter, not John, not one of the eleven. It was Mary Magdalene. She went and told the disciples she had seen the Lord.