When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
We often let our emotions and expectations determine what we will accept as reality, what we will allow ourselves to believe. We are used to rules of apparent finality. We come to believe we are machines that are breaking down, which, when their function ceases cannot be fixed. We have the normal emotional response to such a belief: despair. We tend to believe these expectations, and accept that these emotions describe a state of reality. This can make it hard for us to recognize hope, even when it is right in front of us.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener
Perhaps she had a sense at an unconscious level that this was the new Adam, a new gardener who offered the fruit of the cross, tree of life, to those who had previously chosen the wrong tree. But of course she could not articulate this. It wasn't even a strong enough impression to overcome her default story of what must have happened. But it did keep her engaged in the conversation.
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
We need something to come from outside of our subjective state of expectations and emotions to shake us up and awaken us. It is not something we can work ourselves up into feeling. It is not something we can arrive at by careful reasoning because it is entirely unprecedented. It is something that we must receive as did Mary Magdalene.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
The Lord has the ability to call us by name and awaken us from the daise of despair that threatens to engulf us. His words comprehend us so entirely and yet clearly cannot have their origin in our own expectations or feelings. This being called by name is the beginning of what it means to have and walk in a personal relationship with Jesus. From there we learn to trust in his words even when our feelings and expectations tell us something else.
When we hear Jesus speak our name we begin to learn the mode of speaking by which his message can be spread to others. We learn to use words that come from true understanding of others, to speak a message that offers them a true path to their greatest happiness.
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain
that God has made him both Lord and Christ,
this Jesus whom you crucified.”
The words themselves, from the perspective of a bystander, may not seem special. They may, in fact, seem harsh, like Peter's words may seem to us. But the key in what Peter said was not his eloquence. It was the love of God which his words embodied that made the difference. It was God making his appeal through Peter that made made his words powerful.
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart,
and they asked Peter and the other Apostles,
“What are we to do, my brothers?” (see Second Corinthians 5:20)
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