Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Mary Magdalene loves Jesus so much. In him she finds freedom from seven demons. Tradition holds that she is the prostitute so grateful for forgiveness that she annoints the feet of Jesus and dries them with her own hair*. But her sorrow is so great that she cannot recognize him now that he stands before her risen.
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus addresses her firstly as "woman". He speaks to Mary Magdalene but not just to her. It is almost as if he looks beyond the present to see all the women of history even unto Eve herself. Eve has been hurting for so long. She has been partial and fragmented ever since the first sin. Every hope has been incomplete, never quite healing the ache in her heart.
Jesus speaks so broadly at first to show that he comprehends the full scope of the suffering he confronts. But his salvation is not to some abstract group. Jesus demonstrates that he knows the suffering that has been endured throughout history. But he saves us from that suffering at the most individual and personal level imaginable.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
As he says her name he reveals such an overwhelming understanding of her identity that she can't help but realize who it is who knows her so completely.
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni,” which means Teacher.
We are often in a position like Mary Magdalene before she recognizes Jesus. She even sees Lazarus rise from the dead. She knows that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. But she cannot see past her own weeping and the weeping of every woman at every time in history. It is like the Israelites in the desert of Egypt. They experience such profound power from the LORD. But now, pursued by Pharoh, they quickly forget all of that in the face of the tyranny of the insistent present.
“Were there no burial places in Egypt
that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert?
But just as he is doing with Israel and with Mary Magdalene so to is God leading us toward a more conclusive and permanent deliverance. The only condition is that we not turn back.
“Fear not! Stand your ground,
and you will see the victory the LORD will win for you today.
These Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.
We must exult in the victories the LORD works so that we can trust in him no matter how hopeless our circumstances seem.
Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
* Is Mary Magdalene the same woman as the sinner who anoints Jesus? Possibly. See the discussion here.
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