And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
To Mary Magdalene the reason she was weeping seemed obvious. It seemed so obvious in fact that it prevented her from noticing the details that would have made it evident that a new reality was beginning to unfold. After all, there were angelic figures in the tomb. Rather than wonder at their presence she simply seemed to take it for granted, so great was her focus on her beloved. Her love was so immense that it rendered even angels as mere distractions hardly worthy of notice as she sought the body of her Lord.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
Mary Magdalene was still in some sense acting as the old Eve, mourning for all that had been lost and squandered in the fall, which culminated ultimately in the death of Jesus. At this stage in her thinking Jesus would have been the gardener in the old garden, removing access, not to the tree of life, but to the one who was the way, the truth, and the life. But this was not old and fallen Eden. This was a new creation and Jesus himself was a new Adam who would not only restore but surpass the benefits given in the original Eden. Mary, however, was invested in her old role and the sorrow that came along with it. She needed Jesus himself to reveal himself as risen in order to provide the interpretive key that made the corresponding reality of the new creation evident.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
It wasn't primarily about Mary's ability to recognize Jesus. Traumatic circumstances had caused her to get stuck in one mode of sorrow and one way of thinking. It took Jesus' knowledge of Mary rather than Mary's of Jesus in order to get her unstuck. Jesus had promised that his sheep would hear and recognize his voice. And it now became clear that this was primarily something he would cause to take place rather than an elaborate skill practiced by fastidious sheep.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,
for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
Mary had been trying to connect with Jesus in a limited way that had now been rendered obsolete by the resurrection. The old way of loving was limited and death was its tragic end. But this new way of being in relationship had no such limits. She needed to let go of clinging to the old way in order to be transformed by the new spiritual reality. She was called to embrace a joy that could not be taken from her.
So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you (see John 16:22).
It was Mary Magdalene's experience of being seen and known by the risen Jesus that made her a witness, the apostle to the apostles. It was an experience that she could not fabricate from her own interior subjectivity but one which broke through with a word, like light into a dark room. And this is precisely the impact that Jesus desires to have on all of us. He knows us and he wants us to hear him calling our own individual names. He knows us better than we know ourselves and sees that we are in many ways still clinging to old sorrows when the joy of Easter is available to us. May we too hear him so that we can become witnesses like Mary Magdalene.
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he had told her.
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