50 Days of Easter: Mary Magdalene

 This year there have been many mentions of the fact that the women were the first preachers of the Resurrection. From memes on Facebook to sermons and blog posts we hear about the faith and courage of the female followers of Jesus. During “The Great 50 Days”—the season of Easter, we’ll be exploring these women to see what their life and witness might teach us about our own Easter joy and living into that joy.

We start with Mary Magdalene because she is mentioned in all four Gospels. In the Gospel of John (John 20:1-18) she is the lone visitor to the tomb and has a dramatic encounter with the Risen Lord. We hear that she arrives at the tomb when it is ‘still dark’ to discover the ‘stone had been removed from the tomb.’ John tells us her initial response is to run to get ‘Simon Peter and the other disciple’ who then run to the tomb and discover it empty as she said. The men simply ‘return to their homes.’

Mary, however, lingers at the tomb. Put yourself in Mary’s sandals. A week ago, everything was glorious with Hosannas ringing out. Then…You watched the one acclaimed as Son of David be betrayed, arrested, and put on trial. You have seen the one you love as teacher and friend die a horrible death. You have been present when the mangled body is put in a borrowed tomb. You have spent the long Sabbath hours grieving and making plans to complete the burial rituals. You have arrived at the tomb only to find it empty. Questions race through your mind. Have the authorities taken the body for further degradation? Why? Where? What? There are strangers asking, ‘why are you crying?’ More than anything you want the nightmare to end. If you can just have Jesus’ body to weep over and to bury safely and properly maybe you can make sense of the past few days. You turn to leave, blinded by tears. You see someone else. Perhaps they can tell you where the body is.

Then everything changes. Jesus says her name. Simply says “Mary.”

Allison Wehrung in the April 19 D365 meditation says, “It’s her name, it’s being known, that helps Mary Magdalene finally recognize the risen Jesus. You can almost feel the exhale of relief that she lets out when she responds, “teacher.” Jesus and Mary didn’t need very many words, but they said a whole lot.” 

We all need to be known and recognized. We try to fit in to the expectations of our family, our employer, our spouse, our friends to be accepted and included as part of the group. We so much want to be known that we can hide our deepest selves. We pretend and we put on masks. We don’t let our real, sacred, God-loved selves be seen.

God knows who we are. God loves the you and me that God created. Jeremiah tells us that God promises, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart (Jeremiah 1:5). Psalm 136:16 similarly says, Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Wehrung continues, “While the world might expect us to act or look or feel a certain way, God meets us in quiet, honest encounters to say, “I know you, and I love you,” inviting us into sacred wholeness whether or not everyone else is there to see it. It’s a gift that Mary deserves – and so do you.”

What might Mary’s thoughts and feelings have been when she hears her name? We know she must have moved to embrace her ‘Rabboni’ because he admonishes, do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. This image from The Saint John’s Bible captures that moment.

We want to grab hold of the new, good things and not let them go. We want to keep the joy of Easter. We want to hear good news and not the frightening and hurtful news of the world. Writing for the Easter meditation 50 Days Maria Kane admits, “Truth be told, I don’t want to move on. I’ll do anything to hold on to the sharp contrast between Good Friday’s sorrow and Easter’s unhinged wonder. Like Mary Magdalene at the sight of Jesus outside the empty tomb, I’m scared that if I let go of the glory I encountered on Sunday morning, I’ll never experience it again. After the roller coaster of emotions, expectations, and disappointment of the past two years, can I—or any of us—be faulted for needing to cling to a kind of joy for which our souls have so desperately longed?”  

The truth is the joy is here to stay. Jesus sends Mary back to the disciples with the amazing news of the Resurrection. Obediently, Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Kane concludes the meditation by asking, “what if the call of these 50 days is to let go of any attempts at thwarting disappointment by telling ourselves that any moment of joy and new life we experience is the last one we’ll ever experience? What if we dare to believe that our story is not over?

Easter is not over. A new way is here to stay. God continues to speak our name. God is with us wherever we are in the fears and joys of daily life. God loves us. God sends us to live our story.

Can you hear God speak your name? Can you hear God saying, ‘go and tell’?