Mary, and the Women
Notes
Transcript
We spent the last few weeks looking at the last words of Jesus as he hung on the cross giving his life and fulfilling scripture. Over the next few weeks up until Pentecost Sunday I want to take some looking at the encounters Jesus had from resurrection to ascension. There are a few more the Bible will tell us about and we know he had but there aren’t a lot of information on those encounters.
The first encounter we will look at this morning, is probably the one most people are familiar with, it comes on the morning of the resurrection.
1 When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”
4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large.
It is important to take a moment here to address the differences in the gospel accounts of which women were at the tomb. Some people will use these differences to critique the Bible and say it is speaking against itself, but that is just not true. Imagine for a moment that you and I got second hand knowledge of an event that took place and were recounting that story to someone else. How many of us would have gotten the story the exact same? Probably not very many, the truth is it would kind of be like the old telephone game where you whisper into a persons ear a sentence and ask them to pass it on to the next person and so on. By the end the message is a little bit different.
Here what we see going on is witness bias, when we get told a story we only tell the parts of the story we think are the most important, and leave the other parts out. Women, you are familiar with this I am sure when you ask your husbands to recall a story. You want all the details of the event and he has only kept the information of the upmost importance. There is an old Jeff Foxworthy bit about exactly this. So we see some of the gospel writers talking about both Mary’s going to the tomb, we see others saying it was just Mary Magdalene. Does this mean the Bible is wrong and errant? Of course not, what most likely happened is both Mary’s went to the tomb, but some writers only talk about Mary Magdalene because she is the important one in this story, she is the one who is going to interact very soon with the risen Lord.
So, the followers of Jesus had spent their Saturday in mourning, knowing that Jesus was gone, wishing they could do something about it, wishing they could go and anoint his body for burial as was their custom, but they couldn’t. So when she goes to the tomb she is distraught as she goes, her loved one is gone, and they have lost all hope. The go to the tomb, wondering who will move the stone so they can do their work and when they arrive the stone is already gone.
The John account tells us Peter, and the disciple Jesus loved, namely John himself are inside the tomb after the women went back to tell them the stone was gone and Jesus was missing but Mary didn’t enter - she stands outside crying. And we must understand the emotions she is feeling here, the man she has followed for nearly three years is gone. She has seen Jesus do so much, she has stood near him as he has done the miraculous. She much like everyone who walked with him has expected his kingdom to be a worldly kingdom, where he would overthrow the government and establish his own on the Earth. She has seen him and known him to be an amazing man and can only imagine what he could do in the world if he were in power. All of the expectations she had of him, only for him to be crucified and as Peter and John stood inside…
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.
12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.
13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Here again we find a place where there is some contention, one angel, two angels, that is the question, but the answer is if there are two there are also one, so this is why the different number, again just witness bias. And the angels speak to her, and again I think of how amazing this is as she is standing and speaking to an angel. And here she makes them know she is distraught and upset because she can’t find Jesus. And she is so distraught she can’t even keep talking to them, her hope is gone, she can’t even keep looking them in the face… And next we see the most beautiful thing happen.
14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
She’s talking and trying to process the grief she feels and Jesus, who at this moment she has yet to recognize is standing there talking to her. And watch the change here, in the presence of Jesus, even though she doesn’t recognize him something is happening, she is not just distraught and without hope because he is gone, but now in this moment with him standing there she feels like she can do something, and she says if you took him, just tell me where he is, I will take his body. Unlike with the angels, she hasn’t turned away. It hasn’t killed her so much in these moments talking with Jesus that she feels the need to turn her head and go a different direction.
Do you see the shift there? Do you see what is happening, even when she hasn’t recognized Jesus, his presence has begun to change her, its not a huge change, but it is there. There is now some hope in her and she is ready to do something about this sadness and move it.
And I think we can learn something from this moment. We often talk about how we all have some pain in our lives, how almost every single one of us are dealing with some type of stress, pressure or life situation we are trying to deal with. Often times we find ourselves without hope and the situation is so overbearing we cannot begin to think of what to do next and how to get ourselves out of it. Then as we pray I think Jesus comes into the equation in our lives, often unnoticed at first and begins to give us hope and change our outlook on what is going on. Jesus will come in in the middle of our grief just like Mary and begin to give us hope.
Most of the time in these moments, we don’t even realize it until after and we look back on the event and say that was for sure Jesus. I often think back to the moments when terrible stuff happens and you are at your lowest and your realize Jesus was with you and he was the one that actually changed your perspective. Story about Charis and looking back it was Jesus that gave me hope.
Look at what happens next.
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
And it was in this moment that Mary recognized Jesus, in the moment He called her by name she knew who he was and was no longer confused. What we can see in this moment is how important it is for us to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Remember what we learned in Jesus’ words in John 10:1-3
1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.
2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
3 To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When Jesus calls HIS sheep he calls them by name and leads them into truth and this is exactly what we see happening with Mary in this moment. She is in the middle of deep despair and caught up in her own thoughts and confusion, and in the moment Jesus calls her by name it sets her straight understanding he is before her. In this moment, his presence that started her shift in thinking has come complete because he spoke directly to her and called her out.
And as you are dealing with the hard things in life, whether it be a relationship that needs to be restored, or friends or family you are praying come to know the Lord, or it just really seems like your circumstances are coming down on you right now; your job is awful - all your relationships seem to be falling apart, and it just feels like every time you stand up life keeps knocking you back down. What you need to know is in the middle of our brokenness Jesus calls us out and to himself.
He is the good shepherd and he doesn’t want you to be in the middle of all of what you are dealing with by yourself. The problem we often have with this theology is when people turn this theology around to make it more about themselves and we make it to be Jesus wants us to have all the desires of our hearts so whatever we ask him for he is going to give us like he is our genie awaiting our next prayer to do as we please but this isn’t the way it works at all. What we often find is we are like Mary, we are going through life and we are asking God to give us one thing we think will fix all of our problems and give us the peace we need to fulfill our hearts and souls. Here Mary said, If you took him just tell me where you put his body and I will take care of it.
And we do the same thing with Jesus, we say,
Lord, if you just restore this relationship with my sister/brother/father/mother/daughter/son whatever it may be I will always love you and it will be all I ever need.
Jesus, if you just give me this promotion my soul will be complete and I will have all I need in this life.
Jesus, if you help me pass this test, I will have the life that I want, everything from here on out will be exactly what I need.
But what we see more clearly in this moment, is Jesus didn’t just answer her prayer, he surpassed everything she could have ever hoped for. He did more than she ever though possible, and we have to realize he can do the same thing for us so long as we allow him to move in our lives.
And we have these ways we think will fix the situation and we find ourselves just like Mary awaiting him to give us what we want. But in one moment he can change everything. In the moment he called her by name he answered her prayer because she recognized him for who he was and that was what she was going after that morning, Him, she had a task to do. But here in this moment he has answered her prayer in a totally different way than what she expected.
I think the problem with us in our lives is we often aren’t listening for God to answer our prayers any other way than the way we want. When he tries to call us to a different way than what we had expected we don’t hear him, or maybe we just choose to ignore him because its not the answer we were hoping for. Thats why we have to get to a place like we talked about last week when we talked about starting our morning with prayer and calling on his greatness first thing in the morning, like David in Psalm 31. It allows us to put ourselves out of the way and hear his voice as he is calling us into things we may not expect. And I love what happens next, because it shows us what Jesus is really about; it shows us what he wants us to do with his answers to our prayers.
17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”
18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
Now that Mary has been filled with joy, and she has been empowered by his answer to her prayer he puts her on mission. He says, now that you are made right, now that you are fulfilled, and remember this is in a totally different way than she expected, what you need to Go and do is tell everyone about my triumph. Jesus answered her prayer and restored her so she could share about His glory in the light of everything else going on. And this is exactly why God answers our prayers today, for his own glory. He wants us to share with the world about him and gives us testimony through answered prayer we can share with the world.
What happens for so many of us who have been Christians for many years is we have become ashamed of what God has brought us through. We sit in churches and see how we shoot our wounded, heck we may even pull the trigger sometimes, and so we are scared to share who we used to be, and even more ashamed to share what he is currently walking us through in life, but this is exactly what he wants. He wants us to share what He has done in our lives and what he has brought us through so someone who is going through the same thing has a way out.
The worst thing we can ever do is keep our testimony to ourselves. Because we should know that in his presence, and when he calls us by name everything changes. This week, when the Lord prompts you and puts people before you who you can share your testimony with, don’t hold back. Don’t offer them some other worldly advice or something to help them, share with them what the Lord has brought you through and what he has to offer, because remember, there is nothing you have to offer them that is better than Jesus. And you may say what if I don’t have an opportunity, I believe we have more opportunities than we often think or realize if we just watch, and besides that, here in a minute I am going to pray that Jesus gives us multiple opportunities this week, each of us, to share the gospel. Let’s pray.
The resurrected Christ showed up in the middle of her pain and provided hope and life… and he still does that today to give us the opportunity to point people toward hope and life.
