Called by the Risen Christ

John 20:11-18 ESV

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.” 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.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 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.

Grief has a way of narrowing our vision. When we are overwhelmed by loss, we tend to assume that what we see is all that exists. Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb weeping—not because she lacks faith, but because her faith is fixed on what she believes has been taken from her. The stone is rolled away, the body is gone, and her heart concludes that hope has vanished with it.

And yet the irony is almost unbearable: Mary is weeping in the presence of the risen Christ. Resurrection stands behind her while sorrow fills her eyes. She searches for a corpse while Life Himself speaks her name.

John doesn’t record this scene merely to move us emotionally. He records it to instruct us spiritually. Mary’s tears are real, her devotion is sincere, her confusion is understandable. But her greatest problem is not that Jesus is gone—it is that she does not yet recognize Him. And in that moment, John reveals something profoundly true about the human heart: we can be near Christ, speak of Christ, love Christ, and still fail to perceive Him rightly—unless He graciously reveals Himself.

This passage is not about Mary finding Jesus. It is about Jesus finding Mary. It is not about a woman climbing out of grief by faith, but about a risen Savior stepping into grief with sovereign grace. The resurrection is not discovered by human insight; it is revealed by divine initiative.

And when Jesus speaks her name, everything changes.

Today, we stand with Mary Magdalene at the tomb—not to look for a dead Savior, but to meet the living Christ Who still calls His sheep by name.

If you will briefly recall with me, our text from last week described what had seemed to be the worst possible scenario for Mary Magdalene, for Peter, and for John: As they approached the tomb, they believed that the body of the Lord Jesus had been stolen.

But while in the tomb, Peter and John had observed two very important features: 1. The Lord’s grave clothes were still in the exact shape that they were in when He was buried in them. 2. The face cloth was also in the exact shape, but because it had not been weighed down by spice, like the grave clothes, it retained its circular shape.

And seeing no point in remaining at an empty tomb, Peter and John returned home. Mary Magdalene though, lingered a while longer.

And as she remained there at the tomb, she wept. And she didn’t weep because she didn’t believe Peter and John when they had told her what they saw, but she wept because she didn’t know what it all meant. As we said already, all that she knew was that the tomb was empty, something that understandably puzzled her and brought great grief.

We remember too that Mary Magdalene had not approached the tomb when she first observed that the stone had been rolled away; and because of that, she obviously had not yet looked into the tomb as Peter and John had already done, and so, stricken with grief, she looks into the tomb to see for herself what she already believed and had been told, that the Lord’s body was not there.

We read that when she stooped to look into the tomb, she saw, “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet”.

While it may seem like a minor detail, the positioning of these angels actually carried great symbolic weight with it. The angels, being positioned at the head and at the feet of where Jesus had lain, being positioned on both sides of the burial slab presented a living image of the ark of the covenant.

The ark of the covenant was carried by Israel in the wilderness and sat in the holy of holies in the tabernacle and later in the temple. It signified the very real presence of God among His people.

And above the ark of the covenant, two golden cherubim met, their wings touching over the golden slab that covered the ark. That golden slab was known as “the mercy seat”, coming from the Greek word “ἱλαστήριον” (hilastērion), which means “that which makes expiation” or, “propitiation”. Propitiation means appeasing or satisfying God’s wrath while simultaneously being reconciled to Him and thus, that which is taking place here in the tomb is the communication of the truth that Jesus is the propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of God’s elect people.

As Mary Magdalene stooped into the tomb and saw this, the angels whom she saw asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”. The angels asking her this doesn’t signify that they were ignorant of why she was weeping, but rather, this is more a gentle inquiry, that was asked for the purpose of self-reflection: “Why am I weeping?”. They essentially ask, “Do you have legitimate cause for these tears? Search your heart! Does not the fact that Christ is not here afford cause for rejoicing?! Why do you weep when you should rejoice?!”

Her response though was “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him”.

So, at seeing the angels, I’m sure that Mary Magdalene knew that these were angels, she may have even understood what their positioning over the grave clothes of Jesus meant, but she clearly had not yet understood that He had been resurrected. She still held firmly to what she believed appeared to be obvious: that the body of the Lord was not there and so, it must have been taken.

Then, we read, that perhaps hearing the rustling of leaves behind her, or seeing something out of the corner of her eye, she turned around; and when she did, she “saw Jesus standing”. That she saw Jesus “standing” is significant because it demonstrates the proof that Jesus is alive! Mary Magdalene expected to find a lifeless body, but here stands the One Who defeated death itself, the living Christ!

But though the living Christ stands before her, we read that she “did not know that it was Jesus”. Now, I’ll admit that we don’t know for sure why Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize Jesus at this point, but I think that it is safe to say that the reason why she didn’t recognize Him at this point is because He appeared to her in His resurrected form, which obviously must have looked different than His pre-resurrected form.

And so, just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus in His resurrection form until He deliberately revealed Himself to them, so here does Mary Magdalene not recognize Jesus.

Well, Jesus proceeds to ask her two questions: “Why are you weeping?” and “Whom are you seeking?”.

So, just as the angels before had wanted Mary to self-reflect on why she was weeping when something so good has taken place, so does Jesus ask her this same question.

But even more, when Jesus asks her, “Whom are you seeking?” He is bringing her to the realization that while she seeks the dead corpse of Jesus, the living Jesus is standing before her at that very moment! So, essentially, He says, “Why do you weep? The One you seek is standing before you alive!”.

But, as I said, because she did not recognize that this was in fact Jesus Who was standing before her, she thought that He must be someone else; perhaps the gardener. In her mind, she probably thought, “Who else would be in the garden so early? And who else would question what I was doing here?”.

And so, supposing that Jesus was the gardener, Mary says, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away”. Here, she rightly believes that “the gardener” being responsible for maintaining the garden would naturally be the one who could explain why the body was missing. More specifically, the idea may have struck Mary that the gardener had seen fit to take the body to some other grave nearby, because this tomb was to be used for another body.

This suggests a plausible scenario in her mind: perhaps the gardener had relocated Jesus’ body to another burial site for practical reasons related to the garden’s use. If that were the case, the gardener would be the person who could direct her to its new location.

And in the midst of all of this confusion, Jesus simply says to her, “Mary”… Earlier, we said that the resurrected Christ took on a different appearance than His pre-resurrected body, and because of this, Who He was remained a mystery to those who saw Him until He chose to deliberately reveal Himself to that person.

And here, the Lord reveals Himself to His disciple, one of His own sheep, calling her by name, and hearing His voice, having the Lord open her eyes to Who is before her, the weeping Mary transforms into the worshipping Mary as she joyfully exclaims “Rabboni?”.

Here in this verse, in verse sixteen, it says that Mary Magdalene “turned”, and in this verse, that word “turned” is very significant, especially when we compare it with how she had “turned” in verse fourteen.

In verse fourteen, she had “turned” from the angels in the tomb and “turned” to who she believed was “the gardener”, signifying that she was still seeking the dead. But now, she “turned” toward the living Christ, abandoning her preoccupation with the empty tomb and instead, embracing the living reality that is before her.

That she addresses Jesus as “Rabboni” indicates that she has ceased to recognize Him merely as “the gardener” and now sees Him as who He truly is. Yet she does not simply call Him “Rabbi,” as one might address any teacher, but “Rabboni” — a more personal form of address, signifying a relational bond between the teacher and the one who speaks to Him. In this moment, Mary Magdalene does not merely recognize that Jesus is standing before her; she recognizes that her Savior is standing before her.

At this, Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father”. That she “clings” to Jesus must mean that she embraced Him while exclaiming “Rabboni!”. Furthermore, it indicates her overwhelming joy. She has found He Who she believed was dead, He Who she loved above all! And her joy is overflowing.

And the reply of Jesus, when He says, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” what He is essentially saying is; “Don’t cling to Me, I will still be with you for a while longer, for I have not yet ascended to the Father”. In this, He gently and lovingly says, “Don’t worry Mary, we will still have time together”.

He tells her that rather than cling to Him, she needs to “go to My brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’”.

In this declaration, Jesus declared that His resurrection accomplished several different things.

First, He calls His disciples His “brothers” which declares that they have gained entry into the family of God.

Second, He says that His resurrection indicates that rising from the dead ensures that He will ascend to His Father, Who is also their Father by virtue of adoption into the family of God, and that there He will reign with Him.

And lastly, in saying that He ascends to His God and their God He is saying that the Father gladly owns Himself as their God and they as His people, fulfilling the promises made all throughout the Old Testament, when God consistently declared to the faithful that “I will be their God and they shall be My people”.

And so, she did as she was told, she “went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that He had said these things to her.” How remarkable is the transformation described here as Mary Magdalene goes from seeking the dead to announcing that the Lord lives!

Mary came to the tomb expecting death and left declaring life. She came weeping and departed witnessing. And the reason for her transformation was not her insight, her devotion, or her persistence — it was that the risen Christ called her by name.

And He still does the same today. He does not wait for sinners to recognize Him; He reveals Himself to them. He does not wait for faith to rise; He creates it by His Word.

If Christ has called your name, then you now stand in the light of His resurrection and in the certainty of His victory. And like Mary, you are not sent back to dwell on what was lost, but to proclaim what has been secured:

We have seen the Lord!