Easter Sunday - Mary Magdalene – A Trustworthy Witness of Good News

Over the past several weeks we have been looking at stores where Jesus interacted with different people on His way to Jerusalem where He would be arrested and killed, but He also knew that after He died, He would come back to life on the third day. Despite the pain and suffering that Jesus knew awaited Him, He still went out of His way to connect with men and women along the journey. That’s because Jesus’s whole life was centered around His father’s plan to bring repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life to people who had been enslaved to sin and death. God’s plan was not something that was hastily thrown together and put into motion, it was something God had designed and arranged from the beginning of time. Even as God was pronouncing the curse on the Serpent in the Garden of Eden and on Adam and Eve, God declared that...

Genesis 3:15 CSB

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

Bible scholars look back at this very early statement in the history of humanity and see that even at this point, God had a plan He intended to carry out where Jesus would destroy Satan and his work on the earth. Over the centuries God had been unfolding His plan to bring salvation to humanity. In fact, the entire Old Testament is a record of God’s preparation and plan to bring salvation to humanity through His Son, Jesus. The events of the Old Testament laid the groundwork to show humanity our need for God’s mercy and grace, and the Gospels are the story of God sending His Son to be our Savior.

Running through all the stories and events is a thread of the love that God has for humanity. You see, when God originally created Adam and Eve, His plan was for them and their descendants to be with God, to enjoy God’s company and for God to enjoy the relationships with the people He created. We were made to enjoy and worship God, and for God to love and enjoy us too. When sin entered the earth through Adam and Eve’s disobedience, humanity was separated from God. Every human born since that time was born with a sin nature that separated us from God and interrupted the relationship God wanted to have with us. Sin also had another unwanted consequence: it brought death to us. If sin was a part of our nature, and it separated us from God and brought us death, then sin was humanity’s greatest problem; and Satan, the being through whom sin came to us, was our greatest enemy. For centuries humanity had been living in separation from God, but God had been busy at work laying the groundwork to provide a solution to our greatest problem and freedom from our greatest enemy.

God’s solution was to send His Son, Jesus, to give His life in exchange for our sins. His death and His sacrifice would provide the payment necessary to satisfy God’s justice and allow all those who put their faith in Jesus to receive forgiveness and salvation.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus had been redefining and developing the Jewish people’s understanding of God’s plan and His will for His people. Jesus had given hints to the full plan as He led His disciples and taught the people around Him.

In one of the most well-known passages of the Bible, Jesus explains the Gospel.

John 3:16–19 CSB

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

Near the end of Jesus’s time teaching the disciples, He made it clear that God’s plan included Him giving His life for His followers.

Mark 10:45 CSB

45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Much of what Jesus had been teaching His followers had not yet come together in their understanding of Christ’s full message and plan. When Jesus died on the cross, most of the disciples struggled with doubt and many wondered if their hopes for salvation had been misplaced. If you joined us on Thursday night for our Maundy Thursday service, you will remember that we looked at the emotional roller coaster that the disciples endured as they rejoiced in celebrating the Passover meal with Jesus, and then they were thrown into fear and confusion as Jesus was arrested, and finally left in a state of grief and hopelessness when Jesus died on the cross. I encouraged those who attended that service to keep in mind that even though we remember and give thanks for all that Jesus went though on Thursday and Friday, we look forward to Sunday. Sunday is what gives all the rest of Jesus’s ministry the full context and meaning it needs to have in order to truly be Good News.

Jesus knew that it would all come together and make sense for His followers at the right time. It would all make sense once they understood what happened in light of Sunday.

As the sun rose early that Sunday morning, Jesus revealed Himself again through a series of encounters with people. Just as we’ve been studying the encounters that Jesus had on His way to Jerusalem that final trip, this morning I want us to focus on one of the encounters that Jesus had with someone that first Easter Sunday morning. If you have your Bible with you, please turn with me to John 20.

John 20:1–18 NLT

1 Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 2 She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 3 Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. 4 They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. 6 Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, 7 while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. 8 Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed— 9 for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. 10 Then they went home. 11 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. 12 She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. 15 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” 16 “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). 17 “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Today I want to look at the person that Jesus chose to be the first witness of His resurrection to others. People have called Mary Magdalene the first evangelist, because she was the first person Jesus told to “Go tell others” about His resurrection, and she went and told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!”

Jesus chose someone who had a troubled history.

Luke tells us that Mary had at one point been possessed by seven demons.

Luke 8:1–3 CSB

1 Afterward he was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary, called Magdalene (seven demons had come out of her); 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward; Susanna; and many others who were supporting them from their possessions.

Mary Magdalene didn’t have just one demon, or two or three, she had seven demons. We know that Jesus often healed people from their diseases, and He cast out demons and freed people from demon possession. In the days of Jesus, demons were sometimes responsible for physical diseases such as deafness, blindness, muteness, seizures, and more. They were also responsible for various effects that resembled different kinds of mental disease.

The Bible does not tell us the specifics about what kinds of demons Jesus cast out of Mary Magdalene, but regardless of what kind they were, we can be sure that the experience of being possessed by seven demons had been incredibly difficult and trying. Whether or not those demons had physical effects on Mary, they surely had an effect on her mentally and emotionally. Not only that, but socially, demon possession made her into an outcast and someone people wouldn’t want to be around. Nevertheless, Jesus had cast out her demons, and she went from being a person who was haunted by demons to being a person loved by Jesus. She became His disciple, and became an important part of His ministry along with other women who supported Jesus’s ministry financially with their possessions.

Demon possession is real, and I believe that it is different from clinical mental disease that is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Nevertheless, whether a person is dealing with a spiritual attack or a chemical imbalance, Jesus can help deliver people from their demons. Jesus isn’t turned off by someone’s troubled history, and He restores people who at one point in their lives may be on the fringes of society. There is hope for anyone who is willing to come to Jesus and allow Him to take control of their lives and transform them.

Another notable aspect of Jesus’s choice to be His first evangelist was that Jesus chose a woman in a culture where women were not usually viewed as dependable or trustworthy witnesses.

Jesus gave a voice to someone who wasn’t normally listened to.

Years ago, when Shannon and I had just started dating, we both led summer mission trips to different countries. She led a team of researchers to India, where they were tasked with doing research for a missionary team that was trying to reach a specific ethnic group. One of the challenges she encountered as a woman leading a team in that country was that women are not considered reliable witnesses, and their word does not carry the same weight as a man’s. If she had needed to file a police report or to engage in some type of negotiation to arrange for something to be done or come up with some type of agreement, her word was not enough. She would have to find a man who would speak for her and then HIS word would be taken as believable. If you know anything about Shannon, you know that she is a confident, godly person who found this aspect of Indian society to be very difficult to live under, even if it was only for a few weeks.

But Mary Magdalene and the other women disciples who followed Jesus lived in a similar kind of culture where their word was not given much weight. Jesus, however, empowered women and gave them both value and a voice in ways that were way beyond anything that existed in that society at that time. Anyone who tells you that the Bible encourages people to devalue women, mistreat them, or that its teachings hold back the opportunities women have, doesn’t really understand what the Bible says about women, their value, and their ability to take part in positions of leadership and importance. The fact that Jesus chose a woman to be the first person to see Him in His resurrected state, and then go tell others about it, is an incredible statement that Jesus makes about the position of women in His kingdom and as partners in ministry with Him.

Ladies, God calls you to play important leadership roles in His church. He calls you to be outspoken messengers of the Gospel. He has given you jobs and tasks within His church that are essential to the growth of His kingdom and the salvation of the lost. You are not second-rate members of this church, you are critical partners with Jesus and the leadership of this church to accomplish God’s plan for us in our community and to the ends of the earth.

Another great lesson we can learn from Jesus’s choice of Mary Magdalene as His messenger to others was that...

Jesus used someone who was willing to serve, no matter the task.

Mary didn’t complain about the different things she was asked to do as a part of Christ’s disciples. We know that she was among those who helped make Jesus’s ministry possible through her financial support. We also know that she was part of a group of women who followed Jesus in his travels from place to place and helped out in various ways.

She was there among the few who witnessed Jesus’s arrest, His trial, and His crucifixion, and she was there to witness His resurrection. The reason she was there for His resurrection is that she was willing to be one of the women who prepared the burial spices that were traditionally used to wrap the body in for burial. Because Jesus died on a Friday, and his body was put in a grave over the Sabbath, it meant that Jesus’ body would have been decomposing for almost two days by the time the women got there on Sunday morning. With the amount of damage done to Jesus’s flesh from the beatings, whippings, and crucifixion, there was sure to be a smell to the body by then. Nevertheless, Mary was willing to serve, no matter the task. Because of this willingness to be there even in less desirable tasks, she was available to be used by God to witness the greatest moment of human history.

It is often in the moments that we least expect it that God shows up. It may be in the middle of a task no one wanted to do, or in the midst of helping someone go through a difficult season in life, or get through the grief of a tremendous loss that God decides to let you be a part of something amazing in someone’s life instead. Sometimes it is in the drudgery of handing out food to the poor that you get to pray for someone’s family member, and then hear a few weeks later how God answered that prayer. Sometimes it is in picking up after an event, or cleaning up after a church service that the real conversations about how life is going happen. It’s in those routine moments that people let down their guards and instead of simply answering “everything is good,” they begin to share what is really happening in their lives. Picking up chairs, putting away food, cleaning up after others becomes a secondary activity to what God really wants to do through you in the life of someone else. Because you were willing to serve, God was able to use you.

Finally, Jesus chose to use Mary Magdalene as His messenger to His other disciples about His resurrection because He knew she would obey Him.

Jesus chose someone He knew would obey Him.

Mary had been faithful in the small things of Jesus’s ministry. She had been available, she had been willing, and she had been obedient. The account of Jesus’s last few days with His disciples include stories of Jesus having to teach His disciples about who is great in God’s kingdom, and how it’s important to serve one another rather than try to gain influence, power, or position over others. I love that the Bible tells us how Jesus’s disciples were human, faults and all. It gives all of us hope that God can use us too. But it is also telling that of all the disciples that could have been there that morning, none of them were. It was Mary and the other women who followed Jesus who went to the grave that morning.

When Jesus told Mary to go and tell his disciples that he had risen, she didn’t complain, “No one will believe me,” or, “What proof do you want me to give them that what you told me is true?” She just obeyed Him. She told them what she had experienced herself (she was giving testimony to what SHE witnessed), and she told them the message Jesus had given her to pass on.

What a great model of discipleship that is. Let us tell others about our own experience with Jesus. What have we lived through with Him? How has He shown Himself faithful to us and how has He changed our lives? Then share with them what Jesus has told us to share with others.

As we celebrate this Easter Sunday and in the days and weeks after today, I pray that you would be like Mary Magdalene, the person chosen by Jesus to be His first evangelist. Jesus used her because even though she had a troubled history, her history didn’t define her; her relationship with Jesus did. May your relationship with Jesus define you and not your past. Jesus also gave her a voice even though her culture didn’t usually give much weight to the words of people like her. May we let Jesus speak through us, and not worry about how much weight our words carry, Jesus’s words have all the authority in themselves that we need. May we be willing to serve in any way we are called to serve, just as Mary was, and by doing so she witnessed the victory of Jesus over death and sin. And may we respond to Christ’s command in obedience, just like she did.

Let’s Pray...

Hebrews 13:20–21 CSB

20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Now may you go and rejoice in the knowledge that Jesus is Risen!