The Resurrection Changes Everything
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. – John 20:11
John shows Mary Magdalene weeping outside the tomb. The word used for “weeping” means to weep or wail, with emphasis upon the noise accompanying the weeping. It was one of those full-body, overwhelming bouts of sadness that accompanies the loss of someone dearly loved. Mary had already wept for the loss of her friend. She now wept for the loss of even his body. None of him was left. He was totally gone.
She looked into the tomb again, and she saw something that didn’t seem to register with her in her grief. Two angels in white sat where Jesus had lain, and they asked her why she was weeping. Well, her Lord has been taken. Why wouldn’t she be weeping?
Then something happened that helped her answer the question. She turned from the tomb and saw someone standing before her. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him because she wasn’t expecting him. She thought he was the gardener.
Jesus asked the same question the angels had: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Jesus was reasoning with her, metaphorically wiping the tears from her eyes.
Then, Jesus said something that changed everything for Mary.
He said her name.
“Mary.”
Something happened inside her when he said that. She recognized him instantly. It was his voice—the voice she thought she would never hear again. She turned to him and said, in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” John used the Aramaic word, wanting to preserve the intensely personal scene. Jesus said Mary’s name as he always had, and she called him Rabboni as she always had.
Why did that one word open her eyes? In John 10:27, Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” Mary knew his voice.
It was a knowing call. It was a faith-giving call. My pastor, T.J. Tims, said, “This is the shortest sermon in the Bible. Just one word. And yet it is the heart and goal of every sermon preached in the name of Jesus Christ: that we would all hear our names spoken.”
We know from Luke 8 that Mary was once possessed by seven demons. Jesus drove them from her. Now, at his tomb, he drove another darkness from her: her despair. He was alive! There is no greater joy. And Jesus, in his massive grace, charged this once demon-possessed woman with taking the news of the resurrection to the apostles.
Mary was in a unique position that day, but she is a model for us all. We, too, have been delivered from darkness, and we, too, have good news of Jesus’s resurrection to share.
So, as her Lord told her to do, Mary went and, full of joy, announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”
I love how Sally Lloyd-Jones describes what that joy might have been like in The Jesus Storybook Bible.
Mary ran and ran, all the way to the city. She had never run so fast or so far in all her life. She felt like she could have run forever. She didn’t even feel like her feet touched the ground. The sun seemed to be dancing and gleaming and bounding across the sky, racing with her and shining brighter than she could ever remember in the clear, fresh air.
And it seemed to her that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world had been made anew, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy—the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds…her heart.
Was God really making everything sad come untrue? Was he making even death come untrue?
She couldn’t wait to tell Jesus’s friends. “They won’t believe it!” she laughed.
Of course, we don’t know if that’s what Mary thought as she ran to the disciples, but it sounds about right, doesn’t it?
The resurrection is the reversal of all that is sad. It is the good news that every enemy that stands between God and us has been destroyed. It’s the hope we long for, the reality of abundant life, given freely to all who will believe.
The resurrection isn’t just a neat historical fact. It’s the hope of the world. It changes everything.
Everything sad has begun to come untrue.