The Last Week of Jesus's LifeParaugs

Sunday, April 5, 33 AD

Mary Magdalene arrives back at the tomb as Simon and John exit it to return to their lodgings. They clearly haven’t found any answers either. She stands outside the tomb and weeps. As she weeps, she looks into the tomb and sees the two holy messengers in white, now seated at the head and foot of where Jesus’s body had been laid. John 20:13–17 describes the rest: When they ask why she is weeping, she tells them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

She hears a noise and turns around. Through the garden foliage and mist and early morning light, she sees a man. She assumes he is the gardener. He also asks her why she is weeping. She turns away, sniffling. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus likely steps closer and into more light, and says just one word to her: “Miryam.”

She instantly recognizes his voice, wheels on him, and exclaims in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”

Mary Magdalene throws her arms around her teacher and won’t let go. Jesus says to her warmly, “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.’”

Mary Magdalene departs to find the others. The older women, meanwhile, have had zero luck convincing the apostles and the seventy-odd. They depart the disciples and head on their way, either to their Passover lodgings or back to the garden. Wherever they are heading, Jesus meets them along the way. “Greetings!” he says.

The older women come up to him and grab hold of his feet and worship him. “Do not be afraid,” he instructs them. “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (Matthew 28:10).

Meanwhile (there are a shocking number of meanwhiles on this day), Mary Magdalene finds the apostles and seventy-odd still mourning and weeping over the loss of their rabbi. It has not occurred to even one disciple that Jesus could come back from the dead. “I have seen the Lord!” she blurts, and then delivers Jesus’s message.

Still, none of them believe the news, especially not from a woman formerly occupied by seven demons. Would we believe her? Simon Peter steps out to get some air.