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John John ²⁰Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene ¹¹Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). ¹⁷Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

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Peter and the beloved disciple go home, the beloved disciple believing that Jesus has conquered death, whereas Peter remains confused. Distraught, Mary remains near the garden tomb. She has deep reasons to be grateful to Jesus, who, back in Galilee, cleansed her of seven evil spirits.1 We must consciously distance our thinking from the false notions developed in patristic and medieval times that Mary is a sinful woman, even a prostitute. This has absolutely no basis in Scripture.

Looking into the tomb, Mary sees two angels. We cannot know from John’s account if Mary recognizes them as angels or not. John’s angels are not clothed in lightning like Matthew’s angels.2 All they do is ask Mary why she is crying. Perhaps they attended Jesus at his return to life. They are not messengers, and it is not their role to attest to Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus will do that himself.

John creates literary tension here. The reader knows that the person Mary sees when she turns around is Jesus. Mary doesn’t know, and this positions us to anticipate the moment of recognition, the transformation of Mary’s pain to joy. Few Bibles fully translate Mary’s ecstatic cry, ‘Rabboni!’ (v. 16). An Aramaic word, it is not just rabbi—‘teacher’ or ‘master’—but my master. She wants to hold on to him, but she must not, cannot. John knows that Jesus’ hour, his glorification, is incomplete until he ‘ascends to the Father’ (v. 17). Jesus must ascend to God while his followers must remain on earth as his witnesses. It is a testament to the significance of Jesus’ women disciples that the first person to proclaim the risen Lord is a woman. She takes the news to the disciples (v. 18), from a Greek word (adelphos), which is not gender-limiting. Jesus’ disciples, male and female, then and now, have become his family.

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