When Mary Magdalene set off to anoint Jesus’ body with oils and perfumes on the first day of the week, I’m guessing she would have been distraught. After following Him for years, listening to His words, healed and comforted by Him, she must have felt disappointed, betrayed, maybe taken in by His words of kingship and life. Now she was having to face the future without Him and with their group scattered and fearful.
It was dark but even so her eyes were so full of tears that her sight was clouded. To top it all it looked like His body had been stolen. She had been deprived of performing this last act of love for Him. She spoke to two disciples. Peter and John saw inside the tomb – noted that it was empty and returned to their homes. Not Mary. She couldn’t go, not yet. She looked again in the tomb. Maybe something inside her still wanted to believe that He was there – somewhere. She spoke to angels – her grief overcoming what was such an unusual supernatural occurrence.
I’m sure, as He stood behind her, Jesus had a little twinkle in His eye. She thought He was the gardener and, overruling the custom of the day which would have forbidden conversation in public between the sexes, she offers to bring Jesus’ body back if he has hidden it.
Then He says that one word. ‘Mary!’ Had she heard the talk He gave (John 10:3) when He said that He calls His sheep by name? Voices are so important – when I close my eyes I can’t always bring the faces of those I’ve loved and lost back in my memory without studying a photo, but I can recall their voices.
Mary had to be at her wits’ end, desperate, unconsolable, then that voice broke through and immediately her life changed. Jesus still calls by name – it may not be audible but it is personal.
“I heard the voice of Jesus say: I am this dark world’s Light:
Look unto me, your morn shall rise, and all your day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found in Him my star, my sun;
And in that light of life I’ll walk, till travelling days are done. Horatius N. Bonar