Jesus appears to Mary the Magdalene, in 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯.

John 20.11-18.

When we last saw Mary the Magdalene—well, in my previous article anyway—she was weeping outside Jesus’s sepulcher because she didn’t know where his body was. Had no idea he was alive. Even though he’d told his students more than once he’d rise again, she probably assumed this was just a metaphor, or figured he’d rise on the last day; certainly not millennia before the last day. (Pretty sure nobody in bible times realized Jesus would wait millennia before his second coming!)

Anyway Peter and John had come to check it out; they found nothing but the linen strips his corpse had been wrapped in. It was reallyunlikely anybody would unwrap the corpse, so that had to make ’em wonder. John said he believed, Jn 20.8 which probably means he believed Jesus is alive; but in the other gospels none of the Eleven appears to have believed it until Jesus himself showed up. In any event they left, and left Mary behind to weep in confusion.

Then she bothered to look into the sepulcher, as Peter and John had… and saw angels.

John 20.11-13 KWL

11…and Mary stood outside the sepulcher, weeping.

So as she’s weeping, she bends down

to look into the sepulcher.

12Mary sees two angels in white,

sitting where Jesus’s corpse had been laid;

one at the head and one at the feet.

13These angels tell her, “Woman, why do you weep?”

She tells them, “Because they took my Master,

and I don’t know where they put him.”

I’ve been in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which has the slab they placed Jesus’s corpse on… hidden beneath another slab. Too many pilgrims kept kissing it, and knowing the way the pilgrims in my tour group behaved, likely they kept trying to chisel souvenirs off it. The erosion would’ve whittled it away entirely, so the churches in charge of the sepulcher decided to cover it with marble. Meh; the slab’s hidden in there somewhere. Anyway it’s a nice long slab. Plenty of room for two human-sized angels to sit at either end, and not look like they were sitting right next to one another.

In the other gospels, the angels tell the women, “He is risen; he is not here,” Mk 16.6 but in John, Mary doesn’t give them a chance to reply. She turns round because she notices someone else is there.

The groundskeeper?

Mary thought this stranger was the groundskeeper. That’s the way I’ve translated κηπουρός/kipurós, a compound of κῆπος/kípos, “garden” and οὺρος/úros, “warden,” but when we say garden nowadays, people tend to think of decorative gardens and flower gardens. You know, like you see at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, which is an attempt to give tourists an “authentic” experience of what Jesus’s sepulcher looked like… but actually doesn’t, ’cause there’s too many western ideas overlaid upon it.

In reality, biblical-era gardens were where people grew food. People didn’t have the middle-class luxury of planting a purely decorative yard; even the rich used their available land to plant what we’d call a “victory garden,” and grow all the vegetables and herbs they ate on a regular basis. Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and was arrested, was an olive garden.

If it strikes you as odd that a sepulcher would be in a garden—wouldn’t the dead bodies make the vegetables ritually unclean?—no they wouldn’t. They were inside a sealed cave, and the produce was outside. You were more likely to be made ritually unclean by touching the manure they used for fertilizer. And the produce was more likely to be made ritually unclean by planting them too close together, instead of separately. Lv 19.19

Anyway the groundskeeper’s job would be to tend the plants… and of course keep people and varmints out. It was entirely reasonable for Mary to think any stranger she met would be the groundskeeper, who’d be there to confront trespassers. She didn’t expect it to be Jesus; she never expected him to be alive. That is, till he said her name—and likely said her name in a way only Jesus did.

John 20.14-16 KWL

14On saying this, Mary turns round and sees Jesus.

He had been standing there,

and she hadn’t known it’s Jesus.

15Jesus tells Mary, “Woman, why do you weep?

Whom do you seek?”

This woman, thinking he’s the groundskeeper,

tells him, “Sir, if you moved him,

tell me where you put him,

and I will take him away.”

16Jesus tells her, “Mary.”

This woman spins round

and tells him in Aramaic, “ܪܰܒ݁ܽܘܠܺܝ!”

(which is translated “my teacher”).

Well, properly ravvoní (Greek ραββουνι/ravvuní) means “my master,” or “my lord,” like it’s usually translated in Mark 10.51. But “teacher” and “master” were synonyms in their culture, so yeah, we’ll go with John’s interpretation.

Any groundskeeper there would’ve been working for Joseph of Ramah, whose brand-new family sepulcher this was. And it’s not implausible that Jesus’s corpse would’ve been moved. Joseph coulda changed his mind, decided he didn’t want the bad publicity of a dead rebel messiah on his property, and moved him someplace less conspicuous the moment sabbath ended on Saturday evening. So no, Mary’s not just babbling in her grief; she came to an entirely reasonable conclusion.

But that’s not the groundskeeper Mary was talking to.

Maybe Jesus expected her to recognize him as soon as he said, “Whom do you seek?” But again: She didn’t expect Jesus. Her grief made her a little face-blind. He had to snap her out of it, and saying her name did the trick. It’s kinda like something he taught earlier in this gospel: “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name.” Jn 10.3 She recognized her master’s voice. It’s why she responded, “My Master!”

Grabbing Jesus.

Apparently Mary also grabbed Jesus—same as the women are described as doing in Matthew, except to his feet. Mt 28.9 Which is why Jesus next tells her no no, don’t do that.

John 20.17-18 KWL

17Jesus tells Mary, “Don’t grab me,

for I haven’t yet ascended to my Father.

Go to my family and tell them:

‘I ascend to my Father and your Father,

my God and your God.’ ”

18Mary the Magdalene comes to announce to the students

that she’d seen the Master,

and he told her these things.

Verse 17 has confused Christians throughout history—don’t grab him because he hasn’t yet ascended to his Father? In fact a significant number of Christians insist he did so ascend to his Father: When he died, he freed all the Old Testament saints from hell and took them to heaven with him. You know, heaven; namely the tenth heaven, where his Father is; to live forever in the presence of his Father; he did ascend to his Father. Except right here, Jesus says no he didn’t. That bit about Jesus emptying hell?—Christian mythology. Extremely popular Christian mythology; I think Mel Gibson is even planning to make this story his Passion of the Christ sequel. But it didn’t happen, because the Old Testament saints are in paradise, and when Jesus died he went there Lk 23.43 —not to his Father. Yet.

The way a number of Christians have chosen to interpret verse 17, is to say, “Well he didn’t want her to cling to the fact he’s physically there on Earth, because he had much bigger, more cosmic things to do. She has to accept that he’s not staying; he came down from heaven, Jn 3.13 and he’s going back to heaven.” Okay, it’s fair to say Jesus might’ve meant that. And like a lot of the things Jesus said—namely his predictions of his death and resurrection—Mary, like Jesus’s other students, wouldn’t yet understand what he meant, but would at least remember it. Later, after Jesus’s foretellings finally happened, they’d get it.

Others just figure Mary was hugging him much too long, and this was Jesus’s way of telling her, “Okay stop; you can let me go now.” Maybe they’re not huggers, and are projecting that attitude upon Jesus. Or they imagine Mary had a death grip on Jesus—and he didn’t want to freak her out by vanishing like he did on the road to Emmaus. In any case they prefer the idea Jesus doesn’t appreciate too much affection from his followers; not so much we get all weird on him. There’s something to be said about that idea… but I really do think it says more about the people who prefer this interpretation, and how uncomfortable they are with affection.

Part of the reason Jesus has her stop, is she now has a mission: She’s gotta tell his ἀδελφούς/adelfús, his siblings—his literal siblings, like James and Jude, and his followers; his Christian family—and tell them he’s back. And lest they get the idea he’s now gonna overthrow the Romans and establish God’s kingdom as a political entity, no he’s not; and no, he didn’t leave that for the Christian nationalists to do in his place. He’s returning to his Father. He’s gonna get raptured. They’ll see.

Why’d he have her do this instead of telling them himself? Because he had to get them used to hearing from him through intermediaries. In the other gospels they didn’t listen to Mary, and he had to rebuke ’em for not listening to Mary. Mk 16.11, 14 As he has to rebuke us when we won’t listen to his other prophets.

Jesus’s intermediaries can come in any form. His messages wouldn’t only come through angels or one of the Eleven, like the Mormons claim. It could be a kid, like Samuel. It could be a woman, like Mary. It could be a gentile, like Melchizedek. None of us is so important that the Holy Spirit would only ever talk to us personally—and if that’s your attitude, you need to get over yourself. Anybody whom the Spirit indwells can hear him—and plenty whom the Spirit doesn’t yet indwell can hear him too, if he so chooses.