We continue to celebrate Easter Week, the Week of Light. We look at Mary Magdalena, the first evangelist. She went to the tomb sure in her expectations to find death. She was full of sadness, mourning, and loss. Then she tried to explain the fact of the empty tomb using her reason and human experience along with her sense of mourning and loss. For her the only explanation that made logical sense was that someone had stolen the body. The culprits were probably the temple guards or the Roman soldiers or maybe just common thieves. So now we have Mary experiencing a second tragedy that compounded her grief for Jesus’ death. She is sitting outside the tomb weeping, utterly crushed by the experience of Jesus’ passion and death and now the robbery of his body.
Mary had been a disciple for some time. She had heard his Word, listened to his preaching, seen his marvelous deeds and physical healing, participated in the fellowship of that first Christian community, and personally received pardon and encouragement from him. She had reorientated her life to focus on Jesus. Yet she continued to interpret her life based on dying, death, grief, and hopelessness. Like most of us, Mary was in a state of being “half-Christian”, if we can say such a state truly exists.
Then the risen Christ inserts himself into her life of grief and sadness while she is sitting outside the grave crying. Initially her crushing grief does not allow her to even recognize him. So stubborn was she (and all of us) in the way of death and grief that initially she does not even recognize him. Once she recognizes him, he says to her: “Stop holding on the me”. What a surprising or strange thing to say! He is calling her out of death into the life of resurrection. Stop holding on to her image of him and her life based on grief, sadness, punishment, and death. That only produces a distorted and twisted vision of reality.
Then he sends her out to be the first announcer of the resurrection.
Mary was a good, pious, active, supportive disciple of Jesus before the resurrection. Yet her pious devotion did not include the transformation of the resurrection.
Stop holding on to me…
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord”
Image: CANVA CJ Dunn 31 March2026 AI generated.