Photo: Bishop Jonathan confirms candidates at the Dawn Service on Easter morning at Rochester Cathedral
Following an exhibition and series of talks given at Rochester Cathedral during Holy Week on Women in Scripture, Bishop Jonathan completed the series in his Easter Sunday sermon, by exploring the interaction between Mary Magdelene and Jesus on that first Easter morning, and what it tells us about the nature of God.
Easter Day – Jesus and Mary Magdalene John 20: 1-18
We don’t know that much about Mary Magdalene, but we do know she was central to the unfolding of the gospel story, especially here in John as we have just heard. We are told by Luke that she had had seven demons cast out from her.
Scholars assume she came from the village of Magdala – and as Mary was such a common name, she was called “Magdalene” to distinguish her from others. She seems to have been a woman of some wealth, as we are also told that she was one of those who supported Jesus and his disciples from her own resources.
Mary Magdalene was most importantly of all, a witness to both the crucifixion and the resurrection, standing near the Cross on Good Friday and going to the tomb very early on Easter Day.
Here in John’s gospel especially, Mary is given a very prominent role in the story. She is singled out and John focuses his attention on her, giving us this wonderfully personal and intimate account of her interaction with Jesus in the garden by the empty tomb.
So why is this? Well, what we are seeing here is a beautiful illustration of the transition from fear and grief to the realisation that Jesus is alive and all that means for her and for us all.
Jesus’ meeting with Mary is a parable of the experience of the disciples, who started from a place of grief at the death of Jesus and moved through confusion and disbelief (as in the case of Thomas) before coming to see and believe that Jesus really has risen from the dead.
This is so often the way that John works – it’s why his gospel feels so different to the other three gospels. It’s much more of a meditation on the meaning of what happened in Jesus’ life, not just an account of one event after another. Of course, that is true of all four of the gospels, but it is especially the case with John.
So just what is John saying to us about the meaning of these events?
Let’s start with Mary herself and the prominence John gives to her in his account and remember first what we know about her from the other gospels, which we can reasonably assume would have been familiar to John’s hearers and readers.
Firstly and most obviously, Mary Magdalene was a woman who lived in a society and a culture where women were very much second-class citizens and whose witness was not trusted in a court of law.
It is therefore remarkable that John gives Mary such a prominent role. She is shown as the first witness to the resurrection, and she becomes an apostle to the apostles (as she is sometimes known). This is no accident on John’s part – everything he does in his incredibly carefully constructed gospel is done with a purpose.
John is telling us something, not so much about Mary as about God and the purposes of God.
He is saying in essence the same thing that Saint Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” In the world’s eyes in John’s day, women were despised and seen as weak, and in the simple act of giving Mary such a prominent role in the gospel story, John blows this away.
This is an incredibly powerful theological statement about the nature and purposes of God – that God chooses to use those whom the world despises to be part of his plans and to fulfil his purposes. Mary is the archetype of that – standing not only for all other women but for all those whom the world despises or thinks of as only second best.
This is a statement as radical as the song of Mary in Luke’s gospel that we know as the Magnificat – he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and the rich he has sent empty away.
Secondly, turning to the narrative itself, we see the gentleness and compassion of Jesus, as he leads Mary from grief to the joy of seeing her Lord alive once more. This is a deeply tender moment and again this is not just about one person, it is about how Jesus deals with each of us as we go through the pain of grief and begin to rebuild our lives once more.
Almost every one of us here today will have experienced the grief of losing a loved one, and all of us will certainly do so one day. What we see here is the compassion of Jesus in leading Mary through her grief to a place of new beginnings and of joy.
Now of course our grief is never resolved so quickly – it stays with us for a long time and in some ways for the rest of our lives – but what we see here is the way in which Jesus relates to Mary, beginning with the question, “why are you weeping?” and then addressing her by name.
Of course, Jesus knows why she is weeping, just as he knows why we weep in times of sadness and grief, but by asking the question he is both acknowledging the reality and opening the way to a conversation and addressing her by name – which is the moment when her healing begins, and her grief starts to be turned to joy.
Here again, Mary stands for all of us. She stands for us as she grieves the loss of the Lord she loved, and she stands for us in the sadness and fear and confusion that we feel in the midst of all we go through in our personal lives and in the life of world around us.
Jesus comes to us as he came to Mary and he speaks our name, assuring us of his love and care, whatever we may face and whatever life may bring.
And then there is the significance of those words which sound so strange to our ears, when Jesus says to Mary (in the words of many translations) “Don’t touch me”. How very odd, surely Mary wants, even needs, to touch Jesus, to hold him, to hug him. That is the most natural thing in the world. So what is Jesus doing and what is John saying here?
Well, the translation we heard today does help us with that, because our version says, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” John is saying that Jesus’ work is not yet complete – the final stage is for him to return to his Father in heaven, to go and prepare that place for us which he promised in John 14: “in my Father’s house, there are many mansions… I am going to prepare a place for you.”
This is the “now and not yet” tension at the heart of our Christian faith – that Jesus has won the victory over sin and death through his Cross and resurrection, but we still wait to experience the full reality of that victory until we come to the place prepared for us in heaven.
But as he did with Mary, Jesus addresses us by name and reassures us of his love and of the hope we have through him.
And there is one other crucial thing that happens in this passage, something that embodies the most significant thing that Jesus achieved by his death and resurrection – namely to open for us the possibility of a completely new relationship between human beings and God.
Hitherto in John’s gospel, Jesus has referred to his Father in heaven, but now for the first time he speaks to Mary of God as “my Father and your Father”. This is a massive shift. John is saying that now, as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection, human beings can share in the same relationship with the Father that Jesus has as God’s Son.
This is the greatest consequence of Jesus’ victory on the Cross – that we are free to enter into a living relationship with God as our Father, as we are privileged to pray every time we say the prayer that Jesus taught us.
This marks a whole new beginning, a new kind of relationship with God that goes way beyond religious observance and that reaches to the depth of our souls: the knowledge that God is and can be our beloved Father, going beyond or in some cases completely replacing whatever experience we have had of our human fathers.
In terms of the structure of John’s gospel, this brings us full circle, to the words of the Prologue, “to everyone who believed in his name, he gave the right to be called children of God.”
And that is the invitation that Jesus offers to each and every one of us: the offer of a new identity, a new place in God’s purposes, a new destiny, all made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
In God’s purposes, no-one is left out, no-one is insignificant, everyone has a place and a vital part to play – just like Mary Magdalene.
Of course we still face grief and sorrow in this life, but the risen Jesus comes to meet us, acknowledges our pain and calls us by name, reassuring us of his love and of the hope that is ours through him, until that day when we meet him face to face in heaven.
And as followers of Jesus, as those who have received him and believed in his name, we can have the wonderful privilege of knowing God as our father right here and now, sharing in Jesus’ relationship with him as children of God.
All this is a reality because of the glorious resurrection of Jesus from the dead – the resurrection that Mary Magdalene witnessed on that first Easter Day.
Let’s join once more in the Easter greeting:
Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
The Rt Revd Dr Jonathan Gibbs
Bishop of Rochester
20 April 2025