The Gardener Who Said Her Name

The day of rest was over. Jesus had died on Friday, and now it was Sunday, the third day. While the sky was still dark, Mary Magdalene walked into the garden where he was buried.

She stopped. The great stone had been rolled away from the door of the tomb.

Mary did not go in. She ran back to the city, to Peter and to John, the friend Jesus loved.

"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb," she gasped, "and we don't know where they have put him!"

Peter and John jumped up and ran. John was faster. (John wrote this story down, and he makes sure we know he won the race.) He got there first and looked in, but he stayed outside. Then Peter came up behind him, out of breath, and went straight in.

The linen strips that had wrapped Jesus' body lay there, flat and empty. The cloth from his head was folded up in a place by itself. (Robbers in a hurry do not stop to fold things.) Then John went in too, and he saw, and he believed. But they did not yet understand that the Scriptures said Jesus must rise from the dead, and they went home.

Mary had followed them back, and she stayed by the tomb, crying. She bent to look in. Two angels in white sat where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and one at the feet.

"Woman, why are you crying?" they asked.

"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him."

She turned. A man stood behind her in the gray light.

"Woman, why are you crying?" he asked. "Who are you looking for?"

Mary thought he must be the gardener. "Sir," she said, "if you carried him away, tell me where you put him, and I will go and get him." (She had not stopped to think how she would carry a grown man by herself.)

Then he said one word.

"Mary."

It was the voice that had once sent seven demons out of her, the voice she had followed from Galilee. She turned to face him.

"Teacher!" she cried, and she held on to him.

"Don't keep holding on to me," Jesus said, "for I have not yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

So Mary ran for the second time that morning. "I have seen the Lord!" she told the disciples, and she gave them his message.

Mary could not keep Jesus in the garden. He was alive, but he was going to his Father, and she had to let go.

Jesus had once said that a good shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and they know his voice. He had said he would lay down his life and take it up again. On Friday he laid it down. In the garden that morning, he took it up. The shepherd who had died was standing in the sunrise, calling one of his sheep by name.

Then he gave his friends a new name too: brothers. His Father was their Father now. The joy of knowing him, and of being known by him, had begun, and it would keep growing until the day he comes back for his whole flock.

He still calls his sheep by name, and they still know his voice.