Week 4 Wednesday — That First Easter... I Was There
Day 24: The Woman Who Heard Her Name
Day 24: The Woman Who Heard Her Name
John 20:1-2, 11-18
Introduction
She came looking for a body.
That’s what love does when hope is gone — it shows up anyway. Mary Magdalene had watched Jesus die. Had watched Joseph and Nicodemus take Him down from the cross and seal Him in a tomb. Had gone home and survived the Sabbath somehow, and then, before the sun was fully up on Sunday morning, had come back. Not because she expected anything. Because her love cried out for action.
She had been delivered from seven demons. Whatever that had meant for her life before Jesus — the darkness, the chaos, the years she’d lost to it — He had ended it. She had followed Him ever since. Supported His ministry. Stood at the cross when the disciples fled. Stayed until there was nothing left to stay for.
And now the tomb was empty.
She didn’t think resurrection. She thought theft. Someone had taken Him, and she didn’t know where they had laid Him, and this — on top of everything else — was more than she could bear. Filled with despair, she stood outside the tomb and wept. She looked inside and saw angels, and even angels couldn’t stop her tears. Someone spoke to her from behind and she turned, and through her grief she saw a man she assumed was the gardener.
“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
She was three feet from the risen Jesus. And she didn’t recognize Him.
Not until He said her name.
Scripture
¹ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
— John 20:1-2 (NIV)
¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
— John 20:11-18 (NIV)
Reflection
Three Feet Away
She had spoken to angels and hadn’t stopped weeping. That detail matters. The presence of the supernatural wasn’t enough to break through her grief. Even the messengers of heaven couldn’t reach her where she was — locked inside a loss so total that nothing could penetrate it.
And then Jesus asked her a question He already knew the answer to.
“Who is it you are looking for?”
He was standing right there. Risen. Alive. The answer to every tear she had wept since Friday. And she looked straight at Him and saw a gardener.
This isn’t a failure of faith. It’s a portrait of grief. Grief narrows the world down to what has been lost. It makes us fluent in absence and blind to presence. Mary wasn’t looking for a risen Jesus — that category didn’t exist for her yet. She had heard Jesus declare to Mary of Bethany, “I am the resurrection and the life.” She had stood at the edge of a tomb and watched Him call Lazarus out of the grave. She had seen it with her own eyes. And still, on Sunday morning, she was looking for a dead Jesus — because the dead one was the last thing she had left of Him, and even that had been taken.
There is something else worth noticing. Mary knew that Joseph and Nicodemus had placed Jesus in the tomb — she had watched it happen. She may not have known that Nicodemus had already anointed the body with a hundred pounds of spices, or perhaps she simply couldn’t trust that it had been done the way she would have done it. Either way, she came with her own spices, her own hands, her own love that had to do something.
But she had never thought through the stone. The massive sealed entrance that she could never have moved alone. There was no plan for the stone. Grief doesn’t make plans — it just moves toward the thing it loves, logistics be damned. Sometimes love compels action that doesn’t fully make sense. We just have to do something. We just have to go.
And it was exactly that unreasonable, unstoppable love that positioned her to be the first witness of the resurrection.
She asked the gardener where the body was. She would carry it herself if she had to. One more act of love with nowhere left to go.
And then He said her name.
Just that. One word in Aramaic, spoken in a voice she had heard a hundred times — calling her, teaching her, setting her free. Mary. And everything that grief had narrowed and closed and sealed shut broke open in an instant.
The resurrection didn’t announce itself with earthquake or fire. It spoke one person’s name.
That is the kind of God we follow. Not a God of generic declarations, broadcasting good news to crowds who have to sort out whether it applies to them. A God who knows exactly where you are standing, exactly what you have lost, exactly what grief has done to your ability to see — and who speaks your name into the middle of it.
We Are Like Her
We are Mary every time we are so focused on what we have lost that we can’t see what is standing right in front of us.
Grief does this. So does disappointment, and fear, and hopelessness — that particular blindness that comes from having decided, somewhere beneath conscious thought, that things cannot be other than they are. We come to God looking for what we’ve lost — the relationship, the health, the dream, the version of our life we planned on — and we talk to angels without sensing the moment, and we mistake Jesus for the gardener, and we ask Him if He knows where they put the thing we’re mourning.
He is three feet away. Risen. Present. Offering something we haven’t thought to ask for because we’re still processing the loss of what we had.
We also live in a world that tells us the tomb stays sealed. That death is final, that what’s broken stays broken, that the losses we accumulate are simply the shape our life takes from here on out. And we believe it — not because we’ve renounced our faith, but because grief is heavy and a new life is beyond imagination.
We also come, like Mary, with plans that don’t fully make sense. We show up to pray without knowing how we’ll move the stone. We reach toward restoration without a clear path through the rubble. We do something — anything — because love demands it even when logic can’t support it. And we are not wrong to come. The stone was already rolled away. It had been handled by hands that didn’t need our help.
But notice what Jesus didn’t do. He didn’t rebuke her for not recognizing Him. He didn’t say “Mary, after everything, how could you miss me?” He said her name. Gently. Personally. Into the exact center of her grief.
He meets us in the looking, even when we’re looking in the wrong places.
And then He gave her an assignment. “Go and tell my brothers.” The first witness of the resurrection — the one entrusted with the most important news in human history — was a woman who had arrived at the tomb that morning with burial spices and no hope. God didn’t wait for someone with better theology or steadier faith. He met Mary in her grief, spoke her name, and sent her running with an assignment.
We were there outside the tomb, weeping over what we’d lost, missing the risen Jesus standing right in front of us. We are there now. But He knows our name. And He is already speaking it. - This is The Way
Grace Note
“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” — John 10:3 (NIV)
Jesus said this before the resurrection — before the empty tomb, before Mary in the garden. He already knew then what He would demonstrate on Sunday morning: that He doesn’t relate to His people as a crowd. He knows each one by name. He leads each one out personally. The risen Jesus who spoke Mary’s name into her grief is the same shepherd who knows yours. You are not anonymous to Him. You never have been.
Prayer Prompt
Jesus,
I confess that I have stood outside empty tombs and wept over what I’ve lost — and missed You standing right there. Grief has narrowed my vision. Disappointment has closed off categories I didn’t know were still open. I’ve been so focused on finding what I had that I haven’t recognized what You’re offering.
Forgive me for mistaking You for the gardener. For talking to angels without sensing the moment. For deciding, somewhere below the surface, that the story couldn’t go anywhere except through my loss.
And forgive me for coming with plans I never thought all the way through — showing up with spices and no answer for the stone. Thank You that the stone was already handled. That You don’t wait for me to figure out the logistics before You act.
Say my name. Not into the crowd — into the specific place where I am standing right now, with the specific grief I am carrying, in the exact direction I’ve been looking in the wrong places. I want to be Mary in the moment she turned — not the moment before, when she was still asking the gardener — but the moment after, when everything broke open and she knew.
And when You do — give me her instinct. To run and tell someone. To carry the news before I’ve had time to fully process it myself. You are risen. That’s enough to move on. Amen.
Response
1. Name What You’re Looking For: Mary came to the tomb looking for a dead Jesus because that’s the last thing she had left of Him. What are you looking for that may be keeping you from seeing what Jesus is actually offering? A restored version of what you lost? A God who fits the shape of your grief? Name it honestly — not to stop grieving, but to open your hands enough to receive what’s actually there.
2. Listen for Your Name: Find 10 minutes of genuine quiet today — no agenda, no requests, no noise. Just stillness. Then listen. Maybe not for an audible voice, but for the specific, personal way Jesus tends to reach you — through Scripture, through a memory, through a sudden clarity that cuts through the fog. He knows your name. Give Him room to say it.
3. Go and Tell: Mary was sent running with an assignment before she had time to fully process what had happened. Think of one person in your life who is standing outside their own empty tomb right now — locked in grief or loss or the conviction that the story is over. You don’t need a theology degree or a perfectly formed testimony. You just need what Mary had: “I have seen the Lord.” Tell them what He’s done. Today, before you’ve figured out all the rest of it.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: That First Easter... I Was There
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way