Christ is risen indeed.
What a sad couple of days it had been.
Jesus was dead, and with that so, too, were all the disciples’ hopes and expectations. Everything they had given their lives to over the past few years—everything they had sacrificed: families, homes, jobs, security—seemed to have come to nothing. It was all over.
Then, early on that first Easter morning, Mary went to the tomb (John 20:1–18). She found the stone rolled away and the body gone. I imagine this did not bring relief but deepened her sorrow. Not even a body to tend, to anoint, to care for; those final acts of love that are so much a part of grieving.
Mary ran to tell the others. Two of the disciples came back with her, looked, saw, and then, what I think is one of the saddest lines in the whole story, they “returned to their homes.” What else was there to do? The one they had loved was gone, even in death. There was nothing left to hold onto.
But Mary stayed. What a wealth of richness in those two simple words “Mary stayed”.
Mary remained by the tomb, weeping. There is something profoundly human in that. When love is real, it lingers. It does not leave quickly.
Through her tears, Mary looked into the tomb and saw two being she perceived as angels. I wonder if, even then, there was the faintest flicker of something—hope, perhaps, or simply confusion breaking through grief. They asked her why she wept, and she answered with aching simplicity: she did not know where the body had been taken. Even now, her longing was not for resurrection, but simply to care for the one she loved. One final act of tenderness.
Then she became aware of someone behind her.
She did not recognise Jesus. The text does not tell us why. Perhaps grief can cloud our seeing. Or perhaps resurrection is not simply a return to what was before. Either way, she does not know him. She supposes him to be the gardener and asks if he has taken the body.
Still, she is thinking of care. Still, she is acting out of love.
And then everything changes.
Her name is spoken.
“Mary.”
Not an argument.
Not an explanation.
Just her name.
And in that moment, she knows.
It is such a simple thing, and yet so profound. To be named is to be known. To be named is to be held in relationship. In that single word, grief turns to recognition, despair to hope, death to life.
I cannot begin to imagine what passed through Mary’s mind in that instant. But I know this: it was not an end.
It was a beginning.
Life had not been defeated. Love had not been extinguished. Something new, something beyond what she had expected or imagined, had begun.
And Mary, the one who stayed, the one who wept, the one who was called by name, became the first to carry that news.
The apostle to the apostles.
She went, because love cannot keep such news to itself.
Christ is risen.
Christ is risen indeed.
