Fr Matthew Reese

Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!”
—John 20:14-16

Dear Friends in Christ,

I love the post-Resurrection narratives because they are full of such extraordinary humanity, and such clearly defined personality.

Sunday at Evening Prayer, we read Luke 24:13-49, the “Walk to Emmaus,” where Jesus encounters two of the disciples along the road from Jerusalem. Both of them have already heard of the resurrection from Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, but they did not believe them, since “these words seemed to them an idle tale.”

In the Lucan narrative, Jesus walks with these two men for several miles, “interpreting to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” They still don’t get it, but there is some indescribable tug. And so, they invite him to share a meal with them. Only when he blesses and breaks the bread—exactly as he had done the Thursday before—do they suddenly recognize him, and he miraculously vanishes from their sight.

Jesus’s earlier frustration seems appropriate: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”

Today’s lesson from John, on the other hand, jumps back in the narrative, to Jesus’s apparition to Mary Magdalen. While Cleopas and his companion take hours of sermonizing and the literal reenactment of the Last Supper to recognize what’s going on, Mary requires only a single word. Jesus calls her name.

The tenderness, the intimacy, the mix of joy and grief and deep recognition that is at play here is so palpable, and yet it is communicated with only a name—perhaps nothing more than a familiar tone of voice.

Mary is able to hear. Mary is ready to listen.

Jesus is calling all of our names if we only “have ears to hear,” if we only are ready to listen, too look, to grapple.

We can discern the voice of God in our lives, the nudging, the coaxing, the encouragement, and, from time to time, the exhortation, the censure. But we must be ready to find him in unexpected places. The tomb has been opened, and God’s presence knows no bounds.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew