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Three days and two night ago, Mary’s entire world came crashing down. The earth opened up and swallowed Jesus, whom Mary loved, into the abyss. Mary’s world was thrown into darkness and confusion, leaving only soul crushing grief, bewilderment, and emptiness.

She barely had enough time to get him down from that tree on which he had died. A very generous leader risked his life and reputation to help her with the body and prepare the body properly for burial before Sabbath began. (John 19:42)

The crash of his arrest and the whirl of those events that followed came upon her in a rushing torrent so quickly that she was completely overwhelmed, reeling, barely able to breath from beginning to end, and they ended with his death. The commotion of the last minute burial gave way to the silent weight of yawning emptiness and overwhelming grief in the dark night that followed.

All the men abandoned Jesus as the world began to unravel. The petty squabbling that broke up dinner the night before left Mary confused about what Jesus had been saying. Jesus was trying to tell them something important, but she could only remember bits and pieces….

Something about a cup… and pouring out his blood and…. It was all so surreal and confusing. So impossible to fathom. Jesus seemed to know what was going to happen. She could see it in his eyes. He was resigned to it, but she didn’t understand.

All the mysterious things Jesus said during the exciting and hopeful years they traveled with the Jesus played in her mind like a long, beautiful song ending in a discordant whimper. The mystery that seemed so poignant and momentous now seemed ominously empty. Through the looming darkness, a slight flame of hope sputtered amid the whirlwind of elements around her.

Jesus wouldn’t let anyone try to defend him. “He just gave himself up!” she thought. He utterly gave himself over to them. It was painful to watch, and painful to remember.

But even in his weakness he was noble. He was so beautiful. He seemed like everything they thought he was. Even in the end. Even as he resigned himself to death. She wept.

And those men were always arguing about who was the greatest. They didn’t do anything. They couldn’t even stay awake with him and pray. They were too dull to realize Jesus needed them!

They could have, at least, gone with him! But, they left him. They knew what was happening, but they pretended not to know! they didn’t lift a finger. When Jesus needed them most, they abandoned him. Peter even claimed he didn’t know Jesus! Peter!

Mary and the other women would not leave him. They saw the whole, unimaginable thing … and John. At least, John was there. Not that he did anything.

If it wasn’t for Joseph, who knows where his body would have ended up. Mary was grateful that Joseph owned a tomb nearby and even more grateful that Joseph and his associates helped with the body. (Luke 23:50-53). Even so, Mary couldn’t help but wonder where they were when Jesus needed someone. Anyone!

Even as she felt her heart shrink in anger and frustration, she knew they could not have stopped what happened. She softened, and she wept again.

They had no time to prepare him properly. It was the Sabbath, and night was upon them. The hours labored by. It seemed like Jesus lay there for an eternity through the night. Everything weighed so heavily on Mary’s heart. She needed to get to him.

Joseph and Nicodemus came through with the spices and ointments for Mary to prepare the body in the morning. (Luke 23:56) She was up before the dawn. She couldn’t sleep anyway.

The hopeful sounds that emerge in light’s first dawn might have lifted her heart on any other morning. Tears came in waves. She could hardly see at times.

Tears she could not manage to wipe way with the back of her hands fell from her cheeks into the mixture of ointment and spices. She recalled the day she wiped tears from his feet with her hair in waves of repentant gratitude and joy, knowing her sins were forgiven, and her life was forever changed.

Her tears turned to waves of incontrollable sobs. She could not continue until they subsided.

Mary could not adequately express the depth of gratitude for Jesus for rescuing her from the demons that haunted and tormented her from her youth. She didn’t care what anyone thought.

Nothing had been more precious to her than the ointments she collected… until Jesus set her free. She would have spent her entire life pouring her very self out for him.

She desperately longed to wind time back. The impossibility of it all was maddening. Those demons lurked again in the back of her mind. She shuddered as if to shake them off, and she continued with the ointment and spices.

As the dawn began to stretch back the darkness of that long terrible night, and the birds chirped faithfully as the light of dawn appeared, hope filled with immense love filled Mary’s grief that overwhelmed all but her devotion to the man she loved. She needed to get back to him.

She remembered exactly where they laid him in their haste. The other women went with her, Mary leading the way, carrying the devotion of ointments and spices she prepared for his body. She hoped the soldiers guarding the tomb would allow them this simple extravagance.

As they arrived in the early light, they found no guards. The tomb was eerily still, and dread welled up in her eyes. The stone in front of the tomb was rolled aside. (John 20:1; Luke 24:1)

Her thoughts raced. “Where did they take him? WHY did the move him? It doesn’t make sense!

What did they do with him? “I need to find him!” she muttered to herself.

Mary rushed into the cave and confirmed her fear. The body was missing. It was all a blur to Mary as she struggled through the weariness and her tear-filled eyes as the torrent of thoughts whirred through her mind.

She didn’t even see the men enter until the dazzling whiteness of their robes caught her attention. Then, they spoke:

“Do not be afraid…. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.” (Matthew 28:5-6)

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“Remember how he told you… that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” (Luke 24:6-7)

“What?…. Could it be true?”

“What if it’s true!!”

She remembered the mysterious things Jesus said.

“Maybe It IS true!”

“Wasn’t Jesus saying something like that when the argument broke out among the men at supper a few nights ago?”

With a mixture of fear and hope, Mary ran as fast as she could back to where the men were. (Matthew 28:8)

She tried to tell them. “He isn’t there! I think they might have taken him, but he may be alive! I … I don’t know!”

They didn’t believe her (Luke 24:11). Finally, Peter and John, as if prodded by a sudden thought, leapt up. Peter and John ran ahead and were inside by the time Mary got there.

“I told you he isn’t there!” she said. But they ignored her and left her as quickly as they came standing outside the tomb. She was too exhausted to run after them, but hope stirred as something caught her eye beyond the veil of light and darkness at the opening to the tomb. (John 20:2-10)

She cautiously stepped in, wiping tears as she went. Then she saw a man in the tomb, and she realized why Peter and John left so suddenly. They didn’t even say anything!

The man asked, “Why are you weeping?” Hoping against doubt that Jesus might be alive, she begged the man to tell her where his body had been taken. Driven by her devotion, she still needed to find him and do as she intended. (John 20:11-15)

And then he spoke again. His voice broke gently through the haze of grief and confusion, devotion and tears, and she heard him say, “Mary.” (John 20:16) She knew that voice!

Grief and confusion, despair and hopelessness, and darkness itself vanished in that moment.

She knew him! “Rabboni!”, she said in exited Aramaic, as she had greeted him hundreds of times before. (John 20:16)

She lowered her head, overcome by a flood of relief that overwhelmed her grief, and he embraced her. The other women were right behind her, now. They collapsed at his feet where they clung to Him and worshiped Him. (Matthew 28:9; John 20:17)

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It would take a number of actual appearances by Jesus, before the men would believe, though John maintains that he believed as soon as he saw the linens and cloth lying there. (John 20:8) In all, hundreds of people saw Jesus after his death. Over 500 saw him all at the same time! Most of them were still alive some 20 years later when Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8).

Some people, like Steven and James, had been killed for having the audacity to claim it was true. Mary and the rest knew it was true! And they were glad to give their lives for the one who spared not his own life for them!

Mary was the first. She and the women who stuck by Jesus during the trial and crucifixion, helped lay his body in the temporary tomb, helped prepare the spices and ointment and followed her to the place where they laid his body a couple of days prior. The women saw Jesus, and believed, before any of the men did.

Mary knew, also, that Jesus planned it that way. It wasn’t Mary’s place to make a big deal out of it, but she knew Jesus chose to reveal himself to her and the women first.

The most important thing was that Jesus was alive! He had conquered the grave. He had tried many times to tell them, but they didn’t understand. It was probably best that way.

The men who followed Jesus were forever changed. They no longer argued over who was greatest. It didn’t matter any more. Their shame at abandoning Jesus in that time of great need was also forgotten, as Jesus lived, and He forgave them completely. The fact that they abandoned them, though, was never forgotten.

They would live the rest of their lives doing all that Jesus had instructed them: denying themselves, learning to become servants of the message Jesus left them to tell the world, dying to their ambitions and the sin that always crouches at the door, and pouring themselves out in self-sacrificial devotion.

Mary lived out her life as she had lived before those fateful events, devoting herself to prayer, and the study of God’s word, and self-sacrificial service to the cause of the Gospel. She served the men who preached the words Jesus taught them to say, and she carried with her the knowledge that Jesus revealed Himself first to her and to the other women.

People throughout most of history wouldn’t take much notice of that fact. Yet, it stands improbably remembered in the Gospels of the men who wrote them. In Him, there is no Jew or Gentile, male or female.