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Three days and two nights 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) It was the least they could do.

The shock of his arrest and the whirlwind of everything that followed came upon her in a rushing torrent so quickly that she was completely overwhelmed, reeling, barely able to breath. The that unbelievable, astonishing, implausible whirlwind of events ended with his death. It’s all too unreal.

When the devotion of last minute burial preparation ended and the tomb was sealed, tornadic activity gave way to the silent weight of reality. The yawning emptiness and overwhelming grief descended on Mary as she labored to get home in the darkness.

All the men abandoned Jesus as their world began to unravel. The petty squabbling at 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 accept.

Igt seemed clear to her in retrospect that Jesus seemed to know what was going to happen. She remembered seeing it in his eyes. He was resigned to it, but she didn’t understand. How could she have understood?

All the mysterious things Jesus said during the exciting and hopeful years they traveled with him played in her mind like a long, beautiful symphony suddenly ending in a grand, discordant cacophony that would not resolve before it faded into a whimper. The mystery seemed so poignant, but no less momentous and ominously empty. Through the looming darkness, a slight flame of hope sputtered as she recalled these things like a lone survivor clinging to whatever is close hand in the receding waters of a tsunami .

As she reached her destination for the night, she recalled that 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 so painful to watch.

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 the torrent of her tears broke through the dam of the brave front she put on through all of it.

“Those men!” she thought, “They didn’t do anything. The torrent took an angry turn. “They were always arguing about who was the greatest.” Her thoughts tumbled like rocks that could not withstand the current. “They couldn’t even stay awake with him! Jesus needed them!”

She let out a long, mournful gasp as she recognized the dark cloud threatening her and swallowed her anger.

“They could have, at least, gone with him! But, they left him,” she mourned. “They saw it happening, but they pretended not to know!” her thoughts raced again. “They didn’t lift a finger. When Jesus needed them most, they abandoned him. Peter even claimed he didn’t know Jesus! Peter!” She stopped as the dark cloud threatened again.

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, either,” Mary recounted.

She realized, “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 the people with him helped with the body. (Luke 23:50-53). Even so, Mary couldn’t help but wonder, “Where they were earlier – when Jesus needed someone. Anyone!”

Even as she felt her heart constrict in anger and frustration, the realization came in like the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore, “They could not have stopped what happened.” There were powerful forces at work that Mary did not understand. She softened, and she wept.

They didn’t have time to prepare him properly. It was the Sabbath, and night was upon them. The hours labored by through the night. The force of things undone kept slept at bay. Everything weighed so heavily on Mary’s heart. She needed to get to him as soon as she could, as soon as the doaw broke and Sabbath was over.

Mary was up before the dawn. Sleep was not an option anyway. She hurried to the tomb, where she met Joseph and Nicodemus who came through with the spices and ointments for Mary to prepare the body in the soft light of the morning. (Luke 23:56)

The hopeful sounds of birds gently singing in the still of the early morning might have lifted her heart on any other day. She was drowning in sadness, as 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 her own tears from his feet with her hair in repentant gratitude and joy, knowing her sins were forgiven, and her life was forever changed.

The dam of whatever shame might have remained was swept away. Her tears turned to waves of uncontrollable sobs. She could not resist them. She gave herself over to them in a gush of new gratitude for all Jesus had done, and she could not continue until the waves of emotion passed.

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 tried. It wasn’t enough. She didn’t care what anyone thought, but it still wasn’t enough.

Nothing had been more precious to her than the ointments she collected… until Jesus set her free. None of those precious ointments mattered anymore. They were all she had, and they weren’t enough. She would have spent her entire life pouring her very self out for him.

The grief returned, and she desperately longed to wind back time. The impossibility of it all was maddening; it seemed so impossible, yet it was so formidably real. Those demons lurked again in the back of her mind. She caught herself again, shuddered, and and devoted her weary mind to the ointment and spices and the body of her precious love, Jesus, lying lifeless at her side.

As the dawn began to stretch back the darkness of that long terrible night, and the birds chirped faithfully as the rays of light climbed in the sky, as if nothing of any note had happened, hope mixed with immense love and chasmous grief fueled Mary’s devotion. Mary completed every sacred detail of mixing the ointment and spices to prepare Jesus for his final resting place thinking of the resurrection at the end of the age – as she always did in performing that task.

“Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but no one is there for him?” she thought with a flash of renewed anger and frustration that quickly gave way to an odd, but hopeful, thought that she could not quite hold on to before utter exhaustion set in. She fell into a long, dark sleep as if were dead herself.

The Sabbath Day lasted an eternity. Few words were spoken as the small, sullen remnant of their community who remained in the household where Mary ended up the night before went through Sabbath rituals in the dreamlike silence of their own whirling thoughts, grief, and other emotions.

When she woke the next morning bright and early, her immediate impulse was to get back to Jesus urgently and finish what needed to be done. The other women were up and went with her, Mary leading the way, carrying the devotion of ointments and spices she carefully prepared. She hoped the soldiers guarding the tomb would allow not keep them from their task.

As they arrived in the early light, they found no guards. The scene of the tomb was silent, eery, and still. The mixture of dread and urgency gave way with a gasp as they saw and then realized, “The stone was rolled away.” (John 20:1; Luke 24:1)

Mary’s thoughts raced. “Where did they take him? WHY did the move him? They shouldn’t have moved him!!” Then she realized, “It doesn’t make sense”

“What did they do with him?” she wondered in disbelief. “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 as she struggled with a new wave of confusion, fear, sorrow, and urgency that gaped before her in an instant like a chasm with no bottom.

She didn’t even see the men enter until the dazzling whiteness of their robes caught her attention. With eyes wide and mouth agape, she heard them say:

“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?…. What?! Could it be true?”

“What if it’s true!!”

She remembered the mysterious things Jesus said.

“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 excitement, 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 maybe he is alive! I … I don’t know! The men who were there said…. I … I … I think … he rose from the dead!”

They didn’t believe her (Luke 24:11). Mary know they didn’t She stopped trying to convince them. She fell silent in wonder, batting away the fear that she was mistaken. Holding on to the hope she desperately want to be true.

Finally, Peter and John, as if suddenly prodded by a thought of their own, got up. Peter and John ran ahead. Mary could not possibly keep up, and they were inside the tomb by the time Mary got there.

“I told you he isn’t there!” she said. But they ignored her and left almost as quickly as they came, arguing back and forth between them about what Mary did not know. She was left standing outside the tomb. She was too exhausted to run, fixed as in a trance, when 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 as tears overwhelmed her in the turmoil of emotion and uncertainty. Then she saw a man inside. “Did Peter and John see him too,” she wondered. They didn’t even say anything!

“Why are you weeping?” the man asked her. Hoping against doubt that Jesus might be alive, she begged the man to tell her where his body had been taken. She reached back for her devotion in the uncertainty and confusion, and recalled the urgent need to find Jesus and prepare him as she intended. (John 20:11-15)

And then he spoke again. His voice broke gently through the haze of renewed 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, fear and darkness itself vanished in that moment.

She knew him! “Rabboni!” she said in excited Aramaic .(John 20:16)

She had greeted him that way hundreds of times before.

She lowered her head, overcome by a flood of relief that swept away 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 They 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. Jesus was alive, 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 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.