“Then the disciples went back again to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.” John 20:10-14
Peter and John went back home but Mary, so overwrought, can think of nothing else but her Lord, so she stays behind, weeping. She has yet to understand the events, though Jesus spoke often of His mission and that He would rise again. Our eyes see spiritual truth as though through a thick fog – it’s all hazy shapes and forms we toil to make out. What’s so obvious to us now, reading the account, the rest of the New Testament at our fingertips, was all a bewildering haze of loss and anguish to poor Mary. Oh, how she loved Him and couldn’t bring herself to part from the last place she knew His body had been. Isn’t this such a picture of the devotion that we should all have? In her agony, lost and confused, the world against her, both the Jews and the mighty Romans, she didn’t know where else to go but to look for Him. And for this decision she’s rewarded with the greatest of visions. Mary is brought low by life. She’s as low as a person can possibly get. What does she have, after all? Hadn’t she dropped her life, at least put it on hold, to follow Him and now, not only is He crucified, but she can’t even find the body anymore.
We aren’t told what caused her to look in the tomb. The Scripture doesn’t say. But when she looked, behold, two angels were there. Some critics are happy to point out that other gospel accounts only mention one angel present and act as though this is some great contradiction that throws the whole of Scripture out the proverbial window. But to mention only one isn’t to say there was only one, so there’s no contradiction there.
Anyway, they ask her an interesting question, don’t they? They’re sitting in the tomb and they see her pop her head in, straining to see in the dark. It’s a fantastic scene – an angel at the head and foot of the place where His body had been. How are they sitting? Do they have their legs crossed? Are they reclined in leisure? We aren’t told. But, either way, they’re obviously there for her – sent by God – and we remember Jesus’ statement to Pilate that if His Kingdom were of this world then His followers, that is, angels like these, would fight. Pilate heard these words as a man of power would and should hear them. There was the threat of force behind them. But Mary has no fear of these two. We should remember that if a non-believer were to see the messengers of God it would be in judgment.
Instead, they ask her why she’s crying. But clearly they must know. And this is the way of Scripture. Remember back in the garden of Eden how God asks Adam why he’s hiding. God knows. He’s asking the question for the sake of His wayward child in the same way a parent kneels down to look in the teary eye of a sobbing child. “Why the tears, little one?” The parent asks. It’s a question of endearment. It’s a method to help the grieving child come to know their own emotions, to soothe them by getting them to open up because when we’re distraught like Mary is here, overwhelmed by life’s grief, our emotions are a hopeless tangle. The question is meant to work out the knot that our spirit has become.
Her answer is a plain statement of fact because Mary has no hidden agenda. Notice how her answer is so much different than Adam’s back in the garden. Her reply is straight forward, an admission of total despair and dependence whereas Adam’s was an attempt to deflect blame. In Eden it was Eve that took the forbidden fruit to eat and then Adam was questioned by God. Now, it’s Mary that answers the question and she’s the perfect picture of hopelessness, isn’t she? She’s us…looking for Jesus, lost without Him. Adam and Eve were hiding from God; Mary stays at the tomb and she’s determined to find Him. That’s all she can think of. “Where is Jesus…my Lord?”
It’s in this way that this scene continues to show us the connection between Genesis 3 and the resurrection; between the fall and redemption.
We don’t know why she turned nor why she didn’t recognize Jesus. Perhaps her tears were so great that all was obstructed. Perhaps she was so hysterical and rundown by the events that she just didn’t look close enough. Or, perhaps, and quite likely, it’s to remind us that unless Christ reveals Himself we won’t see Him. Salvation is from the Lord and not the works of man – his righteousness, his labors, his philosophy.
There’s another thing at work that we can consider that’s easily lost and will explain much of why the world hates Christianity.
All false ways are man-centered; Christianity, being Christ born and Christ directed, is, therefore, God centered. Back in Genesis 11 we read about the Tower of Babel. We’ve come to understand that they were trying to build a tower as an assault on heaven based on the translation “Come, let us build a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven (Genesis 11:4).” But the words “may reach” were not in the original Hebrew. The better translation is “a tower whose top is the heavens.” After all, if they were literally trying to reach heaven they wouldn’t have built in the valley near the river in ancient Babylon but started their foundation on one of the nearby hills.
At least a dozen of similar towers have been discovered by archeologists over the past 100 years and their counterparts can be found even in the Mayan and Aztec temples. On the top of these temples, high in the sky, which have a special Arabic name, ziggurat, there were flat stones with a representation of the zodiac and its twelve signs. This portrayal of the zodiac was called in Arabic, rather interestingly, an almanach. Donald Grey Barnhouse says that, “The story of Babel, then, is simply that the men of that day, having departed from the Lord Jehovah, erected a tower in whose top their priests consulted a zodiac and plotted the horoscope.”
The ancient world, before Christianity, was full of such dreadful superstitions, which themselves were full of false religious ideas. Man was sure that there was a god lurking everywhere and that god needed to be appeased. The thing was, though, that man was able to do the appeasing with some ritual or another. Today you still see this in the horoscopes and palm readers and even the appeal to the so-called experts. We consult everything but the word of God for surety about the future. Idolatry is man’s attempt to wrest control of the means of salvation from the hand of God. Mary has none of that. She’s simply looking for Jesus and doesn’t fall prey to any superstitious nonsense. Uncertainty about the future is the Devil’s playground. The desire to know what’s coming is the source of all sorts of heretical renderings and exertions, and the root of so much idolatry. Our lesson today and everyday is to look for the Lord, wait for the Lord, and know that He is the future! Today, unlike Mary right then, we have the Scripture. And that is more than enough because He owns the future and is our inheritance. To live in a state of worry is unfit for us in Christ. Go look for Him if you’ve wandered. Look. Through your tears. Look through all the worry. He’ll find you just in the nick of time.
Many are living today in a perpetual state of anxiety and this story about Mary and the tomb seems unrelated to all the politics and particulars of our crisis. But think again. She’s the model of faith because, not knowing what else to do, she goes to Him…even though she saw Him die on the darkest day of all. You might feel that way too…like God isn’t there, or He isn’t answering when you call…or that your sin has at last caused Him to give up on you. Never. Go. Go to Him and He’s there.
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