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for “teacher” (20:16). Jesus gently
tells her to return to the other
disciples to share the news of His
resurrection. Back at the house
where they were gathered, Mary
bursts in on the others, shouting,
“I have seen the Lord!” (20:18).
Mary’s mistake, thinking Jesus
was the gardener, is a profound
discovery: just as God planted the
Garden of Eden at the beginning
of the Bible, now, through Jesus,
God is restoring that garden.
As Peter put it in his sermon a
few weeks later, human authorities
may have killed Jesus, but God
raised Him to life (Acts 2:23–24).Jesus’s disciples begin to
understand the logic of what had
happened: if Jesus is alive, that
means death is not all-powerful
and that sin—understood to be the
inevitable human tendency to turn
away from God, leading to death—
does not have to mar human life
forever, but can be forgiven.Faith and reason
All that Christianity believes
about God—forgiveness, salvation,
and transformation—depends on
Jesus’s resurrection. As Paul puts
it in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “if Christ
has not been raised, our preaching
is useless and so is your faith.”
Still, the accounts of Jesus’s
resurrection raise many questions
and demands for events to be
explained in terms of natural
causes. In place of the Gospel’s
explanation, some have suggested
that the disciples experienced
mass-hallucination or that local
leaders hid Jesus’s body to prevent
His disciples from removing it
themselves and then proclaiming
His resurrection. These theories
do not explain why the disciples
would later allow themselves to be
martyred for preaching a message
they knew to be false.
If the Gospels are to be taken
literally, the women discovered an
empty tomb; Jesus’s body was
never found, there or anywhere else;
and the women and other disciples
met Jesus, not just as a memory
but as a living person. Discovering
what the resurrection of Jesus
means is the concern of the rest
of the New Testament, and the
ongoing task of the Church today. ■THE GOSPELS
Thomas the Apostle doubts the
man before him is the risen Jesus until
he touches His wounds. Jesus says,
“Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have believed” (John 20:29).Mary Magdalene
One of Jesus’s closest
followers, Mary Magdalene
is remembered particularly
for being one of the early
witnesses to Jesus’s
resurrection. Mary’s name
indicates she was from the
town of Magdala Nunaya
on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee. Luke 8:2 records
that she received healing
from Jesus when He cast
seven demons out of her.
Grateful for the wholeness
that Jesus had given her,
she became a prominent
disciple, accompanying Jesus
on His final trip to Jerusalem
and bearing witness to both
His crucifixion and burial
(Matthew: 27:56–61). Later
tradition associated Mary
Magdalene with Mary
of Bethany, the prostitute
who anointed Jesus’s feet
with expensive perfume while
He was in the house of Simon
the Pharisee (Luke 7:36–50),
although most modern biblical
scholars believe that this
association is apocryphal.
It is noteworthy that
several of Jesus’s most faithful
followers were women (Acts
1:14) and that they continued
to play key roles in the life of
the early Church.God has raised this
Jesus to life, and we are
all witnesses of it.
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