When Jesus Speaks Our Name

A Day in the Life of Jesus

There are moments in the Gospels where the scene is so tender and personal that it feels almost intrusive to read it too quickly. John 20:10–18 is one of those moments. I find myself slowing down here, lingering with Mary Magdalene in the early morning light, standing outside the tomb, overwhelmed by grief and confusion. The resurrection has already happened, yet for Mary, the world still feels broken. She is not searching for victory; she is searching for a body. That detail matters. It reminds me that God often begins His greatest revelations in the very places where our understanding has collapsed.

Mary’s tears are not theatrical; they are honest. John tells us she is weeping, and the Greek verb klaíō suggests audible, uncontrolled sorrow. Even when angels appear—two of them, seated where Jesus’ body had been—her grief dulls the wonder of the moment. When they ask, “Why are you crying?” she answers with aching simplicity: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have put him.” She has not yet made the leap to resurrection faith. Like many of us, she knows loss far better than hope. And yet, even here, Jesus is already near.

When Mary turns and sees Jesus standing there, she does not recognize Him. John makes no attempt to soften that reality. Her eyes see, but her heart cannot yet comprehend. Grief has a way of narrowing our expectations, training us to anticipate absence rather than presence. Augustine once observed that “she sought the living among the dead, because she had not yet learned to hope beyond death.” I recognize myself in that description more than I would like. There are times when Jesus is standing closer than I realize, but my assumptions about how He should appear keeps me from seeing Him clearly.

Jesus repeats the angels’ question: “Why are you crying?” Then He adds another: “Whom are you looking for?” That second question reaches deeper. It is not merely about emotion, but about desire and direction. Mary assumes He is the gardener, a detail John includes with careful irony. The One through whom creation came into being is mistaken for a caretaker of the soil. And yet, even in that misunderstanding, there is truth. Jesus is, in a very real sense, the gardener of new creation, tending what sin and death have tried to destroy. As N. T. Wright notes, “John wants us to see resurrection not as escape from the world, but as the beginning of God’s renewal of it.”

Everything changes with a single word: “Mary.” Jesus does not explain. He does not argue. He speaks her name. In Hebrew thought, a name is more than a label; it represents identity and calling. The Greek text uses María, spoken with recognition and intimacy. In that moment, recognition floods back. “Rabboni!” she cries—Teacher, Master. The veil lifts, not because Mary reasons her way to faith, but because she is known. This is consistent with Jesus’ own words earlier in John’s Gospel: “The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3). Resurrection recognition comes not through analysis, but through relationship.

Jesus’ next words can feel abrupt if we read them carelessly: “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” This is not a rejection of Mary’s love, but a redirection of it. The verb haptomai implies clinging, an understandable response after so much loss. But Jesus is teaching Mary—and us—that the relationship is changing. The resurrected Christ cannot be contained at the tomb. There is movement ahead, mission unfolding. As Gregory the Great wrote, “She sought Him as He was, but He revealed Himself as He would now be.” Jesus is preparing her for a faith that will soon be sustained by the Holy Spirit rather than physical presence.

Then comes the commission. Mary is sent to the disciples with a message of astonishing intimacy: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” This is the first time Jesus speaks this way so directly, placing His followers within His own filial relationship with the Father. The resurrection does not merely restore Jesus to life; it restores humanity to belonging. Mary becomes the first witness of the risen Christ, the first to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!” Her grief becomes testimony. Her tears become proclamation.

I am struck by the quiet urgency of this scene. Jesus does not linger at the tomb. As the study rightly notes, there is work to be done. The ascension must come, the Spirit must be given, the mission must expand beyond one garden in Jerusalem. Mary, too, has work to do. She moves from mourning to witness in a single encounter. That pattern continues to shape discipleship today. We do not meet the risen Jesus simply for personal comfort, though comfort is given. We meet Him so that we may bear witness to His living presence.

What stays with me most is this simple truth: Jesus is near, even when I do not recognize Him. Mary’s story reassures me that delayed recognition does not mean abandoned faith. Jesus does not shame her confusion; He meets it. He speaks her name. And He sends her forward. Karl Barth once said, “The resurrection is not an idea that can be grasped; it is a person who must be encountered.” That encounter still happens—in Scripture, in prayer, in quiet moments when Christ calls us by name and reorients our vision.

May you, like Mary, discover that the risen Jesus is closer than you expected, calling you out of sorrow and into joyful witness as you walk with Him today.

For further reflection on this passage, see this article from Crossway:
https://www.crossway.org/articles/jesus-appears-to-mary-magdalene-john-20/

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