Holy Moments are those divine occasions when God intersects human history. This Easter, join us at Burke Community Church as we celebrate one of the most incredible Holy Moments in all of human history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Aren’t there some questions about the Bible you’d like answered? Here are a few worth posing to God one day. • Do you think that Eve ever ate a piece of fruit again?
• After the Noahic flood, I wonder if Noah loved boats?
• I wonder what happened to Moses’s staff?
• Since the Ten Commandments were carved in stone, where did they wind up? Are they still around somewhere?
• Did Samson ever have to lift the Old Testament version of weights? Follow-up question: Was he ripped or just bulk muscle, like a massive pro football player lineman?
• Since Solomon was the wisest man ever to walk the planet, did anyone ever pose a scenario that left him speechless?
• Did Job ever regret asking God for an audience to argue his case about how he thought his treatment was unfair?
• Was King David a good singer, I mean, did he sing on key?
• Do you think Peter ever tried walking on water again?
I could go on, but I’m sure my questions have prompted biblical questions in your own mind.
Here is another I pondered during this Passion Week. Which woman is talked about the most in the New Testament? Do you know? The answer is quite surprising. It’s Mary from the fishing village of Magdala, located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Of course, we know her as Mary Magdalene. Granted, that was not her last name, but it at least gives us an idea of where she was from. Magdala was located six miles southwest of the seaside fishing village of Capernaum, the base of Christ’s operations in the Galilee region.
Here is another question that thinking minds want answered. Who was the first person to see the resurrected Christ? No. It wasn’t Peter, the leader of the disciples. No. It wasn’t John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, who stayed near him at His crucifixion, along with his mother, Mary. Those are logical choices, but they are wrong. It was Mary Magdalene.
Here is an important follow-up question. Why did Jesus appear to Mary first, of all people that could have been on His master list? I think the answers to this question are not only interesting but, for our purposes on this Easter Sunday, challenge us spiritually, whether we are saints or sinners. I think there are three logical and theological reasons why Jesus revealed Himself in His resurrected body to Mary from the nowheresville village of Magdala.
She Was A Perpetual Disciple
I know. This statement generates a question: Were not the Twelve perpetual disciples, or devoted students and followers of Jesus? Well, Judas certainly wasn’t, as time bore forth. But weren’t the other eleven sold out to the Lord? Yes, but they did have a moment when they deserted Him. When did this occur? It occurred when the Jewish authorities arrested Him on trumped-up charges and eventually turned Him over to the Romans for crucifixion for being an insurrectionist and blasphemer, eleven of them ran for cover (Matt. 26:56). Later, I’m sure John reassessed the sad, sordid situation and bravely stepped out of the shadows. You will remember it is John, the beloved disciple, who eventually stood strong and true with Christ’s mother, Mary (John 19:25-27).
With all of this in mind, consider Mary Magdalene.
Listen to how Luke describes her when she became a Christ-follower toward the beginning of His short, but eventful, 3 ½ year ministry.
1 Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means. (Luke 8)
We don’t know the exact circumstances of Mary’s salvation, but when she became an ardent follower of Jesus, she stayed the course no matter what. When the religious leaders repeatedly mocked Jesus. She remained faithful, even though her association with Him placed her in a potentially dangerous situation. When the seventy disciples deserted Jesus because they didn’t like the depth of His teaching and the cost of real commitment, she remained faithful. When Jesus made the arduous and final journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Matthew tells us that she and other key women joined Him and the disciples.
55 Many women were there looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee while ministering to Him. 56 Among them was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. (Matt. 27)
And she didn’t just follow the group as a loyal disciple; according to Luke, she had financial means and used them to support Christ’s spiritual and redemptive work. What a woman. No matter what our Lord faced in His life, her loyal love and commitment to him never faltered, not one time.
So, why did Jesus eventually appear to her first? I think the answer is as clear as it is simple. He knew He could count on her to do the work of a disciple. He knew she, who had a proven track record of being there for Him at critical times, wouldn’t let Him down now that He was resurrected from the dead. After His miraculous and glorious resurrection in time and space, Jesus wanted to make sure the message of all messages got out to all the right people. Who better to entrust the message to than, you guessed it, Mary. We would have probably selected Peter, James, or John, true leaders among the disciples; however, that is not what Jesus did. He chose Mary from Magdala because He knew this faithful witness would carry out His last personal command to go and tell the disciples of His spectacular defeat of sin and death. Think of it. Mary literally became the first evangelist. Now, it is your turn.
Question: Would Jesus have selected you? Would your track record of following hard after Him cause Him to come to you with a message of all messages? The point can’t be missed today: Just as Jesus chose Mary to share the proof of the resurrection with others, He now chooses you. Will you be faithful to verbally share what happened in that memorial garden 2,000 years ago? He is risen. There is no greater message for our world today, and this message changes everything. Why? Because this truth demonstrates that Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:1-6), Jesus is the one way for sinners to become saints. Jesus is the only way spiritually dead people can become spiritually alive (Acts 4:10-12). Jesus is now equipped to raise our physical bodies and fit them for the glory of heaven.
Can Jesus count on you as He counted on Mary? A second reason why Jesus chose Mary Magdalene is showcased in this statement:
She Was A Picture Of Mercy
As I said, we don’t know the circumstances of Mary’s initial salvation, but we do know something about her prior life as a non-Christian because the gospels of Luke and Mark inform us:
1 Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, 2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means. (Luke 8)
9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons (Mark 16)
Two times we are told that seven demonic beings had possessed Mary. We don’t know how this happened. We don’t know when it happened. We know that she was in demonic bondage when Jesus crossed her life path, probably in Magdala. How did the gospel writers know there were seven demons? Christ probably spoke with the demons, as he did with the demon-possessed man who lived in the tombs in the country of the Gerasenes, on the southeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:26-27). When Jesus asked the demon his name, he said it was Legion because he represented many demons that had taken up residence in this helpless individual. Pragmatically, this meant that at least 5,000 to 6,000 demons controlled this poor, enslaved man.
How could that many demons reside in one man? It is not difficult for transdimensional beings, who are not restricted by our laws of physics, to do things that, to us, seem impossible or illogical. So, if thousands of demons resided in one man, then seven in one woman was certainly doable from an angelic perspective.
What do we know about demonic possession from the New Testament? From analyzing Christ’s dealings with these angelic foes who defected from His army before the cosmos was created, we can readily describe what they did (and do) to a person they inhabit:
- Unusual physical strength. Chains, for instance, couldn’t bind the demoniac from Gerasenes.
- Alteration of the human voice. Legion spoke through the man.
- Blindness, muteness (Matt. 12:22, the mute/blind man), deafness, convulsions, self-destructive behavior (the boy who was frequently thrown into a raging fire, Mark 9:14-29), and anti-social isolation (Mark 5:5; Luke 8:29).
If any of this applied to Mary before she became a believer, she was in a world of hurt. She wouldn’t have had many friends, if any. She would have been a social outcast. She would have been prone to destructive behavior. She might have had some debilitating physical ailment(s). She certainly wouldn’t have had any lasting inner peace, just daily fear of the darkness that controlled her life.
Running into Jesus changed everything. I’m sure with a word, she experienced freedom for the first time in years. With a word, the Lord of glory broke the stranglehold these dark beings had on her life. With a word from Jesus, she went from being a slave of the Devil to being a servant of Christ. With a word from Jesus, fear was replaced with joy and hope. With a word from Jesus, she found new friends who cared about her. With a word from Jesus, she traded spiritual death for spiritual life.
No wonder, then, that Christ chose to appear to Mary first before anyone else. She represented the very reason why He came to earth. Since seven is the number of perfection in the Bible, we can safely conclude that she was the poster child for a person enslaved and dominated by sin. Hence, she became the perfect person for Christ to reveal Himself to after His resurrection because she was a living and breathing example of the power of His gospel. He takes spiritually dead and broken people, people with no purpose and meaning, people with no hope, people with truckloads of guilt. He gives them, at the moment of faith, forgiveness, freedom, and a life of knowing and walking intimately with Him. This is why Jesus appeared to her first. What does this mean to you? It means that the resurrected Lord possesses all the necessary power to save you from the clutches of sin and to give you not only eternal forgiveness and the hope of life in His presence one day (Rev. 1:5), but a real, vibrant, and intimate relationship with Him in the here and now (Rom. 8:10-11). Put differently, what Jesus gave to Mary, He now waits to give to you.
The third reason why Christ appeared to Mary Magdalen first is this:
She Was A Powerful Witness
How so? Well, if you lived in this Semitic culture and wanted to build a fictitious or mythical story about Christ’s resurrection, a woman would never be selected as your first witness. Why? Unfortunately, in Jewish and Roman cultures, women were looked down upon and didn’t enjoy the status and prominence that men did. Consider the following quotes from ancient Jewish writings.
Sooner let the words of the law be burned than delivered to women. (Talmud, Sotah 19a)
The world cannot exist without males and without females– happy is he whose children are males, and woe to him whose children are females. (Talmud, Kiddushin 82b)
But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex, nor let servants be admitted to give testimony on account of the ignobility of their soul; since it is probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment. (Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15).
Any evidence which a woman {gives} is not valid (to offer), also they are not valid to offer. This is equivalent to saying that one who is rabbinical he accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman (Talmud, Ros Hashannah 1.8).
In other words, male Jewish thinkers from the time of Christ thought that a woman’s testimony was about as important as that of a criminal. This may explain why the disciples didn’t place much credence in what Mary had to say when she reported seeing the resurrected Christ.
9 and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. 11 But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them. (Luke 24).
The Greek word here for nonsense denotes that which is mere idle talk, nonsense, or just something that is not believable. Here is the lexical meaning explained by Ardnt, the Greek grammarian:
λῆρος, ου, ὁ (Aristoph. et al.; X., An. 7, 7, 41; PSI 534, 16; 4 Macc 5:11; TestSol 26:6; Philo, Post. Cai. 165; Jos., Bell. 3, 405; Just., A I, 68, 1; Tat., Ath.) that which is totally devoid of anything worthwhile, idle talk, nonsense, humbug ἐφάνησαν ἐνώπιον αὐτῶν ὡσεὶ λῆρος τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα these words seemed to them to be nonsense Lk 24:11. S. ληρώδης
From this, it sounds like the disciples were tainted by the thinking of the day regarding the testimony of a woman.
Gentile thinking about women was no better. Dr. Gary Habermas, an authority concerning the resurrection of Christ, recounts what Caesar Augustus said around the time of the birth of Christ:
Or as men and women had hitherto always set together, Augustus confined women to the back rows even at gladiatorial shows: the only ones exempt from this rule being the Vestal Virgins, for whom separate accommodation was provided, facing the praetor’s tribunal. No women at all were allowed to witness the athletic contest; indeed, when the audience clamoured at the games for a special boxing match to celebrate his appointment as Chief Priest, Augustus postponed this until early the next morning, and issued a proclamation to the effect that it was the Chief Priest desire that women should not attend the theater before 10 o’clock.
Regarding all of these points, Habermas makes this insightful observation:
Given the low first-century view of women that was frequently shared by Jew and Gentile, it seems highly unlikely that the gospel authors would either invent or adjust such testimonies. That would mean placing words in the mouths of those who would not be believed by many, making them the primary witnesses to the empty tomb. If the gospel writers had originated the story of the empty tomb, it seems far more likely that they would have depicted men discovering its vacancy and being the first to see the risen Jesus. Why would they not list the male disciples Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and avoid the female issue altogether? If the account of the empty tomb had been invented, it would most likely not have listed the women as the primary witnesses, since in that day a woman’s testimony was not nearly as credible as a man’s. Thus, the empty tomb appears to be historically credible in light of the principle of embarrassment.
How true. The entire historical account of Christ’s resurrection smacks of truth. Was the tomb empty? Yes. We have the historical evidence to back this up. You will remember that it was the Chief Priests and the Pharisees who told Pilate to secure the tomb with armed soldiers and eventually a seal (Luke 23:55-56). To break this seal warranted a death penalty. Also, do you really think the disciples were capable of overpowering Pilate’s well-armed and crack troops? I don’t think so. So, when the body did go missing, what did these leaders do? They concocted a lie, blaming it all on the disciples (Matt. 28:11-15). Supposedly, they crept amongst sleeping soldiers, cut open the seal, and rolled this massive stone quietly in its track, and then they grabbed Christ’s body. Right. Again, this is just not plausible. Sleeping on guard duty was another capital offense for soldiers like this. I’m sure they were quite awake. We know they were when the angel descended and rolled the stone away before the ladies showed up (Matt. 28:2-4). The earthquake plus the angel sure got their attention. They, then, turned and ran for their lives.
Enter the ladies, and a woman like Mary. Enter the most unlikely witnesses to the greatest event in human history.
1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. (Mark 16)
No one has figured out how to provide a perfect chronological flow of who showed up when, but this we do know. The women showed up first to attend to the body of Christ. None of them expected to discover His body had vanished, leaving behind 100 pounds of graveclothes that were somehow missing a body. It appeared His body had passed right through those heavy, restrictive linens wrapped with various spices. When the ladies investigated the tomb, they encountered two angelic beings, one at the head and one at the foot of Christ’s graveclothes.
5 Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. 7 “But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you. (Mark 16)
Talk about a holy moment. This was it.
According to Luke’s account, they ran back to tell the disciples about the missing body and the angels. He also adds that Mary Magdalene was their spokesperson (Luke 24:9-11). Peter and John then took off to see for themselves (Luke 24:11-2; John 20:2-10). Verse 10 tells us they then went back to their homes, but then John adds this:
11 But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13 And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” (John 20)
Talk about another holy moment.
I think she ran back to the tomb with Peter and John. They looked at the empty tomb and the shocking formation of the graveclothes, and then they booked. She stood at the doorway of the tomb, sobbing and having a hard time focusing on the two angels.
And, then, this happened:
14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” (John 20)
Have you ever run into someone you weren’t expecting? Did you recognize them? I ran into a lot of friends at my twentieth high school graduation thirty years ago, and some of them I didn’t recognize until they spoke to me. Ah, I remember that voice. I think that is what happened to Mary. She had seen the mangled, battered, swollen, lacerated, punctured, disfigured, and unrecognizable body of Christ three days prior, so no wonder she thought Jesus was just a gardener who worked in this garden area.
But then, Jesus called her name, as He had so many times before:
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher). (John 20)
This was a holy moment to beat all holy moments. Instantly, she knew His voice (as you and I will one day, too). I tend to think that you, too, will recognize Christ’s voice when He calls your name.
How did she respond? Like you would have. She grabbed hold of Him and held on for dear life. He quickly informed this loyal disciple that she needed to back off because He was preparing for His ascension. And before this, He would appear not just to her exclusively, but to many others (1 Cor. 15:1ff).
17 Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’ ” (John 20)
What did the loyal disciple do? She became the first and best witness to the resurrection of Jesus from the grave:
18 Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her. (John 20)
Two thousand years later, Mary Magdalene is still bearing witness that she not only saw an empty tomb with angelic messengers, but that she, a woman, was the first to see the risen Christ. Her testimony speaks of truth. Her testimony calls for you to decide to either receive or reject the risen Savior. What will your decision be?
For those who already know His resurrection power, I think the application from the story of this devoted woman can’t be missed: Will I speak up and out about the resurrection of Jesus Christ in time and space? Who will I tell what God has done for sinners?
