Recognizing Jesus

Mary Magdalene Sees Jesus Risen
- Artist unknown
From Treasures of the Bible

TODAY'S SPECIAL: John 20:1-18

TO CHEW ON: "Now when she had said this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know it was Jesus." John 20:14

I have always been puzzled by Mary's failure to recognize Jesus. Didn't she know Him well? Hadn't she observed Him at close quarters as one of the women who served His itinerant ministry? Why this failure to recognize him?

The IVP New Testament Commentary says of her uncomprehending reaction:

"Such can be the blinding effect of profound emotions. In this case, her inability to recognize him also seems to be due to the character of Jesus' resurrection body, since such failure is typical of encounters with him (cf. Matthew 28:17; Mark 16:12; Luke 24:16, 37; John 21:4)" - IVP Commentary of the New Testament accessed through "Study This" on Biblegateway.com.

This is by no means the only time Jesus wasn't recognized, though. A failure to recognize who He really was in His person and work was a common reaction to Him while He was on earth.

• Isaiah predicted this blindness - Isaiah 53:3.

• Though the disciples were guilty of this same reaction for much of the time Jesus was with them (John 14:9), they eventually got it. Look at what John says in His gospel, written some 50 years after Jesus' death and resurrection: "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him" - John 1:10.

• The Jewish leaders of Jesus' time who looked on Him as their rival clung tenacious to their unawareness - John 9:1-34.

• Jesus predicted that bad things would happen to His followers because people in authority didn't and wouldn't recognize Him and His Father - John 16:1-4.

The above could and does impact Christians in the world today. So do two other things about recognizing Jesus:

• People can see that we have seen and know Him by the bent of our lives. In his letter to early Christians, John says:

"Whoever abides in Him does not sin.* Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him" - 1 John 3:6 (emphasis added).

"No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him" - 1 John 3:6 NIV.

• Jesus may come to us even now in many ways through the needs of our fellowmen (Matthew 25:34-40). Do we recognize Him here?

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, please open my eyes to see You in the needy people all around me. Soften my heart to respond as surely as I would if it were You in person. Amen.

 ________________

* "…does not sin…"  or "no one who lives in him keeps on sinning…" does not mean that the person who is in Christ never sins. The IVP Commentary is helpful here: "What is meant, then, by the statement no one who lives in him keeps on sinning is quite simple: sin is not the identifying characteristic of those who live in him." (Emphasis added.)


 *********
Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The lingering Mary

Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene
by William Brassey Hole

TODAY'S SPECIAL: John 20:1-18

TO CHEW ON: "Then the disciples went away again to their own homes, But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb." John 20:11

Of all the disciples it is Mary called Magdalene who puts the most human face on the grief Jesus' friends felt as His death. She is the Mary who was named among Jesus' women disciples. She is among the women "who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities." She herself was delivered from seven evil spirits. And she was grateful -- to the extent she traveled with Jesus and supported Him with "substance," probably money and service.

(This closeness may be why there has been unsanctified speculation about Mary being intimate with Jesus in a sexual way. There is no grounds at all for this in the Bible.)

Mary Magdalene was loyal to the end. She was there in the crowd of women, looking on from afar when Jesus was crucified. In our reading today we find her getting up while it was still dark on the day after Sabbath, to slip out to Jesus' grave  and grieve.

There what a cruel shock! The tomb seal was broken and the body missing. She suspected grave robbers. Distraught, she reported back to Peter and John, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him."

She then must have gone back to the tomb with the men, for after they left, we see her there again, weeping. Maybe to reassure herself that He really was missing, she entered the vault where His body should have been and encountered two angels in white. It was after a short conversation with them that she saw Him. Not only that, He talked to her!

It happened when she lingered. Not in a hurry to get on with her life, she stayed after the others had left. Jesus met her then.

Maybe we can learn something from this. Maybe we need to be a little less tuned toward entering or reentering the hustle and bustle of the day. A little more willing to linger.

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, help me to learn from loyal, grateful, practical yet willing-to-linger Mary Magdalene. Amen.

MORE: Feast of Mary Magdalene
Today is the Feast of Mary Magdalene. The liturgy for this day begins with this Collect:

"Almighty God, whose blessed Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of body and of mind, and called her to be a witness of his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by your grace we may be healed from all our infirmities and know you in the power of his unending life; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen."

Magdalene is a historical fiction account of this woman by Angela Hunt.

Excerpt from a starred booklist review:

"Angered by the assertions of The Da Vinci Code (2003)--in particular, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene--Hunt tells the traditional story, more or less, of Mary Magdalene. The "more or less" would be that Hunt turns Mary into a staunch feminist and downplays her history as a prostitute. She is Yeshua's shrewd advisor and helpmate, no more. And she is an interesting woman…"

From the archives