John 20:11-18 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. ¹² And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. ¹³ 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.” ¹⁴ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she 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.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

INTRODUCTION

There are two things that continue to stand out to me in John’s account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The first is the lack of doctrine in it. The Gospel of John as a whole contains a good deal of doctrine, but that faucet short of shuts off during the most doctrinally significant part of the whole story. More than once, John pointed out that certain events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection were the fulfillment of the Scripture, but he does not explain why any of this matters; he doesn’t tell us what any of this means. For the most part, John just tells us what happened with very little commentary on its significance.

The second thing that continues to stand out is the confusion and uncertainty of Jesus’ followers. No one seems to understand what happened or what to do. They seem continually confounded and a bit chaotic. In our passage, Mary talks to angels unaware. She even talks to the resurrected Jesus and confuses Him for a gardener.

Combined, these two things might conspire to keep us from seeing the unparalleled glory and grace bursting forth into all creation at Jesus’ resurrection. If this is all we had, we’d probably be left with our eyes wide in amazement, but also scratching our heads in confusion at its significance instead of being filled with awe and wonder and conviction and repentance and worship as we ought. In other words, without even more help from God, we’d almost certainly look a lot like Mary at the beginning of this passage.

But once again, Grace, let us thank God that we do have more help from God. We do have the rest of John and the rest of the Bible to interpret and explain the doctrinal significance of these things for us. We do have the Spirit of God dwelling in us as Jesus’ promised.

As we continue to make our way through to the end of John, then, let us do so carefully (making sure to understand John’s Gospel as he wrote it), biblically (making sure to understand how John fits into the rest of the Bible), practically (making sure to live in light of the truths John taught), and prayerfully (making sure to lean not on our own understanding and strength, but on that which God so richly provides in His Son and Spirit).

This sermon has three main parts. We’ll consider what Mary expected, what she found, and what she did. In so doing, we’ll see that there are three big ideas in this passage. First, because God’s ways are higher than our ways, what we expect from God and what we get are not always connected. Second, the ability to see things (especially spiritual things) as they truly are is always a gift from God. And third, Jesus is risen from the dead! The main takeaways for us are to pray and trust—pray for spiritual eyes and trust God’s invisible promises.

WHAT MARY EXPECTED

Mary returned to Jesus’ empty tomb (after being the one to first find it empty and then going to get Peter and John). She still had no idea why Jesus’ body was missing. But she still loved and trusted in Jesus and so she “stood weeping outside the tomb” (11).

All she could imagine was tragedy. All she could imagine was that someone had added to her already overwhelming burden (of seeing Jesus crucified) by stealing the body of Jesus with bad intentions.

I said this last week, but I believe it’s worth repeating: We must learn from the fact that Mary was weeping unnecessarily. Her grief was real and it would have been appropriate if what she believed to be true were true. But what she believed to be true, as she was about to find out in spectacular fashion, was not true.

Godliness means being on guard for this at all times on two levels. First, it means constantly reminding ourselves that we rarely know as much as we think we do. On our very, very best days our perspective is staggeringly limited, but we are constantly tempted to think and act otherwise. And second, it means knowing that the promises of God stand above every trial, no matter how bitter. Even if we are right in our perspective on a hardship, Jesus’ resurrection means that we need never despair.

Stuck in the midst of misguided expectations, resulting from a misguided perspective, Mary cried outside of Jesus’ tomb. The way John reports the story, it seems that for the first time, in the midst of her weeping, it occurred to Mary that she had never actually looked into the tomb. The impression we’re given is that when she first got there, she was so surprised to see the stone removed that she ran away before giving the grave an even cursory inspection. Naturally, then, “as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb” (11).

Keep in mind what we were just told about the contents of the tomb. Remember that John and Peter had just inspected it and found it empty of everything but Jesus’ burial clothes and face covering. Of course, therefore, we expect Mary to find the same thing when she looked in. How could it be otherwise?

I don’t want to push what I’m about to say too far, but I do think there’s something worth mentioning here, before considering what Mary actually found. It is a dangerous thing to presume to know God’s grace-distribution schedule. It is pure hubris to believe God’s ways are our ways or that we know the mind of God.

The grace God had for Peter and John on Sunday morning was not (as we’re about to find out) what God had for Peter and John later that day. The grace God had for Mary during her first visit to the tomb was not (as we’re about to find out) what He had for her on her second. Likewise, the grace God had Peter and John was not (again, as we’re about to find out) what He had for Mary.

There was no earthly reason for Mary to expect anything other than what John and Peter saw or what she found the first time she was there, but God is not bound by earthly reasoning.

Practically, this is what I mean: Obey God expectantly, Grace. Obey God expecting amazing grace in your quiet times even if you’ve received ordinary grace in the previous one hundred quiet times. Evangelize expecting God to save your friend even if you’ve had a hard time discerning God’s grace at all the previous ten times. Come to Sunday morning worship expecting God to stir your heart and convict you of sin even if you were distracted and things were ordinary last week. Come to DG expecting God to unify and grant sweet fellowship even if that hasn’t been your experience lately. Expect God to unite your family and establish generational faithfulness through family worship even if it has seemed like none of your kids hear a word.

As we’re about to see in Mary’s experience, our perspective on God’s past grace is not a reliable indicator of God’s future grace. We are called to obey in simple, childlike faith, not because we know what the specific outcome will be from our obedience, but because we trust God’s Word and God’s promises no matter what things look like from our limited perspective.

It’s not clear exactly what Mary expected, but it is clear that it was only more bad news.

WHAT MARY FOUND

What, then, did Mary find when she looked into the tomb through tear-filled eyes? She found angels and then she found the resurrected Jesus Himself! Be amazed, Grace.

Angels

Instead of seeing Jesus’ folded grave clothes and nothing else like Peter and John did…

¹² … she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.

We don’t know for sure the amount of time between when John and Peter went into the tomb and when Mary looked in, but even if we did, the presence of the angels cannot be explained by anything other than the sovereign, miraculous grace of God. God intended Mary to have this unique encounter in a way that was reserved for her at this specific moment in time.

What Mary expected and what she found were two very different things. Once again, don’t miss the significance of this, Grace. Be humble and obey expectantly.

So what did the angels do?

¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

The angels, messengers from God, knew why Mary was weeping. They had been sent precisely because she was weeping at a time in which she ought to have been rejoicing. Why, then, did they ask a question that they already knew the answer to? They asked her in order to help her see what they saw; to learn what they knew. They asked her in order to help her recalibrate her expectations to better line up with reality.

We might expect Mary to be shocked or amazed or even scared. Instead, seemingly without any awareness that she was in the presence of heavenly beings…

She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary just couldn’t get off the track she was on. And in that is a critical lesson that I hope will become even clearer if I end up preaching through Ecclesiastes next: It is the default human tendency to process reality as if everything were “under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). That is, we’re all prone to what the Puritans called “functional atheism.” We often act as if the “laws of nature” alone govern our universe rather than the God from whose nature all reality proceeds.

That’s what Mary was doing here. Angels in white, sent from God, were talking to her and Jesus (as we’ll see in the next verse) was standing behind her, but she was still thinking only in terms of under-the-sun, earthly explanations for Jesus’ missing body. Despite the unparalleled glory surrounding her, nothing but what could be explained with worldly logic crossed her mind.

It is easy for us to scoff at Mary, isn’t it…or at least to raise an eyebrow at her cluelessness? It is easy for us to marvel at her thick-headedness and lack of spiritual perspective. It’s easy to wonder how she could possibly have missed seeing what was right in front of her. But we’re missing a significant measure of grace in this passage if we don’t quickly recognize that we are every bit as scoff-worthy, thick-headed, and spiritually blind.

How many times have you prayed for some hardship to end only to find out later that God was using the hardship to do a far greater work than whatever you asked for or imagined? How many times have you missed the mighty work of God in your life? How many times have you thought only in terms of what you could understand? How many times have you acted as if God were not with you in a time of need?

Grace, God is real and always, always, always working in a billion invisible ways at all times for His glory and our good. That’s why we pray. That’s why we place our trust in God’s promises. That’s why we live by faith and not sight. Believing that is what makes us fundamentally different from agnostics, atheists, and unbelieving believers. Living by faith in God’s Word and His invisible promises is infinitely safer and better than living by trust in our senses and interpretations.

Angels asked Mary why she was crying and, oblivious to the reality around her, she explained that it was because Jesus’ body was missing and she had no idea who took it or where they put it or why they did it.

Jesus

All by itself, that’s a pretty big whiff. All by itself, it’s easy to see that Mary missed something astounding. But, as you know, Mary wasn’t only missing the presence of angels in her midst. The angels weren’t all by themselves.

For reasons we aren’t told, having finished answering the angels’ question, Mary decided to turn around. And when she did, she…

¹⁴ saw Jesus standing…

Woah! She’d missed the angels, but there’s no ways she could miss Jesus, right?! He was the very reason she was there. She was weeping at the tomb because she was mourning for Jesus, the very man standing in front of her. Nothing but joy and wonder and gratitude and amazement could be her response, right?

¹⁴ … but she did not know that it was Jesus.

She did not know it was Jesus?! How can that be? How is that possible? It’s one thing to miss an angel, but it’s something entirely different to miss Jesus, isn’t it?

Unphased by her failure to recognize Him…

¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? …

Did you notice that Jesus initially addressed her just as the angels did? He addressed her in with the generic term, “woman.” And did you notice that He also repeated the angels’ question, “Why are you weeping?” Also like the angels, Jesus knew full well who she was and why she was crying.

Jesus, however, added a new line of questioning …

¹⁵ Jesus said to her…”Whom are you seeking?” …

With this question, Jesus got even more to the point. The question, “Why are you weeping,” was simply meant to get Mary to acknowledge the true source of her sorrow—her mistaken belief that Jesus was dead and His body stolen. The question, “Whom are you seeking,” was meant to correct the mistake.

Mary was sad because of Jesus’ “absence,” but this question from Jesus was meant to reveal His presence. If His absence was the cause of her tears, His presence ought to have been the cause of her laughter, if only she had eyes to see.

Angels asked her why she was crying and she missed it. Now Jesus asked her why she was crying. Would she fare any better? She would not at, at least not at first.

¹⁵ … 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.”

Do you see, once again, what Mary’s spiritual blindness meant? Her Lord, the object of her affection and devotion, her greatest treasure, was right there. The very thing she most wanted, without even imagining it to be a possibility, was hers already. And yet, her highest hope in that moment was that someone would tell her where Jesus’ dead body was so she could properly tend to it. She couldn’t even think to ask for more than a corpse.

If ever the famous C.S. Lewis quote has an incarnation, it’s here.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

That is us continually, Grace. Learn from Mary.

Again, Mary completely missed it, but Jesus’ next words changed everything though…

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

A few moments ago, I asked you to consider how it was that Mary could have failed to recognize angels as angels and now Jesus as Jesus. I’ll come back that in a minute. For now, however, I want to highlight the simple fact that the only difference John reveals is that in this instance Jesus called Mary by name. No longer was she “woman.” Now she was “Mary.”

Jesus’ words from chapter 10(:27) must ring in our ears, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John doesn’t tell us why hearing her name from Jesus enabled Mary to recognize Jesus, but it’s clear that it did.

As has been the case over and over and over, reading John well means seeing two things at the same time. It means seeing the crazy blindness of even Jesus’ closest followers. Mary had spent most of the past three years of her life following Jesus and yet she could not recognize Him standing in front of her and talking to her. That’s a startling kind of spiritual far-sightedness.

But the second thing a careful reader of John will see is that the difference between those who see and those who don’t is not merit or courage or righteousness or strength or even devotion. It is the grace of God. Jesus’ grace called Mary in the first place. Jesus’ grace enabled Mary to trust Him in His life. And it is now Jesus’ grace that allowed Mary to recognize Him in His resurrected, glorified state.

This is one of the most important biblical principles you can grasp in relation to evangelism and spiritual growth. We are all born spiritually blind and, therefore, to be converted, to initially come to faith in Jesus, requires God to give you sight. The reason the entire world does not honor God as God is because of the blinding effect of sin. Just like countless men and women throughout John’s Gospel could stand in front of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, and completely miss it, to the point that instead of surrendering themselves to Him as Lord and Savior, they crucified Him, so too do countless men and women today. If you want to see a non-Christian family member or friend trust in Jesus, pray for them to be given eyes to see what’s already right in front of them; God’s holiness, their sinfulness, Jesus’ loving sacrifice, and gracious faith offered—the gospel.

Similarly, just like Mary, who believed in and loved Jesus, but lacked eyes to see in this moment, every ounce of spiritual growth in Christians is tied to our ability to see things as they truly are. To be saved is to be given spiritual eyes to see for the first time. To be sanctified is to be given clarified vision.

The Apostle Paul says it like this in his prayer for the Ephesian Christians (1:16-19), “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…”.

We see a physical example of this spiritual truth in Mark 8(:22-25), “²² And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. ²³ And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ ²⁴ And he looked up and said, ‘I see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ ²⁵ Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

If you want to grow in your faith, to mature in Jesus, to be sanctified, your greatest need is to see with spiritual clarity, and so we ask God for greater spiritual vision. Jesus granted this to Mary. He will grant it to you. He has promised to grant it in increasing measure to all who trust in Jesus.

More than anything else, Grace, pray for grace. Pray for ever-widening eyes and ever-clarifying vision to see that which is entirely invisible to fallen mankind apart from God’s grace. Pray for spiritual eyes to see for yourself and your brothers and sisters in Christ that we might grow in love, worship, and obedience. Pray for the eyes of the hearts of your unbelieving family, friends, and neighbors to be enlightened that they might turn to Jesus in faith. Every time Christians see more clearly or unbelievers see at all, it is because the Spirit of God is pleased to work through the Word of God; every. single. time.

WHAT MARY DID

Mary expected to find an empty tomb and a missing body. Instead, she found a pair of angels and the resurrected Jesus Himself. Initially, she didn’t have eyes to see any of that, but the seeing-grace of God came upon her as Jesus spoke her name. What, then, did she do? She did two things. She tried to cling to Jesus and then she obeyed Him.

Tried to Cling to Jesus

Now that her eyes were opened, Mary, relieved, must have run towards Jesus in joy and relief. That’s what anyone with eyes to see does. To see Jesus is to treasure and trust Jesus. One of the most significant marks of genuine salvation is sight that leads to the desire to cling to Jesus.

And yet, for reasons that are not clear (even though Jesus sort of explained it), Jesus stopped her short, saying…

¹⁷ … “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father…”

As I said, it’s not obvious why Jesus’ future ascension would prevent Mary from clinging to Him now. Others would touch Him soon. One possible explanation is that Jesus was warning Mary not to cling to Him as if His physical presence was her greatest need. He was about to leave again permanently (in Mary’s lifetime anyway), but it was going to be better for her since the Spirit would always be with/in her (). Regardless of Jesus’ specific meaning, the main point stands that Jesus held Mary back from clinging to Him in a way she desired.

Grace, know two things here. First, your greatest longing ought to cling to Jesus. The defining characteristic of the eternal life Jesus came to bring is that in it, He will be our greatest treasure. And second, once again, like Mary, we will not experience it in fullness until God’s sanctifying work on us is complete. In the meantime, we long to long for Jesus and give thanks to God for every inch He is pleased to move us in that direction through ever-clearing spiritual vision.

Obeyed Jesus

Jesus stopped Mary from clinging to Him, but that is not to say that He had nothing for her. He told her instead to go and announce the good news of His resurrection and coming ascension into glory.

¹⁷ … but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ “

What did Mary do in response to her recently clarified sight? She did the two things that everyone who can see clearly does. She tried to cling to Jesus and she obeyed Jesus.

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

CONCLUSION

As we’ve seen many times in this Gospel, irony is one of the most significant tools John used to highlight the unmatched glory of the events he wrote about. We have another example here. It was in the most significant symbol of death—a tomb—that Jesus revealed His resurrected life. In the grave Jesus defeated the grave. Oh death, where is your sting?!

And in that, more clearly than ever, we can see the three big ideas of this passage: What we expect from God and what we get are not always connected, the ability to see things as they truly are is always a gift from God, and Jesus is risen from the dead! Therefore, let us be a people who are marked by ever—growing trust and prayer. Trust in God’s invisible promises and prayer for the grace of God to give us eyes to see.