Mary Magdalene’s Darkness-to-Light Morning
By Lissa M. Wray Beal
“The Life was the Light of All People!” John 1:4
IF YOU GO to Jerusalem, you will likely want to visit The Garden Tomb. While not the traditional location of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial, there you can walk in a garden setting, and see a tomb such as the one that would have housed the body of Jesus. Stooping through the tomb’s doorway and peering into the dim chamber beyond, you can imagine the experience of Mary Magdalene, Peter and the other, unnamed, disciple in John’s narrative of the resurrection (John 20:1-18).
I visited this garden a year ago, on a sunny Sunday morning. But my sunny morning visit sat uneasily with the account in John’s gospel, which alone has Mary arriving at the tomb – not as the sun was dawning (as in Matthew and Luke), and certainly not after the sun had risen (as in Mark) – but “while it was still dark” (v. 1). The difference is more than one of perspective, of different descriptions of a transitional moment from night to day. It is a difference that is crucial to our understanding of John’s gospel.
Poor Mary! Does she come in the dark because she’d had a sleepless night of weeping? Did she rise in the dark because, in her distress and grief, she opted to just begin the tasks of the day? Haven’t we all done the same thing after our own sleepless nights? Or does she come before it is light out of anxious, loving concern to tend the body of the Lord she loved?
Certainly, she came expecting a dead body and not a resurrection. She came bowed down with sorrow, yet committed to preparing that body for burial. But then. . . the shock of the open tomb. . . her heart-pounding run to Peter and the other disciple…the breathlessly uttered conclusion that the body had been moved…the heart-pounding run back, Peter falling behind…then entering the tomb (would you enter?)…the notice of grave-cloths lying carefully arranged. Surely no grave robbers would take the time to unwrap the body and leave the cloths behind, would they? The other disciple “saw and believed.” But believed what? – Mary’s account, perhaps? – for “as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” Perplexed, distressed, uncertain, they return home.
No wonder John tells us this occurs while it is still dark. For in the rush and confusion, in the theories of moved bodies, they remain in the dark. Without understanding the resurrection has occurred, darkness is all they have, for hope is gone. For the disciples, if the Lord is dead it is indeed dark – for John’s Jesus proclaims, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). This is what John tells us as he begins his gospel. In a passage that echoes the creation in Genesis 1 John tells of a new creation in which it is Jesus Christ – the Word – that is both life and light (John 1:4). It is no accident that in John’s gospel, at the very moment Judas departs to effect the betrayal, “it was night” (John 13:30). What else could it be, when forces gather to crucify the Light of the World?
Peter and the other disciple depart. Without an understanding of the resurrection, Jesus is simply dead and gone, and it is still dark.
It is at this point that John’s account takes a decidedly supernatural turn, leading us into the light. Poor Mary remains weeping. Perhaps she’s hoping for someone to come with an explanation. Maybe she’s getting up the courage to look into the tomb to check if they’d seen wrongly, and somehow the body is still there. For the first time Mary looks into the dark tomb and, despite her grief, begins to see rightly. She sees two angels. Less startled by them than by the discovery of the open tomb, she answers their “Why are you weeping?” It is the same question voiced by the gardener she then turns and sees. To both, she answers wondering where the body has been moved, that she might tend it.
It is only when the gardener calls her by name that Mary’s understanding of the dark morning falls into place, and light dawns. For he is not the gardener but “The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day” as Malcolm Guite writes in his poem, “Easter dawn” in Sounding the Seasons. As Jesus says her name, Mary sees rightly. Her eyes are opened and she recognizes him for who and what he is: the risen Lord of Life, the Light of the World. Truly, as John says as his gospel begins, the light who “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
This is the very moment Mary enters the new creation–a new creation in a new garden in which the darkness of death, and sin, of confusion, and human frailty, is overcome. And desiring that all his disciples know that the new creation has dawned on Resurrection Day, the resurrected Lord commissions Mary to go, and tell. “I have seen the Lord” is her report.
I sat with other clergy this morning and we pondered how to be Church in the midst of the panic arising out of COVID-19. It is a time of global fear, and a staving-off of the acknowledgement of our human frailty. Last month, a friend’s wife was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. This young couple with a newborn child is entering their own valley of darkness and, while they know Christ walks with them, they have moments of fear. Elsewhere, reports of corrupt governments remind us that darkness remains a powerful enemy. Even within our own hearts, we know the whispers – or shouts – of dark desire.
It is these daily realities that show the great Good News of Mary’s darkness-to-light garden morning. Beyond the finality of death, ending confusion and grief, banning the darkness of sin and despair, Christ the Light of the World has overcome the darkness. It is an overcoming that addresses us still today, for its power is undiminished, even in our own world of dark death, false understandings and confusions.
It is Easter! Alleluia! He is Risen! Mary’s words tell of the Lord, calling us to affirm with her, “I have seen the Lord!” And like her, to go; to live; to tell. The Light has come into the world, and darkness cannot overcome it. TAP
The Rev’d Dr. Lissa M. Wray Beal is Professor of Old Testament and Chair of the Seminary Bible and Theology Department at Providence University College and Theological Seminary in Otterburne, Manitoba.
