In the midst of a hot and stressful midsummer, filled with dire geo-political discussions and infernal weather, we come, ironically, to a feast of hope and triumph. It’s the feast of the first witness to the Resurrection in all four Gospels: the Feast of Mary Magdalene. Maligned for millennia as a “loose” or “promiscuous” woman due to her conflation with multiple other women named Mary in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene’s profound legacy as a key companion of Jesus and the “Apostle of the Apostles” has long been shrouded in sex-shaming and other patriarchal dismissals. We have only just begun clearing out the debris and honoring Mary Magdalene in all of her nuance and detail – and there are so many New Testament scenes of hers to analyze and re-imagine. Today’s meditation zooms in a little more on the specific lessons on hope and attention we can learn from her encounter with the Resurrected Christ in the Gospel of John. 

In this particular resurrection scene, we begin with Mary weeping outside of Jesus’s tomb on the third day, confused to find his tomb empty apart from two angels lurking. Then she meets a gardener, who asks “whom are you looking for?” Only once this gardener says her name does she realize that she is actually speaking with Jesus himself. “Rabbouni!” she exclaims, meaning teacher.  

This Apostle of the Apostles, the one brave enough to face the tomb while others remain in hiding, shows herself to us in an all-too-relatable moment of misrecognition. Concerned with the reality she thought she knew – that Jesus is dead, that all is lost, that what remains to be done is to find Jesus’s body and safely return it to its resting place, she misses the hopeful sign right in front of her. She doesn’t recognize her own beloved teacher. Stuck in what she believes are the stone cold ‘facts’ of the situation, she nearly misses the most incredible fact of all: Love has conquered death. 

That makes this story one of always being on the lookout for God’s hope. It’s not a call to reverie or blissful denial, but a warning to not let the facts of the moment interfere with the dream of God’s love. New Testament scholar Gail R. O’Day notes that Jesus’s question, “whom are you looking for” is similar to his first question in this Gospel, spoken to John the Baptist: “What are you looking for?” Thus, says O’Day, “this question is an invitation that introduces one of the marks of discipleship in John: to look for Jesus” (528). In other words, this particular Resurrection scene unveils the unpredictability of our sources of hope. Mary Magdalene models the openness to hope that we all need today. She could have trusted her senses and made them her objective reality, scurrying away from the gardener and never realizing his true nature. It’s something we all do, all the time. We succumb to our stress and the demands of the day and run right past the face of God. But Mary Magdalene has the wisdom to pause, to listen, and to look again. And in that pause, she recognizes her teacher. Just like Mary Magdalene, we live in a post-Crucifixion world that desperately needs our hope and faith in the possibility of God’s love on Earth. 

Mary’s particular source of hope and faith in this Gospel scene reveal to us deep ecological messages as well, signs of God in the act of caring for the world. He is a gardener, tending to the same earth he created from his own breath and hands and word in Genesis. Did it even need to be the literal Jesus himself that Mary Magdalene saw? Or perhaps it was sign enough that, after a crucifixion, a kind, humble man came out to a garden and planted new seeds of life and care into the world. Love, through his hands, prevailed. Perhaps this is what it means that Jesus is alive: care and gentleness and attention toward all the created world have survived. That is Jesus. We cannot discount these signs of care and survival when we see them. We cannot let ourselves fold into despair, because to do that would be to deny the reality of God’s presence, always smiling and asking us whom we seek.

Source: O’Day, Gail R. “Gospel of John.” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley. Westminster, 2012. 517-535.

Set aside some time each day at the beginning and end. At the beginning of the day, repeat to yourself before sitting in quiet contemplation: “I will look for God in unexpected places today.” At the end of the day, think back through all your activities and reflect on the unexpected places where you encountered God’s love. Did you recognize them at the time? Is it only now, upon reflecting, that you see them for what they were? (If so, don’t judge yourself – you have that in common with Mary Magdalene and all the Apostles). What made these encounters so unexpected? How did they expand your understanding of God’s love and hope and character? Repeat the process as many times as feels helpful.

A community embodying hope

Following the theme of taking care of the earth as a sign of love, I want to lift up the White Earth Land Recovery Project. An Anishinaabeg action group founded by Winona LaDuke and devoted to the recovery of the original land base of the White Earth Nation, the organization combines food sovereignty projects with legal action. All their work has the effect of not letting the colonial policies of the US Government have the final say, and working with the earth to find autonomy and hope.