Mary Magdalene Sees Jesus

April 8th, 2026
by Lance Waldie

John 20:16-18 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher). 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.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her.

As Mary wept outside the tomb of Jesus, the man she thought was a gardener was Jesus, alive from the dead! All Jesus needed to do to reveal Himself to her was to say one word: her name. Now although a common gardener may have known Mary by name, it was the way that Jesus spoke her name that identified Him as her “Rabboni” (Aramaic for “my Teacher”). Like the raging sea which Jesus stilled with a word (Mark 4:39), Mary’s troubled soul was calmed by one word from Jesus. Likewise, the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in John 21:6-7, after Jesus instructed them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, and in the story of the two disciples making their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:31), Jesus transforms people’s lives in an instant. All these examples reveal that recognition of Jesus does not follow a single pattern.

Mary’s joyful response to Jesus was to call out to Him in reverential awe as to who He was to her, namely her Teacher, her Lord. But given Jesus’ response to her, she must have also embraced Him physically as the other women had done when Jesus was revealed to them (Matt. 28:9). Therefore, He told her, “Stop clinging to Me…” Though the NASB sounds quite harsh, Jesus was not in any way pushing Mary back. His words were in no way meant to keep her from actually touching Him, for that would contradict the invitation He gave the disciples to touch Him in Luke 24:39 along with the challenge to Thomas to touch His hands and His side in John 20:27 (cf. Matt. 28:9). Perhaps what Jesus was telling Mary, given the present imperative verb tense, was to refrain from fixating on the idea that Jesus had returned to stay. The fact that He told her to “stop” means that she had already begun to think that Jesus being back from the dead meant that He would be with Mary and the others in a physical sense indefinitely. The truth of the matter was that Mary’s relationship to Jesus, as with all others, would no longer be through her physical senses. Once Jesus ascended to the Father (v. 17) a short time later, her relationship with Him would be through the presence of the Holy Spirit (cf. 14:16, 26), not Jesus physically.

It should be noted that Jesus did make many physical appearances after His death, prior to His ascension (cf. Acts 1:3, 9). This was so that writers like John could claim to have been eyewitnesses who had heard, seen, and touched Jesus—the “the Word of life” who grants eternal life (1 John 1:1-3). Even in his Gospel, John asserted that seeing and touching Jesus had ceased to be the means by which people come to faith. From that point onward, God’s blessing came upon those who believed without seeing (cf. John 20:29).

Food For Thought
Though Jesus’ work of redemption is finished (19:30), He still had work to do before the Spirit descended, and He is still working. In telling Mary to go inform His “brethren” in v. 16 and telling her, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” in v. 17, Jesus includes all those who have faithfully followed Him as His family, the One who “is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Heb. 2:11). After all, “Whoever does God’s will is [Jesus’] brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34). They are co-heirs with Christ (cf. Rom. 8:16-17).