Mary said to the one whom she supposed was the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Do you understand what she was offering? She was a woman, and she was offering to carry away the body of a man. Now that’s hard for a man to do, let alone for a woman. And in addition to that, the body had been wrapped in the hundred pounds of spices that had been provided by Joseph of Arimathea.
So what she was offering to do was impossible. She couldn’t carry away the body, and you see, the body was all she could think of. She wanted to do whatever she could, and so, not recognizing the Lord, she said, “Sir, if you’re the one who’s taken Him, let me know where He is and I’ll take Him.”
At that point she must have turned away from Jesus, because it then says she turned back to Him after He had called her name. Up to this point, unless this gardener knew where Jesus’ body was, she wasn’t interested in this person she supposed to be merely the gardener. So when she turned away, perhaps she was looking over at the tomb since that’s where Jesus had been. But then the “gardener” says something that causes her to turn back to Him again.
“Mary.”
Now she recognizes Him and says, “Rabboni” [My Master]!”
What happened in that instance was the resurrection of Mary. She, no less than the others, had experienced the death of faith and the death of hope. But when the living Lord spoke her name and thereby revealed Himself to her, her faith, which had died, came leaping from its grave, and her hope, which had evaporated, gathered again around the person of her Lord.
Now let me apply this to you. Are you one who has never had faith, hope, and love for Jesus? You may say that you don’t know what saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is, and because of this you have no reason for hope, and therefore you do not understand how you can love him. May I suggest that the place to begin is with love for Jesus. And if you ask, “But how can I love Him?” my answer is that the place to learn that love is at the cross, where Jesus shed His blood and died for you. In the book of Romans, Paul says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
What I urge upon you is that you focus on the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf and love Him for that. And if you do, I am convinced that your heart will hear His voice calling your name—as the sheep knows the voice of their shepherd—and your heart will answer, “My Master!” In that instant faith and hope will be born.
But maybe you are one who already believes and hopes in Jesus, and you do love Him. But nevertheless you may be going through a period when your faith and your hope are severely tried. It may be because of death. Maybe a loved one has been taken from you. Or it may be because of sickness or physical suffering. Perhaps these have caused you to doubt many things that you have always believed. It may be other difficult circumstances when you find yourself wondering whether you really have believed as you ought, or if the hope you once had was real and will ever return.
If that’s the case, take confidence in the fact that your love for Christ does not die because of circumstances. Draw near to the Lord Jesus Christ in love, to the one who loves you. And as you are learning to love Him even more through the trial and through the suffering, you must also know that in His own time and by His grace you will see that the faith and the hope that you also have will grow with your love.
Faith, hope and love! These three! “But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).
