Part 27 – John 20

Now that we are entering the closing chapters of our skip through John’s gospel I want to remind you of how we started this jaunt. A lot of my observations and insights of John’s gospel have been to focus on Jesus and what we do with him, how we interact with him and ultimately how we walk with him.

We started off with an observation that John the Baptist’s whole purpose in life was to point Jesus out in a crowd and who was also willing to lose disciples in order that they could “go and tell” others that they had seen “the Christ”. We saw Mary point people to Jesus when the wine had run out in John 2 and we saw Nicodemus realising that Jesus was more than just a man and who sought him at night in John 3, and so I could go on. 

As we enter into John 20 we have a story where Mary Magdalene has “come to see” and is told to “go and tell” in order that more can “come and see”. 

Let’s set the scene. We are at the tomb early in the morning when it is still dark, this tells us that we are before 6am. The tomb is in a garden and we find the sealing stone rolled away and the tomb empty. 

We are told in other gospel accounts of the resurrection that Mary did not come alone. Why John only records that Mary came on her own is unclear. What we do know is that she is surprised to see an empty tomb. Her first instinct is to go and tell the disciples that all is not as she had expected. It would appear that her first thought is that the governing body, the Romans or the Jewish leaders have taken the body away and it appears that she is quite distraught. There seems to be an urgency and Peter and John run to the tomb and find it to be true, but I am guessing they are rather confused. 

In our next scene (John 20:14-15) we have Mary turning around and as she turns she sees someone she presumes to be the gardener. He asks her why she is weeping and who she is looking for. This person then speaks her name, “Mary”, and she immediately identifies him by his voice as Jesus, the Voice in the garden. 

I am reminded that this Voice in the garden has spoken before in another garden. At the outset of creation in Genesis 3:8-9 KJV we read that “the man and his wife heard the voice(KJV) or sound(NLT) of the Lord God walking in the garden….. and they hid themselves“. 

John, at the beginning of his gospel, identifies the spoken word of God, Yahweh (who will be – who is – who was) as becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us. There is much that we could say about this act of God coming down and dwelling in our midst suffice to say that a significant part of the Jewish story is all about a belief that God would come down and rescue His people and one of the first references to this is in Exodus 3:7-8 where God speaks with Moses and says:-

• I have seen their misery
• I have heard their cry
• I am aware of their sufferings
• I have come down to rescue them in order to bring them up to a new land. 

John’s gospel is all about this Voice that has become flesh that has come down in order to give new life. He culminates his account of Jesus in a garden gently speaking a name just as he did to Adam and Eve. It is this same Voice that was calling Adam and Eve to Himself so there could be restoration, regeneration and a realignment of all that was wrong as a result of their actions. 

The same applies to us today as to them then. The eternal voice of the Spirit cries out calling us all by name in order to restore us to God Himself so that we have a story to tell and a voice that can “go and tell” and can compel others “to come and see”. 

I am guessing that Mary left that garden a different person. She went with enthusiasm and excitement and told the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord”. 

I wonder what our testimony is? Is it that I have seen the Lord? Is it that we have heard the eternal cry, Adam – Where are you? Or, like Mary, have we just heard the gentle voice that speaks our name?

The “word” that John refers to at the beginning of his gospel account has become flesh, it has come down, it does dwell amongst us, it has risen, it has ascended and is glorified in order that all humanity past, present and future can enter into a relationship that will impact our lives for ever and all we can say is Praise the Lord (Praise be to Yahweh). 

He will be

He is being

He was

HALLELUJAH.

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