Weeping Woman

John 20:11-14 (New American Standard Bible)

11 But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb;
12 and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.
13 And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him."
14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away."
16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher).


Please note, Mary first stated something that was correct her observation, it was fact, Jesus body was gone! So she wept, she was in despair, perhaps she thought if she could but see Him just one more time, she could get back that sense of His presence, of Him before He died.

It wasn't Mary's speaking something that was lack of faith, the mouth does speak what the heart believes and is most often based on truth on observable facts, what we see the facts are.
Yet, there is a deeper truth, we are to see, and learn. It goes beyond our intellect, it reaches down into our hearts and sets us free!

Yes, truth was Jesus had died, that was a fact, she was right to say that and believe that, He was no longer in her presence, she had that correct as well, His body was gone, she had that correct, and she wanted to know His presence again even if He was just a lifeless body. She had this wrong, because the Father had a grander plan then she could comprehend.

She wanted to know His presence again, so much, that she told Jesus while not yet,knowing who He was, "tell me where you have laid His body, and I will take Him away!"

I know the hardest part for me, of my first wife's death, was when they put her body into the ground. When she was there in the casket, I could still look at her with my eyes, touch her if I wanted to, but the reality comes to your heart when they lower that casket into the ground and your last sight of them is laid away. The grave separated me from her presence. Unlike we practice, burying our loved ones under the ground, the Hebrews buried above the ground, one could still go to the grave and see their loved one, touch them, and gain some sense of remembrance of them. Perhaps sense their presence again.

She knew he was dead, she stood there at the cross, saw it happen, and his body was no longer where she had prepared it after He was dead, it's was gone.
Where's my dead Jesus?
That is what her heart was asking, and she spoke what was on her heart?
Where she went from there, is where we often go in our own faith and understanding of the Gospel. We know the facts of what pain we are in, we know Jesus, but all of a sudden we have forgotten the Gospel, the truth of the "exchanged life."

Many times like many of you, I have found myself at the hard places in life, because I failed to see who I am in Him and to realize that, No, He is not dead.
He is here, present right now not just a memory but in reality.
He is very much alive, I in Him and Him in me.

We often like Mary Magdalene, get so focused either on the Jesus of history, Jesus on the cross, that it clouds our minds and just like Mary, we see only His death on the cross. If that is all we see of Jesus, and nothing beyond the cross, we have it wrong in the first place and unbelief only magnifies from there into every area of our life.
We begin to believe, well He is not here, I will just be what I have always been, a stinking sinner until He comes or suffer the pain of this life alone.
He is in His heaven and I am stuck here on this earth. Maybe if I try a little harder, I can get from here to there. So, we leave our first love.
Remember, we didn't love Him first, we love Him now because He first loved us.

The Good News is - He has come, he is present now, standing right there with you, in you, and as you desiring to live through you everyday. You are in Him.
No, I am not saying we are Jesus, but we are so in union with Him by what He has done, we are of one Spirit with Him joined to Him forever.
Jesus is all the time right here in our presence.
I am not saying that the cross isn't an important part of the overall Gospel, but the cross is not the whole Gospel. Christ didn't come to keep us from going to hell, he came and broke down it's doors and got us out of what we were already in, sin and death (hell).

The living, the resurrected Jesus, the exchanged life we now have in Him, should be the center of our trust as well as knowing what we were, that old self, was already put to death at the cross. He didn't go to the cross, to be beat up by God, He went there out of love, to rescue us from our sin, our nature of the old man, the flesh. We killed Him with our sin, and he died because of His love.

Just like Mary, too often we don't know His presence, because all we see is forgiveness of sin instead of our death to the sin nature, she knew His forgiveness, He had rescued her from the life of death she was living as a demoniac, and those circumstances would have led to her being stoned to death or remaining cast off from who considered themselves, good.
She loved much because she had been forgiven much. Jesus had showed her a glimpse of what was too come, and what was happening around her. He gave her a glimpse of what would be after the cross and resurrection for her life. Victory.

She just didn't know how much He really loved her, that He would never abandon her, and He would never leave her without His presence.
He wouldn't leave her to her own strength to deliver herself from a life that she once lived, where the dark powers of evil could destroy that which God loved. Forgiveness alone doesn't give us deliverance from the power of what we were and the powers that brought it about.
Jesus not only had forgiven us his life offered that, he had to die, to remove the who we were, and destroy that evil in us, that made life evil. He had to be resurrected to make a new who we are. God was expressing his love toward us, not punishing us, in Christ. We still don't get that one, right, because of a lot of false teaching on who God is. We hang onto shadows, and Old Testament revelation which was not a clear picture of the God of love. It is in Christ, that we come to understand and gain the clear picture of the Father and who He is. So John could say, God is love.

Jesus was to be gone but for that short time of the grave.
She like the disciples and us many times, did not hear or do we hear, for He said He would die, but be raised up in three days.
We too often because of wrong teaching and relying on our experiences in life, treat His resurrection as something that only has meaning for when we die, sometime way out there in the future and all we are left with is a dead Jesus!
A Jesus that forgives, but that's it. We have to wait until later in the future to get anything else. I want to say, right now, "what we have now, is what we will have then, so if you don't have it now, don't expect it later."

The Old Testament had a means for the Hebrews to receive forgiveness from God, but it could never remove the consciousness of sin. It couldn't remove the power of sin, the law (religion), or the consequences of sin, which is death (spiritual separation from our Creator God). It could only offer forgiveness for a short time for the sin. The priest had to come back year after year to provide forgiveness.
It was limited forgiveness to one people, the Hebrews or those Gentiles who accepted the one true God. God had a grander plan in mind.
No, He did much more than just offer us forgiveness, but what He did was become the more perfect sacrifice, rather then the blood of bulls and goats, He was the perfect lamb of God, that would remove the stain of sin, the consciousness of sin, the power of sin, and it's consequences and make a new creation. No longer would the Old Adam represent God's creation but the new Adam - Christ would.
He would become sin, He would take what we were, upon Himself. He was the propitiation for our sins and deliver us from that nature, that power, the consequence.

We don't realize that when we look at the cross that is who we use to be, we look at His resurrection and that is who we are.

Rather than perceiving the Good News, the entirety of the full Good News, as if we are sitting at the docks of despair, and weeping, thinking that some day the ship will arrive. We need to realize who we are now, that we have been raised by Him into newness of life already. The ship has arrived and we are on it!
We are headed on our journey home and the boat we are on, is home. His name is Jesus.

We are completely new creations because He died, because He lives, because He has joined Himself to us before the cross in his life, He was a human, at the cross he died as a human but even more he died the death that we won't have to- complete and utter separation from God in that moment of time, and in the resurrection he was raised as a God, and we are one in Him, forever more.
This doesn't make us "a god," as some have twisted that to mean, it shows we are loved of God and precious to Him as children, brethren and sisters of Christ and children. Made to be Sons of God, not the Son of God.

You know, we say we believe in Jesus, but aren't we just often acknowledging the Jesus of history. We often play this number in our heads due to a lot of poor teaching and religion stealing our first love away.
"Yes, I believe He died and was resurrected, but we like Mary are saying to ourselves and others - "they have stolen his body away, He's gone."
We desire and need to know the presence of that love again, when I saw my forgiveness in Him. We started on the right train, but somewhere after we saw we were forgiven by Him, we didn't get the whole message because religion crept in and stole even that little bit of revelation that God had given us, that by faith we could be forgiven, then started right back into trying to appease God. He is already pleased with us, in His Son. Rest in it.

This was the Jesus that made Mary weep, he was not only dead in her mind, but his body, her explanation or "theology" was that is body had to have been stolen.
She fell under the magic of the lie, that the soldiers were to tell everybody as to why His body was no longer there. They were to tell everyone that some of his disciples had stole the body away in the night.

Then she turns around, and there He is, she doesn't recognize Him.

One of the beautiful parts of this story, is, He didn't chide her, and say to her, "Mary quit being a sinner, where's your faith."
No, He so loves her, He show first His concern for her.
He loves her with the love of the Father, His heart feels her pain, and He ask "Woman, why are you weeping? then He ask something the angels didn't ask -
"Whom are you seeking?"
Jesus gets right to the heart of her heart, her concern, He knew she wasn't crying over just anything, but that she was seeking Him.
He doesn't continue after that, to say anything, He stops and let's her tell him why she weeps.
He listens to her desire to know His presence once again.
She was even ready to go to the extent to gain that presence again, that if this stranger had his body she would come and take His body away.

What a difference that makes doesn't it, He doesn't attack her evaluation of the situation, or her inability to recognize Him, or that she believes His body has been stolen, or any of that.
He spoke first to her out of love. He expresses His love, He knows what is on her heart, He allows her to speak, and then something changes her, something, drastically happens, something opens her eyes to see Him.
He says her name- "Mary" and she with that one word her own name spoke from the lips of the one she so desired to know His presence again, the scales of blindness, that just moments before kept her from recognizing Jesus fall off. She awakes from the facts of only what she has observed and imagined to see that which was unseen just moments before, she recognizes it is Him.
Rabboni! She exclaims...
Her heart is lifted into the heavenlies, her smile returns, her sadness turns to joy, and suddenly her tears are wiped away, and she finds there is no more pain and death.

You know I have found in my life, when I got into those places of mistrust, or started believing the lies again that He is not present, my heart would be hurting, my heart would be breaking, I how I longed to know His presence again, that's when Jesus comes to me me, and He ask me, "Man, why are you weeping?" and He doesn't stop there, He knows why I am weeping, He ask, "Whom are you seeking?"
Then He looks at me with those tender eyes and love permeates His being, and He speaks to me, and says, "Joe!"
My heart is lifted and my countenance restored. Oh! Glory to God in the highest.

It is then when my mind and heart recognize He is alive, and I realize that the resurrection of Him is true and as real for me, as it was for Mary, and like Mary, I cry out "Rabboni," which means Teacher. It cries out Savior, It cries out my King, it cries out my life.

Isn't it wonderful, the best Teacher in the world, is not one who hits us with a ruler, and tells us "behave now, do it right or I will send you to hell."
No! That is not my king of glory.
My king comes along in my pain and in my hurt and says, "why do you weep, whom do you seek."
I am alive, here, now in your presence. I know that because I hear my name at Calvary, I hear my name that day in the Garden, I hear my name spoken by Him before the Father. What wondrous love is this.
He is our ever present Teacher and our ever present life.
We are not what we do, but we are - who He is.
Our behavior doesn't define us.
Our misbehavior, our mistrust at times, It doesn't change His love for us and His desire for us to know His presence. He didn't leave us alone. We don't have an evil twin in us, We have Jesus!

Jesus didn't look at Mary and judge her for not knowing what happened at the cross, and for not understanding the resurrection, neither did Jesus chastise Mary for not recognizing Him while His presence was right there with her.
He made His presence known to her, this is what He does for us, when our focus becomes, the cross, as if that is all He was to do, was to die for our sins and give us forgiveness of sin, then go to heaven and leave us here without His presence, then we miss the full picture of that death and the resurrection.
He is still right here present right now. Oh! that we might grasp a clearer revelation of the resurrection as well.
2 Corinthians 5:21
"He ( speaking of God) made Him (speaking of Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we (that's you and me) might become the righteousness of God in Him..

He didn't die to be punished for our sins, he died, to be "sin on our behalf "so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This is what happened at resurrection we were in Him then as well.

He gave us His righteousness.

Colossians 1:22
yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--

He was resurrected so...

Romans 6:4
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Ephesians 2:6 (New American Standard Bible)
6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

Right here, right now.

It is a free gift from a loving God who doesn't expect us to be something we aren't instead He takes that which we were, and kills it, at the cross and gladly gives us, what He is in the resurrection.
Do you realize, you are in Him - right now in heavenly places. A partaker of His divine nature, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. You didn't make yourself that, He did, and He doesn't see us any different when we forget who we are in Him.
God is not looking down on you, and saying "get it right,"
He is not shaking his finger at you, when you fall into mistrust of the Gospel.
He is saying "It is finished"...and He raps it all up in Revelation with "It is done."

What is faith, it is the trusting in the shared death, resurrection and life we now have in Him. It is seeing the power of love and He that is love.
It isn't seeing His presence as way off there in heaven somewhere.
Nor are we waiting for Him to come to fix us or the world. Yes, He will raise us up in the last day, to have everything he has, immortality. The rest He has spoken already.
He said "it is finished." Trust those words. Trust Him!

He is constantly reminding us, bringing to our sight, the truth of the Gospel saying, I am alive and so aren't you. He speaks our name to us reminding us, of His eternal love for us.

Despair, grief and sin in our lives overwhelms us at times, because we haven't heard Him speak our name- He is right here in our presence, right now, resurrected and alive, in you and in me and we are in Him.. and the really cool thing is, He doesn't waste His time to chide us or condemn us for times of mistrust, instead He speaks to His in His language, of who He is. God is love!

Mary discovered that day, that Jesus is alive, have you? That Jesus loved her so much she had not abandoned her.

Or are you still trying to figure out somehow, someway, to make it look like you believe that, by religious effort, living in unbelief of the death and resurrection, living in your unbelief, that He is not here, with you in the midst of your troubles or even your mistrust at times. Perhaps you have never met the Jesus I am speaking of. I hope I have introduced Him to you, for those who have met Him, He hasn't left you here as twins, one evil one and one good one.
He has made a new man, woman or child of you in His Son. He is your life now.

He is here, we are in Him and He in us.


Hear him speak your name there at the garden as He did Mary's name.

He will I promise, in the midst of the darkest hours we experience, look at us, and say, Why do you weep, whom do you seek? and then He WILL speak our name, because He is so closely connected to us, He understands our desire to know His presence in our life everyday. He is here right now with you and with me, speaking our names, saying I am alive, and so are you.
Mary got the answer, and her weeping was turned into joy.

Love all encompassing love, touched her heart with those words of compassion, as opposed to words of condemnation, He brought her beyond just the forgiveness she knew, He brought her Himself, again, raised from the death she so feared had taken Him away. She realized He was the Victor over sin and death, and He said "I am here Mary, it is I." Just like Peter heard him say as the waves crashed about Him. It is I. I am not ghost, I am the living resurrected conqueror over sin and death.
Isn't it great that He knows my name and your name and all of those to which He died for, all those to which He was raised for, and all of those to which He has poured out His Spirit for, and all those for which are joined to Him in Holy Matrimony, His Bride! Come let us enjoy our honeymoon with Him.

Dr. J.