But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). —John 20:11-16

Mary had been at the cross. She was there until the very end, most likely. (As was John.) She may well have been one of the people who saw Jesus’ body go into the tomb. She may have had an hour or more with her dead friend and teacher as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus arranged for the body to be given to them and dress for the tomb. They had to transport his body.

No wonder it’s hard for her to picture Jesus as anything but dead.

And Mary has spent her Sabbath thinking about and preparing for her Sunday morning trip to the tomb to anoint his body. When you expect something so hard you don’t even imagine another possibility, of course any deviation is hard to comprehend. Especially your dead friend alive and speaking with you.

His body missing was devastating, but this isn’t a hard assumption to make. Christ was dead. His body isn’t where she last knew it to be. Therefore, someone must have taken it. Someone took it benevolently (the gardener) or someone took it malevolently (a robber or enemy). These are the possibilities in her mind, and they are evidence of her mind in crisis mode.

Mary is practical, maybe even a pragmatist. John wasn’t at the tomb at daybreak to care of Christ’s body as they hadn’t had time to on Friday evening. He’s not even there to support Mary and the others who are going, or to help move the stone for them. No one is there to offer this practical help, save Mary.

She came to care for her dead friend’s body. His body is missing. Someone must have taken it. But where, and why?

The fact that Mary seems to share this plea to the supposed gardener so quickly suggests to me that Mary has been thinking it through. Yes, she is grieving. Yes, she is devastated, gutted anew by Jesus’ missing body. But she is also working on the problem. Where could his body be? Is there any hope of getting it back? To the gardener, Mary offers to carry Jesus’ body away. I think she intended to move him herself, one way or another, despite the smell and loose limbs, both of which she’d prepared herself for on her long, mournful Sabbath. How beautiful, this willingness, this yearning to care for and to restore.

Caring and restoring. That sounds a lot like Christ.

Maybe Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus because he was kind of unearthly looking. Maybe he was still a ways off. Maybe Mary couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Maybe the new day’s sun was in her eyes. Maybe Mary still expecting death so much she simply could not recognize life. Maybe, like the disciples Jesus travels with on the road to Emmaus, Mary senses something is different. Something is good in a fundamental way, but she hasn’t yet figure out what. Maybe she stumbles on in spite of this feeling. Maybe she thinks this feeling, this heart-quickening leap, is hope that Christ’s body is not stolen forever.

The best, best news awaits her. The best revelation. And it comes with her name.