Dear

He said to her, “Dear woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Mary answered, thinking he was only the gardener, “Sir, if you have taken his body somewhere else, tell me and I will go and…”

“Mary,” Jesus interrupted her. Turning to face him, she said “Rabboni!” (Aramaic for “my teacher”).

John 20:15-16

dear: beloved, loved, much loved, adored, cherished, 
precious, esteemed, respected

Where I live, a common address of another person is loved one. 

What if that was the first thought of greeting we had for others, the primary characteristic of their identity to us?

Jesus called Mary loved.

Loved is not the first thing we usually answer when asked who we are. Especially if we are women. We sing songs about love, dream about love, lash out at love, chase it. We become embittered, wrinkled, cynical when it disappoints.

Mary Magdalene knew what it was to chase love. To be hurt by the pursuit. Objectified, mocked, criticized, shamed. 

Mary’s epiphany on Easter morning was the revelation of the truest thing about her. 

Dear woman.

Mary was loved. And the One who lifted her from the pit, released her chains, delivered her from spiritual darkness, counted her identity so critical that He met her first thing. Jesus had just sealed the love deal. His life in exchange for all the hate, all the shame, all the sin that keeps us from knowing the truest thing about us. 

We are loved.

Mary was busy that morning, preoccupied. She was shell-shocked with grief over the death of the One she had been counting on to make all the pain go away. Instead, she had watched him die. So she set to work because that is what we humans do. We get to it. We get busy. We do things to make thinking about things harder. In a frenzy we do and we do and we look right up into Jesus’ face in the garden of our disappointment and don’t even recognize Him.

Jesus is patient with us. His eyes, set on us, never waver with our wavering. They don’t grow dim with our weeping. They peer intently, deeply, past the pain of love’s missed mark.

Dear one.

This is always and ever how Jesus addresses us first. As beloved. We are His beloved, and this is the truest thing about us. Not the work we do, the people we know, our family of origin, or the family we’ve built. We are known first by Jesus as beloved.

His love is what draws us. The gentle and lowly Savior, fresh from Calvary, spoke hesed love to Mary outside the tomb that first Easter morning. His love, the tone of His kind voice, gave her the courage to ask for his help. 

In His next words to Mary, we see love galloping out of the gates of Jesus’ heart, not to be restrained one more second, insisting on stopping the beloved’s pain then and there. He couldn’t bear a single moment more of this blindness, this terrible grief state of not knowing the truth. 

“Mary.” Jesus interrupted her.

At the sound of her name, Mary understood. Turning in surprise, she cried out, “Teacher!” 

Mary finally learned love’s lesson Easter morning. 

I am loved. And death can’t stop my Savior’s love for me.

Easter is a celebration of being loved. You are loved. Dear one, Jesus is here, and He is alive. He knows all you have suffered and all you have done.

Dear one, you are loved and not even death can stop this from being the truest thing about you now and forever. #Easter Click To Tweet

Go, tell the good news!

Lord, help me believe the truest thing about me, truth purchased by your life for me at Easter. Amen.

@audreycfrank

Image by dae jeung kim from Pixabay