by Walter Wangerin Jr.
She hasn’t moved. Still she kneels in front of the tomb. And she is weeping. Not in lamentation; not in remembrance and honor for her Lord, which would have been her final act of love; but in loss. The body of Jesus is lost. Therefore, Maryam has lost her life. She has lost her way. There is absolutely nowhere to go from here. She will lie down and die before the Feast of Weeks.
A roseate light falls on Maryam’s small back, which shakes with her silent sobbing. She is a slender damsel bending groundward. She is a stalk of sweet grass, bent by the jackal’s paw in its passage. Her face swells; her hands are wringing themselves into a bloodless white.
A voice says, Woman? Two voices, echoing as if in a stone basilica, say: Woman? Why are you crying?
Her eyes shut tight, it seems to Maryam that the sun is bright against her face. But when she opens her eyes she finds no sun. The sun has not arisen—and when it does it will rise behind her. No, the light is playing her false: it comes from the clothing and the countenances of two men sitting inside the sepulcher, one at the head and one at the foot of Jesus’s shroud. They are the ones who have spoken to her.
Slowly, Maryam rises to her feet. “O sirs,” she whispers in a voice destroyed by sorrow, “because they’ve taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.”
Her eyes ache. Her sight is stunned by the angelic brilliance. Instinctively, she turns away, rubbing the water that pools in her vision—and there, in the road, she makes out the blurred figure of a man.
“Woman, why are you crying?” asks the figure, walking toward her. “Tell me: what are you looking for?”
“Him,” Maryam answers. “My Lord.” She begins to babble: “Are you an intendant of cemeteries? Did someone ask you to take the body out of this tomb? Did you? Did you take the body, I mean? If so, could you tell me where you put him? I’ll go, and I will get him—”
But the watery figure continues to approach her until he stands but an arm’s length away. He, too, is growing bright. But not like the men in the tomb. Like the morning. He is the morning itself, splendid, filling the space between heaven and earth, sparkling like stars ascending and descending on the open tomb!
O good and holy God!—who?—
Then the figure clothed in white, this man composed completely of light, speaks. He utters a single word. But in that word Maryam knows everything. She knows him; she knows herself; she knows the grace of the Father and the glory of his only begotten Son.
The Light says, Maryam.
Jesus! It’s Jesus!
He calls her by name, saying, “Maryam from Magdala.”
She leaps straight up and cries, “Rabboni!”
Oh, how beautiful the planes of his face! He stands with his head in the heavens, and yet he is only just her size; and he is—his rust-bright eyes and the freckles that emblazon them are—deft and dazzling and full of life.
Bolder than she has ever been, Maryam spreads her arms. She will embrace the Lord whom she loves! She will throw herself upon the neck of him for whom her face and her throat are flaming: “O my darling Teacher!”
But: “Hush,” the Lord commands her. “Don’t take hold of me,” he says, “I haven’t returned to my Father yet.”
Such impetuosity, Maryam! You’ve never acted like this in front of Jesus! And on any day before she would have been terrified by such emotion; she’d have feared it was her devils returning again. But on this day, at this daybreak hour, nothing at all can trouble Maryam from Magdala. Not even the Hush! of her Lord.
Because he is alive! And so is she: alive.
And more than that, he has a job for her to do. See? Maryam has become the first servant of the newly risen Jesus. Maryam, that once bore evil spirits here and there, now bears the good news of the Lord!
For “Go to my brothers,” he says. “Tell them that I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Fleet afoot is our pale, our wraithlike child! And she has torn the veil from round her face; it streams behind her as she runs. Her ankles flash like lambs on the hillside, her feet like ibex high on the mountains. And her mouth is open. And she is singing. And the song precedes her where she goes.
I have seen, sings Maryam from Magdala.
She is greater and more beautiful than the swallow now. She is the osprey, white at the throat, her bosom and abdomen snowy white: I have seen the Lord!
She is the osprey who skims the seas to wash her feet in their salty waters. And high above her, soaring on the mighty thermals, on those invisible pillars of the dome of the universe, flies the eagle.
I’ve seen the Lord! I’ve heard his voice! Attend his word, O nations, And rejoice!
From Jesus: A Novel by Walter Wangerin Jr.
