So, why does she not recognize him?  The tomb is open, and the body, as it seems, has gotten up and left.  Where has the body been taken?  She's seen the whole thing, leading up to that, up to and including his death.  We're talking about Jesus here.  You'd think she had a pretty good idea of what he looked like.

But contrary to all expectation, he has disappeared, or rather, his corpus, his body, his corpse.  He had died on the cross, after being scourged quite dramatically, taken down, wrapped in funeral linens, and here is the tomb, courtesy of Joseph of Aramathea.  (sp.)   The woman, Mary, of Magdalena, has come, and the tomb is open, you know the story.

There is a gardener there, so it appears to her.  Politely, distraught, confused, wondering, dislocated, discombobulated, he is the guy to ask.  Uh, sir, would you happen to know...

The risen, he has to catch her almost.  Obviously intelligent, maybe there's a sense of humor lurking here, in the kindness between the two.  Mary, look, it's me.  And with his understanding of human nature, this doesn't surprise him, this strange lack of recognition, to intimate ones, even to family, as if we could not see clearly.  Vision blinded by expectation and other things.

Might make you wonder, how do women see men.  How do women see men anyway.  What clues them off, he is the guy...  What do they see?  Brow, hair, eyes, actions, heart, voice, words, actions, what do they see of us?  Even Mary cannot see Jesus in Jesus standing before her in radiant light.  What gives?  Does it take a special word?  What is the word, then?

You would scare her otherwise, even if you were Jesus.  Even Jesus has to be careful.  Probably because he's a polite sort of human being.  Not strutting around in false attire, big image, big bravado, big show, big pushiness.

Even the crowd preferred Barbaras the criminal, the psychopath, to poor Jesus, when the time came to spare a Jew from the cross at Passover.  The crowd recognized the criminal psychopath abuser of all things holy to the quiet intellectual teacher pure human being.  They could not see Jesus as Jesus.

And she doesn't either.  And then, he speaks, and she does see him, finally.




But if, but if this were an alternate sort of gospel story, less of good news, of our times, now, what if... What if Mary, when the gardener speaks to her, takes upon herself that modern protective armor.  Who is this stranger, scaring her, staring at her?  Who is this man who seems to act like he knows her, knows her when she's looking for one thing and one thing only, the dead body of that man called Jesus the Christ.  He speaks to her, calls her name.  What if she says, who are you, who are you, offended at him from the thoughts in her own mind about how she should be treated and by whom.  This stranger before her.  What if she silences him.  He has to be polite.  She walks away, with her little self-protective victory, her show of power, smug, entitled, uncaring, not looking back.  What happens then to the story?

Would he have bothered to do his work, gone through all the trouble, had he not some firm sense that we human beings are somehow enabled by innate powers to recognize each other.  Thus it natural for Jesus to recognize Peter in Peter.  His story is almost even principally about recognition.  Can we awaken the souls in others of us so that they see us and we see them...