After the Cross
Albert Bogle
April 05, 2026
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John 20: 1-18 (NIV-UK)
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!’
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped round Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’
‘They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’ 14 At this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus.
15 He asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’
She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).
17 Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her.
It’s Easter Sunday but you know the shame of the cross won’t go away. You see, the resurrection doesn’t undo the cross, the resurrection gives the cross its meaning. If there was no resurrection then the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth would be just another sad first century Roman execution. But, if you stand this side of the resurrection with eyes of faith – the resurrection invites you to gaze at the cross, from a new perspective to overcome the flinch, and take a second look at yourself, the world and eternity and even God — like Mary did when she met the gardener.
We too need to have our own personal encounter at the cross. We need to hear the Lord call our name. This is no fanciful, notion I’m writing about, it’s the moment when ‘we get it’ we see God bearing our personal shame, but also God experiencing his personal suffering, His encounter with the cross, out of His love for humanity, bearing our name saying ‘broken for you’. Do you get it, God feels broken?
This week I’m asking you to join me in gazing once more on the suffering Christ from the expectation of the resurrection garden, and in doing so to uncover the hidden love of redemption, an event that happens within the very life of the Trinity. Today as we read again the story of Mary’s encounter with Jesus - let each of us wait for the Risen Christ, greeting us by name.
Prayer:
Lord,
I like the triumph
Of your resurrection
But I flinch seeing a crucifixion
I’d wear an empty cross
But think twice about wearing a crucifix
Yet the empty cross and the crucifix
Are fixed - You can’t have one without the other
Mel Gibson’s film ’The Passion’
Made me flinch
The brutality
The suffering was too much
I turned away from You
I hid my face
I hid my face
For I dare not look upon my own shame
The cost of my transgression.
Yet I seldom think what the cross did to You
How could You do what you did?
God – you in my skin
But me in your holy being?
Living out my sin again and again?
God in my head
Me in the head of God
Seeing all my thoughts
Making me face myself
Making me see my sin
The hurt caused to others
The hurt caused to God
Lord,
‘Be merciful to. Me a sinner’
Turn me away from self
That I might be crucified with you
Turn me into You
That I might see the world
Through your eyes
Your cross –
That I might live
In the faith of your resurrection
In the hope of my resurrection
And in the love of the fellowship of the resurrected.
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