Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - When Jesus Calls You by Name | The Gospels | John 20:11–18

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

What if Jesus is closer than you realize? How does Jesus meet us when we don’t even recognize him? What has the resurrection made possible for us today? In today’s episode, Keith explores John 20:11–18 and shows how Jesus calls us by name and welcomes us into the family of God. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 20:11–18

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Let me set the scene for you. It's early on the first day of the week, and we're at a garden just outside of Jerusalem. All is quiet. Peter and John have already been here. They saw the folded grave clothes, they saw the empty tomb, and John tells us they went back to where they were staying. But one person stayed behind. Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb, and she's crying. That's where this story begins. Not with triumph, not with a trumpet blast, but with a woman weeping in a graveyard.

John writes this in John chapter 20, verse 11. Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb. This is the part of the resurrection account we tend to skip over on Easter morning, but John doesn't skip it. He wants us to feel the emotion of this scene. Mary's watched Jesus die. She'd likely watch his body taken down and placed in this tomb, and now, on top of the grief of losing him, she's been robbed of even the small comfort of tending to his body. As far as she can tell, someone has stolen him away. Mary looks into the tomb and sees two angels sitting where the body had been. The angels don't say he has risen. They simply ask her a question. They ask, woman, why are you crying? And she gives the only answer her grief will allow. She says they have taken my lord away.

and I don't know where they've put him. Then she turns around, and Jesus is standing right there, the risen Christ, he's alive, he's close enough for her to touch, and she does not recognize him. John tells us that she mistook him for the gardener. Think about that. The living Lord of Glory is standing in arm lengths away, and to her he looks like the hired help. She asked him, of all people, where have they taken his body? She said, sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.

Here's the first thing to see. Jesus was present before Mary was aware of it. He was standing beside her while she was weeping before she knew who he was. He didn't wait for her to compose herself. He didn't wait for her to get her theology straight or to stop crying and start believing. He came near while she was still mistaken, still searching, still sobbing in the garden. And notice how gently he come. He doesn't correct her first. He doesn't rebuke her. her for not recognize him. He asks her the same question the angels asked, woman, why are you crying? Who is it you're looking for? Not because he doesn't know, but because he wants her to name the ache in her heart before he heals it. This is how the risen Christ meets people who are grieving, not with a lecture, but with a question and with his presence. If you've ever stood at a grave site, if you ever prayed through tears and felt like you were alone, then you should know this. He was nearer than you know. If you didn't recognize him, it doesn't mean he wasn't there.

Then Jesus changes the whole dynamic. He says to her, Mary. He just said her name. That's John chapter 20, verse 16. When she hears her name, she immediately knows who it is. She turns and cries out Rabinai, which John tells us means teacher. So I want you to notice what didn't open her eyes. It wasn't the empty tomb.

She'd already seen that. And it only deepened her distress. It wasn't the two angels. It wasn't even seeing Jesus with her own eyes because she looked right out of and thought he was the gardener. What broke through was his voice speaking her name. Remember back in John chapter 10, Jesus had called himself the good shepherd. And he said, the sheep listened to his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. His sheep follow him because they know his voice. That's what's happening in the garden. the shepherd calls one of his own by name. She knows the voice. And I think there's an enormous grace in this for us, because if recognizing the risen Christ depends on our seeking hard enough, or our reasoning our way to the right conclusion, or are getting our eyes focused, well, Mary would still be standing in that garden. She was looking straight at him and got it wrong. What saved her was not the strength of her seeking, but the fact that she was known. He knew her name.

He said her name and it changed everything. We do not climb up to the risen Christ by the latter of our own insight. No, he finds us. We are named. The initiative is always his. He's calling out to us. If you know Christ, it's not because you were smart enough to find him, wise enough to find him, clever enough to find him.

It's because at some point, in some way you may not even have really understood, he called you by name and you heard his voice and you started to follow. him. Now, Mary's first instinct is exactly what yours and mine might have been. She has her lord back. She's not going to lose him again. It seems like she's going to hold on to him, so she grabs him. 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. He says, don't hold on to me, but he's not being cold or mean. He's telling her that things can't simply go back to how they were. She's trying to hold on to an old relationship. She wants her teacher to walk beside her

on the roads of Galilee, but something far greater is coming. You see, Jesus is on his way to the father, and through the ascension, he is about to give her a better relationship than the one she's clinging to. He's going to give her a better one, not a worse one. And then he tells her, go to my brothers. This is the first time in John's Gospel that Jesus calls the disciples his brothers. Remember, these are the men who had betrayed him, who had scattered, who had denied him, who abandoned him at the cross. And the first word he sends them after rising from the dead is, you are my brothers. He says, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. He doesn't say our father, as if he and we all belong to the father in the exact same way.

No, he keeps a distinction, my father and your father. He's the son of God by nature from all eternity. We are God's children by adoption, by grace. we are brought in through the cross. The relationship is not identical. But here's the wonder of it. Because of the cross, because of the empty tomb, his father has become our father.

His God has become our God. The risen Christ is not merely alive again. He's bringing his people into a relationship with the father. Everything that belongs to him as the son, he is now sharing with his brothers and sisters who did nothing to deserve it. The resurrection is not only Jesus' vindication. It is the basis for our adoption. So when Mary reaches out to hold on to him,

he's essentially saying, don't settle for holding onto my body in a garden because I'm going to my father and I'm taking you with me. You're about to become not just my follower, but my adopted sister. And then he sends her on a mission. Remember how this started

with her standing outside the tomb, weeping because she thought she'd lost everything? Here's how the passage ends in verse 18. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples, with the news, I have seen the Lord, and she told them that he said these things to her. She started with, they've taken my Lord away, and now she's, I've seen my Lord. She'd gone from tears in a garden to a testimony in a room full of disciples. God had called her from mourning and sent her on a mission. Don't miss who he sins. Mary Magdalene, a woman in the culture where a woman's

testimony carried little weight, a woman with a shady reputation. She became the first human being sent with the good news of the resurrection. The church would come to give her a striking title. She's called the apostle to the apostles. Apostle means sent one. So she was the one sent to those who would be sent out into the world. The risen Lord entrust the most important announcement in history to a grieving woman who mistakenly thought he was the gardener. And that's how grace works. Grace is giving us far more than we deserve. So let me ask you the question, the ancient angels asked Mary. And then let me leave you with the answer that Jesus gave her. The question was, why are you crying? Who is it you're looking for? Whatever grief you're carrying around, Jesus is nearer

than you know. He's not waiting for you to stop weeping before he draws close to you. And to everyone he has called by name, everyone he now calls brother and sister, he says the same thing he said to Mary, don't just hold on to me here. Go, go to your brothers. Go tell them Jesus is alive and offers grace to all who wanted. Amen.