Who Saw Him First?

When trying to get the story concerning who saw Jesus first on resurrection day, one would think the scriptures would be the place to pin this down. Here’s what we find:

MATTHEW:
Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary” arrived at the tomb at dawn only to encounter an earthquake, an angel of the Lord from Heaven, and dumbfounded guards. The angel sends them on their way to spread the news, and who do they run into, but the risen Lord himself! [Matthew 28:1-10 NABRE]

MARK:
Choose between two accounts. Mary Magdalene and two others only encountered a young man with the news of the resurrection. Or the Readers Digest version which merely states without embellishment that “he appeared first to Mary Magdalene.” [Mark 16:1-11 NABRE]

LUKE:
Again the familiar story of the women going to the tomb and finding this time two men in dazzling garments with the resurrection news, but no Jesus, not even when Peter came. Instead, the first appearance of Jesus occurred on the road to Emmaus with two unnamed disciples, who don’t even recognize him till he breaks bread and disappears. [Luke 24:1-35 NABRE]

JOHN:
Mary finds the tomb empty, and tells Peter and the disciple that Jesus loved. They return, but there is no Jesus, no angels, no nothing. Mary sticks around and gets an angelic visit, and then mistakes Jesus for the hired help until he calls her name. [John 20:1-18 NABRE]

FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS:
Paul in his inimitable style merely drops a line into this letter that after Jesus was raised “he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.” Short and sweet with no indication of the source of his information. [I Corinthians 15:3-5 NABRE]

In summary:
Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary see Jesus first.
Mark: Mary Magdalene saw him first—no details of the encounter provided.
Luke: Two disciples on the road to Emmaus see Jesus first, recognizing him right before he vanishes.
John: Mary of Magdala spots him and eventually realizes who it is after Peter and John have inspected the tomb and left.
Paul: Peter saw him first, but no details related as to when or where.

If this were being decided based solely on the numbers, 3 out of 5 sources give Mary Magdalene the nod as the first to see Jesus. I’m not really comfortable with this dispassionate, statistical approach. Perhaps bible scholars would have a much more refined and intellectual method of analyzing the texts and coming up with a reasonable answer from the disparate accounts.

I like the fact that they don’t all agree exactly on the first encounter with our resurrected Lord. First, it was a kind of shocking occurrence, this rising from the dead thing. It’s probably safe to say that although some of those involved saw Jesus raise people from the dead, and heard him speak of his pending coming back to life, they just couldn’t quite make the connection in the face of the usually efficient Roman methods of execution. Additionally, it’s obvious that no one attempted to monkey with the text to make it come out nice and neat, accounts all lining up and agreeing with one another. One of the charms of the New Testament is that it shows us Christians as a mess, as we most certainly are.

In spite of this jumble of accounts, I have an answer for the question posed in this musing that satisfies me, though I doubt that any scripture scholar would support it. Jesus appeared first to his Mama. Here is the woman who worried over him in his childhood, searched all over Jerusalem and its environs to find him, got him to start his ministry early at the wedding of Cana, and stood at the foot of his cross watching him die a slow and agonizing death. No one can convince me that this good Jewish son with such a devoted mother, would not want to tell her first that he was not dead.

So why wasn’t this revealed scripturally? Mary’s last recorded words in the bible were at the wedding of Cana when she told the servants there to “Do whatever he tells you [John 2:5].” Though she makes other rather inconspicuous appearances in the Gospels and in Acts for Pentecost, Mary never put herself forward as a major player in the formation of the church. The Blessed Mother was one who ponders and treasures in her heart the mysterious happenings around her. And perhaps, before she had a chance to relate the encounter with her risen son, others had already reported it.

I’ll continue to believe that the being who is the source of all love in the universe would come and comfort his mama first as an example to all of us who need to be reminded that we were held first in the body of our mothers before we were held in anyone else’s arms.