Mark 16:9 tells us that Mary was the first person to witness the resurrected Jesus. There were a lot of people he could have appeared to first, a lot of people you would have expected him to appear to before Mary Magdalene—the 11 disciples, for example, the men he would soon send out to change the world. He could have appeared to the Jewish religious leaders who had scorned his message or the Roman governor who had condemned him to salvage a spiraling career. He could have appeared to his own mother to comfort her after she had seen her boy unjustly torn to shreds. He could have appeared to hundreds of Jerusalem citizens from the top of the temple wall to make them think long and hard about demanding for his crucifixion. But instead, he chose to appear first to Mary Magdalene.
Do you remember when you would get these dubious offers in the mail: “You may just have won $1,000,000”? Every time I stood up on my tippy toes and pulled one of those envelopes out of the mailbox, I must have handed it to my mother with dollar signs in my eyes like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon character. Just think of all the Star Wars action figures I could buy with a million dollars! Maybe I could finally get Kenner’s Death Star Space Station (complete with foam-filled trash compactor)! I should have been a bit suspicious when I noticed that those letters were always addressed to my father “or Current Resident.” And as a rule, our last name was misspelled, because there are only a handful of Doeblers in the entire world, and nobody knows how to spell German names correctly anyway. Why couldn’t I have been a “Smith”?
Many of us think of Jesus’ love in terms of “Mr. Smith, or Current Resident.” We know that Jesus loves the world, and we are part of the world, of course. So Jesus must love us. But Jesus doesn’t just love people in general like a politician claims to love the faceless masses of his constituency. He loves you specifically—by name, pimples, cowlicks, big toes, and all—just like he loved Mary. God so loved the world, but he also loves “Mary” and “Matt” and “Christine” and “Madeline” and “Samuel” and “Caleb.” As my sister-in-law likes to say, “I’m his favorite kid!”
That’s what I love about Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. When a pastor preaches from the pulpit, he tells the whole congregation, “Jesus loves you; Jesus died for you; Jesus rose for you.” But the person who is pestered by a smothering sense of shame doesn’t hear “you” as a singular pronoun. They hear it as a plural pronoun, and somehow, they figure that the pastor is speaking to everyone else but them. I don’t know how it happens. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m telling you that’s what happens. And if you have had this experience, then you know what I am talking about. The rest of you will just have to trust me.
However, in Baptism, God personalizes the glorious news of Jesus’ resurrection for you: You yourself have been declared innocent before God; you yourself are empowered for a life of following Jesus; you yourself are guaranteed to rise again and live forever with him. The great missionary Paul put it this way, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4). When Jesus died, it was as if you—singular—died to pay for your own sins. And when Jesus rose from the dead, he raised you—singular—up from the dead to give you a brand-new life of eternal hope and peace. Through Baptism, God personally carried you through that whole process; he personalized the glorious results of the resurrection for you. I love what Pastor Mark Jeske says about this, “The incredible events of Holy Week are not only a great drama for us to watch, passively admiring and worshiping Jesus Christ for what he pulled off. Your baptism actually connects you to Christ and puts you into the story.”[1]