She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” (John 20:15)

Ever wonder why Mary Magdalene would mistake Jesus for the gardener?

At first blush, it would appear that it was a physical problem with her visual perception. You could blame the low light of early morning for preventing her from recognizing Jesus.

Or you could attribute it to a change in Jesus’ appearance following the Resurrection. We find the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) as well as the disciples out fishing on the lake (John 21) also having trouble identifying Jesus.

While we cannot dismiss these two factors, my sense is that it was her expectation that was responsible for her inability to recognize Jesus.

How so?

Mary had come expecting to see the dead body of Jesus, as you can tell from her response to angels’ question: “Woman, why are you weeping?” “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” (v. 13)

And again, when Jesus asks her: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”, she is wondering if he had taken the body away and laid it somewhere else.

If all you expect to see is a dead Jesus, then a man standing in the garden cannot be the Risen Lord, can he? The only other logical choice would be the gardener. (Considering how hot it would get in that part of the world by mid-day, it was a necessity for a gardener to be up and at it very early in the morning).

Her expectation led to her mistaking God for the Gardener.

This is not the first time in the Bible that expectations were responsible for someone not recognizing Jesus for who He really was. Case in point. The Jewish leaders of His day. They expected the Messiah to be a military ruler like David and not the Suffering Servant that Jesus was…so they never saw Him as the One they were waiting for.

Similarly, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the leaders could not see God in the healing, because their expectation was that a faithful Jew, especially a teacher like Jesus, would do no “work” on the Sabbath.

Listen to these indignant words from the ruler of a synagogue: “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.” (Luke 13:14)

Many years ago, I was greeted with anger at the end of Sunday morning worship by a member of the church I was serving at the time. She was ticked off at me, because a guest she had brought with her, who had been a member of the same church several decades prior, left upset.

My first impulse was to wonder whether I had said something in the sermon that was responsible for this. (Occupational hazard, you know…lol!) Then she divulged that what had really upset this woman was the fact that we did not sing “The Doxology” (Praise God from whom all blessings flow) following the offering.

She had come to church expecting that every element of the service would be exactly the same as her last visit some 30 years back. To hear us sing an offering song to the tune of Edelweiss was simply not acceptable. At the time we had a rotation of 4 different offering songs, so “The Doxology” was still sung once a month. But, no! That was way too much change for her to bear. So, she was never coming back.

In a way she was like Mary Magdalene, wasn’t she? Mary’s last picture of Jesus was His dead body being laid in the tomb. Because she was expecting to see Him in that same state, she could not even conceive of encountering the Risen Lord.

Dear DWOD friend, please watch your expectations as you continue on the road to your destiny, so you never end up mistaking God for the Gardener, as Mary did.