John 20:18 | A Weeping Woman Becomes a Messenger

John 20:18 (World English Bible) is short, but it carries a major turning point in John’s resurrection story. This is the first resurrection testimony in John’s Gospel. The first time the good news moves from a private encounter in the garden into the gathered community of disciples.

In this episode of Formation to Transformation: A Worship Devotional, we watch Mary Magdalene become the first witness to the risen Jesus. Just moments earlier she is outside the tomb weeping, disoriented by grief, trying to make sense of what cannot be fixed. Then Jesus speaks her name. Recognition breaks through the fog. And John gives you the simplest, most powerful fruit of that encounter: she came, and she told.

Mary doesn’t deliver a polished speech. She doesn’t present a perfect theological outline. She simply carries what she has been given. “She had seen the Lord.” In Scripture, seeing is not only eyesight. It is recognition. Encounter. The kind of knowing that changes what you believe is real. And the resurrection is not just a doctrine here. It becomes an announcement that death does not get the final word, the thief does not get the final word, and the Shepherd is not absent.

This verse also completes the shepherd arc we’ve been tracing through Psalm 23 and John 10. The Shepherd gathers. The Shepherd leads out. The Shepherd does not only restore individuals, he reunites scattered people. Jesus sends Mary toward the flock, and her testimony becomes the first voice of hope returning to a community that has been fractured by fear and failure.

John also includes a detail that matters for discipleship: Mary tells them what Jesus “had said” to her. She carries words. She carries the voice of Jesus into the community. That takes us straight back to John 10, where Jesus says his sheep hear his voice. Mary hears, recognizes, and then brings that voice to others. That is worship becoming witness. Formation becoming transformation.

If you feel disqualified, John 20:18 is a steady word. The first resurrection witness is not the strongest disciple on his best day. It is the one who was still crying. Jesus forms people as he calls them, and he calls them as he forms them.