<p>16:9<i> Now when he had risen from the dead early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons</i>-One would have expected that the Lord Jesus would have first of all appeared to His dear mother, after resurrecting. His mother could so easily have taken this as yet another snub, similar to the way in which He had rebuked her for not knowing He must be in His Father&rsquo;s house, how He addressed her at Cana as &ldquo;Woman&rdquo; and asked her what He had to do with her; how He told those who informed Him that His mother was outside that all those who heard God&rsquo;s word were His mothers; how He said that His mother wasn&rsquo;t blessed for suckling Him, but rather, blessed were all those who heard God&rsquo;s word. And the way He chose to appear to the other Mary rather than His own mother could have been taken by her as yet another snub. Yet these incidents weren&rsquo;t snubs. The Lord loved His mother, with a depth of passion and emotion that maybe we and she will never know. Yet He wanted the best for her spiritually. He wanted her to relate to Him for who He really was, not for who she perceived Him to be. It must have so hurt the Lord to work with her in this way. And so it is with His workings with us, as He seeks to bring us to know Him in truth. It must be hard for Him to bring distress into our lives. Yet with His dear mother, it worked. For the next we read of her, she is meeting with the rest of the ecclesia in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14), and, according to how we read Revelation 12, the Lord Himself saw her as clothed with the sun in glory, responsible for the birth of Himself as the man child, who would bring the Kingdom of God on earth. She made it in the end.</p><p>Mary Magdalene was the least qualified to be a witness. Women's testimony was not accepted in the Roman world; and Mary had previously been seriously 'demon possessed', probably referring to mental illness. And in addition to that she had worked as a prostitute. Yet she was the one chosen by the Lord as His star witness. We should not therefore worry about our own apparent inadequacy as witnesses. The Lord delights to use our inadequacies in this work of witness.</p><p>Mary Magdalene is always noted first in the appearance lists in the gospels. It is unusual that the first appearance would involve women as in that culture their role as witnesses would not be well accepted. It is a sign of the veracity of the account, because if an ancient were to create such a story he would never have it start with women. But inspiration disregards this. The Lord so wanted those women to be His leading witnesses. Joachim Jeremias quotes extensively from Jewish sources to show that &ldquo;a woman had no right to bear witness, because it was concluded from Gen. 18:15 that she was a liar&rdquo;. And Josephus (<i>Antiquities Of The Jews</i>&nbsp;4.219) concurs: &ldquo;Let not the testimony of women be admitted because of the levity and boldness of their sex&rdquo;. And so it should not surprise us that He chooses today the most unlikely of witnesses, indeed, those who somehow shock and arrest the attention of others. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>