Mary turns around, sensing someone behind her, and sees a man.
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. But she did not recognize that it was Jesus.
John 20:14
He asks her a question:
Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?
She, thinking He was the gardener of the garden where the tomb stood, answers:
Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.
John 20:15
The sentence is striking. Mary is offering to carry a corpse alone, through a city full of Roman soldiers and hostile Jewish authorities, with no idea where she would even take it.
It is the offer of a woman who has stopped calculating.
Jesus says to her one word.
Mary.
John 20:16
Her name, spoken in Aramaic: Miriam. The intimate form her mother would have used, warmer than the formal Greek a stranger would have addressed her by.
And she turns. The text says she turns again; she was already looking at Him, but now she truly sees Him.
She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, 'Rabboni!' (which means 'Teacher').
It is the last time in John's Gospel that anyone calls Him by that title. Her title as a disciple, spoken in Aramaic, in the instant the Teacher's return is confirmed.
Mary Magdalene becomes, in that instant, the first witness of the resurrection.