Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph were the first to discover the empty tomb, but that didn’t immediately equate for them into our present understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. While they understood from Lazarus’ example that mortal life might be restored to one who had died, it was difficult for them to believe that it could be restored to one whose body had been so battered and drained of its life-fluids. And if by some miracle it had, He would surely have fallen back into the hands of His enemies because of the guard at the tomb. For as the first-born from the dead and the first fruits of those who sleep in the grave, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead—as opposed to the resuscitations they had seen—was something entirely new. Not understanding the nature of the spiritual body to which His natural body that was sown in death had been raised, and in spite of the angelic visions to the contrary, they therefore concluded His body must have been removed from the tomb by someone; Joh 20:2. Thus, later that morning, when they were also the first to meet the risen Savior, Mary Magdalene didn’t at first recognize Him. Like most today, she assumed that the physical body in which she had come to know Him after the flesh was the real Him, not understanding that the real Him is spiritual, not physical. To be sure, Christ may manifest Himself with a physical body, as He did to the two Marys, but the spiritual body to which He was resurrected, no longer subject to corruption so as never to die again, transcends time and space and is as much different and greater than our present physical bodies as a butterfly is from the lowly worm from whose chrysalis it emerged. We have only barely begun to understand the nature of that spiritual body, and our present conception of it is as opaque as the butterfly must be to a worm; cf. 1Co 13:12, 2:9, 15:35-44. Only through the eyes of faith, and when Jesus had called her by name, did Mary Magdalene realize it was really Him who was speaking to her, though His form was very different from how she previously had known him and from what she had expected.
After recognizing Him, Scripture records two things of first importance that Jesus immediately spoke of to the two Marys at His first resurrection appearance: 1) that He would proceed before His many disciples into Galilee as planned to appear to them so as to establish the fact of the resurrection (see Mat 28:10; cf. Mat 26:32, 28:7,16, 1Co 15:6), and 2) of His ascension to the Father (Joh 20:17). This latter was important because His disciples had conceived of His kingdom only in a physical sense, supposing His reign must include His physical presence. For they could not yet understand how infinitely more powerful His reign would be through His personal presence to each of His followers through His Spirit that He would pour out upon them from heaven after His ascension to reign at the right hand of God. Hence Jesus’ words to the women to stop clinging to Him after the flesh was important for all the disciples: they must come to know Him as He is, according to the Spirit, and no longer in the very limited sense of the flesh after which they had come to know Him.
To whom did Jesus tell Mary to go and tell about His ascension? See Joh 20:17; cf. Mat 28:10. Is there any significance to Him specifying His brethren, as opposed to His disciples or followers or those who had believed in Him? Did His resurrection from a dead, natural body to an incorruptible one so separate Him from men on earth that they were no longer His brethren? What does that one word communicate about Him still being fully man even in His glorified, resurrection body? What does that one word also communicate about the hope we have that through death we can attain to that same glorified, resurrected state, precisely because we are His brethren? Cf. 1Co 15:36-38, Heb 2:5-12. Why is it significant that Jesus referred to His followers as His brethren even after they had fled and forsaken Him at His arrest? See Heb 2:11 and note[1]. In His parables Jesus’ disciples are depicted as slaves or servants, and just before His death He referred to them as friends (Luk 12:42-43, Joh 15:8,14-15); what is the significance that here, after His resurrection, after He had tasted death as a man, that Jesus specifically refers to them as His brethren? See again Heb 2:9-12 and think: was it possible for us to receive our adoption as sons to do the will of the Father as Jesus exemplified apart from His death and resurrection? Cf. Mat 12:50, Rom 8:15-17. Is it possible that Jesus perhaps also especially meant to include His brethren after the flesh, James, and Joseph, and Simon and Judas (Mat 13:55), who had yet to come to believe in Him (Joh 7:5), but who did in fact come to believe in Him very shortly after His resurrection? Cf. Act 1:14, 1Co 15:7.
[1] “It is not in the power of the sins of our infirmity to unbrother us”, Bishop Hall, as quoted in Jamieson-Fausett-Brown.