17 Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ John 20: 17 (NRSV)
17 “Don’t touch me,” he cautioned, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them that I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” (The Living Bible)
We are now in Easter season and looking at experiences that convinced the early followers of Jesus that he had indeed risen. The first reported sighting is by Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb. Others have arrived and found an empty tomb with no body. They are being told that Jesus is risen, resurrected, but they have no body as with other resurrections in the Bible and so stories are circulating but not really understood. Meanwhile, back at the tomb, Mary Magdalene has lingered, perhaps immobilized by her grief. She is just needing to take a deep breath. After my husband’s death I just wanted to sit and be quiet and still. A man comes to Mary from behind and she assumes it is the gardener and asks him where the body is. He calls her name and she knows it is Jesus, risen!
If it were me, I would have wanted to turn and hug him. Jesus though says something that is not in the other gospels. “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” I have often pondered this scene. I do not think Jesus is talking about “ascending” as we will talk about it in 40 days when he returns to his original glory with the Father. Could it be that Jesus is cautioning Mary that she cannot “hold on” to the Jesus she knew from the past but must now learn to relate to him as the risen Savior? He is signaling a new understanding of what we call “the Godhead.”
Faith is in a transitional phase these next days. We are having to grow from understanding Jesus as God incarnate who took on humanity from infancy through death. He walked and talked with us as a human but then died and soon would not be visible. We have learned of him as he healed the sick or calmed storms or raised the dead when confronted with those cases. We must not hold on to these ideas but allow them to grow and breath to fit the reality of our lives today.
Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves right now is how we “hold on” to Jesus. I visited the USA for a month when I was younger because we brought my mother-in-law here for medical reasons. We stayed with my parents for that month and suddenly I was their daughter, a new wife, and a new mother. I had trouble juggling the roles. I was a daughter. I was a wife. And I was a mother. I had grown into a new identity. Jesus was God. Jesus was human. And Jesus now is Savior. All of that roles are together in the Trinity that we worship. We call it a mystery we cannot explain very well but it is a mystery we embrace. Let us thank God today that he understands our humanness but that he also is a Savior for our times of weakness and our sinfulness. May we not hold on too tightly to who Jesus was and allow him to become more in our lives. Thank you, Lord.
On the Way to Wonder 