John 20:17-18, I Have Seen the Lord

17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for 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.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

 

Jesus’ words to Mary are a bit confusing as to their exact meaning. Has Mary fallen to the ground and grabbed Jesus’ feet? Has she buried her tearful face in his breast? Is Jesus commissioning her for mission? “Don’t stay here gaping at me, but go and tell my disciples that I am risen from the dead!” Or does Jesus have business with the Father, and he has yet to ascend into heaven having just risen from the dead?

Jesus’ directive to Mary can be interpreted in two ways that are not mutually exclusive. First, she need not cling to him because there will be more resurrection appearances before his final ascension. Second, Jesus will now have a new relationship with his followers that can be shared with followers in every age and physically touching Jesus is not necessary for a real, personal, intimate relationship with him. Whatever the true meaning, the relationship of Jesus to “my Father” and “my God” is available to all because he is now “your Father” and “your God.”

Mary obeys Jesus’ command and announces the good news to despondent women and men gathered inside Jerusalem’s walls: “I have seen Jesus and he is alive!” God has invaded history and turned death on its head. Never before has a person been resurrected from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is historical—it happened—personal—he came to Mary—and universal—Jesus is not bound by time and space. A new age has begun with the rising of a victorious Messiah.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.

John Updike, “Seven Stanzas of Easter”