John 20:17

‘TOUCH ME NOT’

Jesus saith unto her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father.

John 20:17

This is the second word spoken by our Lord after His Resurrection; and it was spoken to the simple womanly penitent. His first word touched her heart, His second informed her spirit.

I. The action of the Magdalen.—The action of the Magdalen in stretching out her hand to touch our Lord proved that she never supposed that He would be further removed from her than He was in His natural body. There was the Christian woman’s faithful, loving, pious act. Is it your first impulse to get the precious possession of your risen Lord? While you know more distinctly than ever Mary knew that Christ your Lord was dead and is alive, do you honestly think that you find it in your heart to long to touch Him? Do you care as she did to be near Him? True, He may be fixed in your creed, but that dogma may be only a dry abstraction, not a living person, perfect Man and perfect God, as He was to her?

II. The rebuke.—Let us go a step further. The word was instant—‘Touch Me not.’ Now, do you think that by that word He meant in any way that He was separate from her? Was it a warning, do you think, to His redeemed, that He was no more to be approached as near, that He was retiring into the nature which He had from all eternity, pure Godhead, and had left behind Him in the grave His manhood, emptied Himself of His human fellowship and kinship with us? Not at all. When He bade Mary touch Him not, He only negatived her impulsive love, and corrected it by a higher knowledge of a more perfect blessing which should after a brief interval of patience be hers. He needed that body as an instrument for our atonement and sacrifice in death upon the Cross; He needs that body now to be an instrument of uniting man with God. Mary should touch Him, Mary should receive, embrace, possess Him, but not in the only way in which she had kissed His feet and washed them with her tears and wiped them with the natural drapery of her hair, but she should touch Him and possess Him in a better way. So, to turn again to ourselves, it is better far to be all impulsive and eager in our desire to touch our Lord with loving haste than to be cold and indifferent whether we touch Him one way or the other. We cannot all be theologians, but we can all be seekers after Christ and lovers of Christ, and He, the Divine Master, Who wills that our knowledge be perfected, will meanwhile, till that perfection come, never break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. He will accept our devotion, be we women or men, even if it be for a time uneducated; He will justify that devotion by the plea that He used Himself, ‘She hath done what she could.’

III. ‘Not yet ascended.’—It is clear from these words that the union of any individual man with Christ is the result of the Ascension. The period of forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension was a transitional state, not intended to last, an intermediate condition of life, an interval that is too subtle to be defined. The natural body of Christ—that is, the body that was so liable to suffering and death—was extinct when He said these words. It had no place, and has no place on earth, or in hades, or in heaven. The natural body was and is extinct. The glorified body was not perfect when He spoke with Mary. He waited till the Ascension for the endowment of power, sent forth by the Holy Spirit, charged with all the virtues of His manhood, the life, sacrifice, and atoning death of the Redeemer. And this authority given to the ascended and glorified Lord to send forth the Holy Ghost seemed to have been ordered in the eternal counsels of God to be the Son’s reward, to be the glory to ensue after Christ had perfectly fulfilled His mission. It is the Holy Ghost Who is entrusted with the inward spiritual power of uniting man, in whom He indwells, with Christ. He conveys to the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, every gift and grace which Jesus has authority to give.

So this is the sum of Christ’s teaching on the effect of His Resurrection upon us. Christ died for all the world, but the fruits of that death and the vital power of His Resurrection are to be communicated singly to every one of us by a personal union, to every one of us who will accept Him. And this union with Christ is effected by the Holy Ghost.

—Archdeacon Furse.

Illustration

‘It is right we should show forth the beauty of worship, that we should give to God the best we have, that our singing, our adornment should be of the costliest and best; but we must beware lest we mistake the two things, lest we permit a fondness for music, a love of art, a devotion to culture to take the place of the true spiritual communion with our Lord—a caution lest we lose, as it were, in a beautiful many-tinted wreath, the close communion with our risen Lord, lest our natural likings should draw down the actings of our enfranchised spirits.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

REVERENCE FOR THE SUPERNATURAL

Once again Mary hears His voice calling her by name, and sees Him at her side, and she reaches forth her hand with the cry, ‘Rabboni! Master!’ But she is met by words which sound hard and strange, and almost like a reproof: ‘Touch Me not.’

I. What did our Blessed Lord mean?—Three main interpretations have been given, coming respectively from St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory, and St. Augustine; either, or all, of which may be true.

(a) The words were spoken to check any mistaken view of the Risen Saviour.

(b) The words indicated that she was to lose not a moment in executing an unique and glorious errand.

(c) The words were spoken to lift her from earthly things and ideas to something higher and more real.

II. Does He repel our advances?—No! He is stirring impulse into resolution. ‘God is very greatly to be feared in the council of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are round about Him.’ He is not the Lord and Master, as He was before—‘Rabboni’ must give place to ‘Jesus, my God.’ Easter-time is just one of those festivals when we are brought face to face with the supernatural. It is the limit of the world of sense, from which we stand and look over the interminable vista of the supernatural—the resurrection of the body, life from the dead, victory over the grave. Sometimes we may think we could match Christ’s self-denial; that we could rival His teaching in some system of morality; that we could equal His philanthropy; that we could surpass His Plan. But on Easter Day He stands back from us. None of our greatest heroes or philanthropists have been crucified, and risen again on the third day; no human spell can give life to a dead body, no imagination picture more than the immortality of the soul.

III. On Easter Day Christ is clothed with a supernatural light.—His words, ‘Touch Me not,’ claim a new homage beyond His other words of power: ‘Be still, then, and know that I am God.’ A gathering spirit of reverence should stretch out from the Easter Festival and flood our religious life with light. This should be so with—

(a) The Holy Word of God.

(b) The Holy Mysteries.

(c) The Church, Her Creeds and Teaching.

The Faith is not of men, it comes from God Himself. Thus, on this Festival, Reverence before the Supernatural stands out the one great lesson for us to lay to heart.

—Rev. Canon Newbolt.

Illustration

‘Whatever it was that Mary did—whatever that action was meant to express and to convey—that may we now do and express, seeing that His own appointed time for it is already come; and that He has “ascended to the Father.” For, remember, that to Christ’s own feeling the circumstance of the invisibility of His Presence would make no difference. I often think that it may be so with the spirits of the departed. To them, death may make no separation at all. To us, indeed—even if we believe that they are still about us—still the fact that we cannot see them, must make a great change. But, to them, if they are still about our path, and about our bed, there will be no change, in this respect, at all,—not a shadow of separation in any sense. Certainly, our Lord feels just as much present with His people now as when His bodily eye saw them, and His natural voice spoke to them. Therefore to Him it is just the same, now, as if anybody really “touched” Him. But to us, it is an exercise of faith to realise that. But to Him there is no alteration at all, since He was upon the earth.’