After the Resurrection and Other Addresses

Jesus saith unto her, Touch Me not; for I am not j’ct ascended to My Father. — John xx. 17.

rXlHESE are the first words of the risen Christ;

-^ they strike one as being singularly cold and repellent at such a time. Their immediate purpose was to put a barrier between Himself and Mary’s clasping hands. It was not like Him to repress tokens of love, or to chill hearts. He had let a much worse woman than Mary Magdalene wash His feet with tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. At such a meeting, after such a parting, a little exuberance of demonstration might have been permitted, and forgiven even if it had been excessive.

The prohibition, strange as it sounds, was followed by a reason which sounds even more strangely: ^’ Touch Me not; for I have not yet ascended.” We might have expected that the first “not” would have been left out, “Touch Me; for I have not yet ascended,” — would have been intelligible, as suggesting that for a little time still such tokens of love were possible, ere the great separation came. Mary must have been as much bewiklered by the reason as she must have been chilled by the prohibition. And yet both were meant to lead her, with gentle, loving, and yet most firm hand, to recognise the new relation which had begun, and was henceforth to continue. They said to her, “old things have passed away, all things have become new,” and though thou hast ^’ known Christ after the flesh; yet now henceforth “thou shalt” know Him “so ‘’ no more.” They were not meant for Mary only. All the Resurrection histories have a forward look, and were intended to explain directly to the disciples, and more remotely to us, the essential nature of that new relationship into which His disciples have entered, and in which they now continue, to their Lord. These teachings, whether expressed in words or in the facts of our Lord’s appearances, are the lesson-book for the Church “till He come,” and if we understand the bearings of these we have enough to direct and to sustain us. We have, then, to deal with the three points here; the touch that was forbidden; the touch that is possible because Christ has ascended; and the lessons for to-day that come from both.

Then let us think of

I. The Touch that was Forbidden.

Now the prohibition which, as I have said, sounds at first repellent and cold, can only be understood if we grasp firmly and see clearly tlic mood and character of the person to whom it was addressed. And so I venture to turn to the circumstances that precede these words, not with any foolish idea of telling over again the story that John has told for all time, but only for the sake of bringing out what his narrative shows us of the disposition of Mary.

I would only make one remark in passing, which is, that if this episode is not the simple recounting of historical facts, the man that wrote it must have been one of the greatest imaginative geniuses that the world ever saw. If it is not history, I would match the story of Mary and the Lord on the resurrection morning, for subtlety of characterisation, for exquisite beauty, for reticence, for simplicity that goes straight to the heart, against anything that a Shakespeare or a Dante ever wrote.

But, passing altogether from that, let me just recall to you the points bearing on Mary’s mood. She had been to the grave once already, found it empty, rushed away to Peter and John with the lament which henceforward became a kind of cuckoonote on her lips, and filled her whole heart: “They have taken away the Lord; we know not where they have laid Him.” The two apostles ran to the tomb. She seems to have come, not with them, but after them. Manlike, they satisfied themselves i T<>:<’1 MK NOT

TImmi, wriu’ily ini|ui.ririil, nl’ llic vn.in hill, vvillillii’Mc I wo wlin had nnl loiiclird Inr liin.il nor liri ‘rolKIII MIO NOT

woikIci’, mIh; iiicrliiuiicii.ll y (iiiiim lii-nicH kmiihI, imhI

“lU’CM .IcMIIM HllUldili;’;” liol, COmillK. He Willi iJicrc; llOVV 11(1 IiImI CdMlc IIhIT mo (MIC luiMWit. Sim <I()<’H

It is the old name, never recurring after the resurrection except this one time. It is the old name, which she would fain have lifted across the gulf, and in it there speaks her recognition only of the Christ that had been, and not of the Christ that was then, and is to be in future. We must suppose what the evangelist does not record, because there was no need to tell it, that, in the sudden impulse of a woman’s heart, when all these smoky elements of which I have been speaking, listlessness and absorbing sorrow and hopelessness, had caught fire and blazed up into a flame, she made some eager movement to clasp Him, and make sure of Him.

Then came the beginning of the educational process, only explicable if you take all that I have been trying to sketch into account. “Touch Me not; for I have not yet ascended.” What was the touch that was forbidden? On that very morning other women were permitted to clasp His feet. On that very evening He said to the apostles, “handle Me and see.” A week after He said to the doubter, “Reach hither thy hand. Thrust it into My side.” Why were these permitted that, which to Mary was forbidden? For this simple reason, that that attempt to clasp Him was the expression of a love and a faith which unduly clung to the external form, and which desired to perpetuate the vanished relationship. And so our Lord began the educational process, then and there; and it is going on to this hour, to teach, us, as it taught her, that “the Spirit qnickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing,” and that the ascended Christ is to be grasped in another and a better fashion than with the chitch of clinging hands around the “blessed feet” that trod the plains of Galilee,

And were nailed
For our advantage, to the bitter cross.

Let me turn now in the second place to the consideration of

II. The Touch that is Possible by Reason of THE Ascension.

“Touch Me not; for I have not yet ascended,” that implies in all plainness and obviousness, “if I had ascended you might touch.” And it points us onwards and inwards to the true meaning of Christ’s ascension, to the true meaning of presence and absence in relation to Him, and to the true mode of union with Him, by the communion that is possible through faith and love, aspiration and obedience. Now let me begin by reminding you of what is a parallel, though an inadequate one, in the fact that, for us all, death and distance have a transforming, elevating effect upon our thoughts of those who, when they were beside us, did not seem to us so sweet, so great as now, when they are withdrawn from us. Though we entertain angels unawares many a time, it needs that they should wing their way into the native haven, before we see how white the wings and how fair the faces. Distance heightens the mountains, because it dwindles the knolls; and many a man that has lived amongst his fellows unrecognised contradicts all laws of perspective, and becomes greater as he recedes from us. Thus you will find that, as a matter of history, it was the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ that elevated the apostolic conceptions of Him, and that the flesh had been indeed, though a means of revelation, also a veil. It was so hard to believe that He with whom they ate and drank all the time that He went in and out amongst them was the Son of God. It was so hard to believe that He who was so kindly with His kind was yet something other than His kind. It needed the commentary of the open grave, and the glory-cloud hiding Him from their view, and of the Pentecost which was the issue of both, to teach these men who it was that had been walking amongst them. That resurrection and ascension have, in like manner, been the schoolmasters of the Church ever since, to teach it how to interpret the earthly life by the heavenly glory.

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