Christ's Manifestation to Mary Magdalene
“Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” — John, xx. 17.
This was the first appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection. In sundry places and at divers times during the ensuing forty days he appeared to the different disciples, showed himself openly to them when they were assembled for worship, and at other times; but this was the first occasion of his being seen by any of his followers. The whole occurrence is very full of comfort, and we, who are poor weary pilgrims through this wilderness, need some words of comfort every now and then, to cheer us on our way. May the Holy Spirit sweetly assist us in addressing you now on the things of Christ, and may your hearts burn within you by the way.
I. First, IT IS PECULIARLY ENCOURAGING TO REMEMBER THAT THE FIRST PERSON TO WHOM JeSUS ChRIST APPEARED AFTER HIS
RESURRECTION WAS Mary Magdalene. Romauists will have it that Jesus Christ first of all appeared to the Virgin Mary, his mother, and they have invented some curious stories in order to give her this peculiar honor. Now this shows that in their opinion there was a peculiar honor conferred upon the person who first beheld the risen Saviour, and I need not say that their wishing to say it was the Virgin Mary is only just another instance of their perverting the truth. Mary Magdalene was the first who saw the Saviour after his resurrection; at least, if the guards saw him when they fled far away, they were not his disciples, and I mean to say that she was the first of the disciples who had the honor of seeing him when he rose from the dead. It was a woman, then, that first saw the risen Saviour. It was a woman that was first in the transgression; it must be a woman who shall first behold Jesus Christ when he rose from the dead. If there be — and there certainly is — some degree of opprobrium connected with Avomanhood, because Eve first of all touched the fruit, there is a far greater degree of glory now connected with it, because Mary Magdalene first of all beheld the Saviour at the tomb. Not only was it a woman, but it was a sinner — a woman out of whom had been cast seven devils. Beside all that is said, I am inclined to think that there were other devils in Mary Magdalene besides those that made her a demoniac. Luther used to say of her, “So many devils, so many sins.” She had been a sinner once, and then she became a demoniac, and afterwards became a saint. How strange it was that Jesus should appear to her! What, give the” most honor to her who had the most of sin! Sweet thought! Then if “I the chief of sinners am,” if I have an interest in the blood of Christ, there is no reason why I should not climb to the greatest heights of fellowship, and enjoy the best of the good things which the Lord has prepared for them that love him. When Jesus takes a sinner to himself, his pardon is so complete — so totally does he overlook all previous sin — that that chief of sinners, although he may not be as great a saint as th very chief of the apostles, who did most grievously rebel, so that he only obtained mercy because he did it ignorantly in unbelief, may yet be the most highly-favored of the servants of the Lord, and may have revelations made to him above measure. Mary Magdalene should comfort you who, after years of sin, have lately found a Saviour. Oh! think not that those years that you have spent in folly, though they must ever make you weep, will be the means of robbing you of his friendship. Oh! no, he will restore to you the hours the locusts have eaten, and he will not take away from you the pleasure of enjoying the bliss of God on earth, and certainly he will not diminish your glorious happiness when you shall stand before the throne.
Methinks, however, that Mary was selected to see Christ first, because she loved Jesus most. John loved Jesus much, but Mary loved him better; John went away when he saw an empty sepulchre, but Mary stood without and wept. Love, you know, is a keen-eyed thing. They say love is blind. In one sense it is true; but there never were such good eyes as those which Love can carry in its head. Love will look after Jesus, and discover him where none else can. If I set the unloving heart to read a chapter, it finds no Jesus there; but if I set a Hawker to read that same portion of Scripture, he finds the name of Jesus from beginning to end. If I set a critical scholar to read a Psalm, he sees no Messiah there; but if I set an enthusiastic lover of the Saviour to read it, he sees him, if not in every verse, still here and there glimpses of his glory. Oh! if you want to see Jesus, and have sweet revelations of his glory, you must love him: methinks you must add to that — you must weep for him much, you must seek him diligently, seek him in the darkness and the twilight, seek him when the sun is risen, seek him at the tomb before the stone is rolled away; you must seek him when you behold that the stone is gone; you must seek him in the hollow tomb; you must seek him in the garden; you must seek him in life; you must seek him in death; and then, the more diligent you are in seeking, the more probability that Christ will manifest himself to you, and you shall rejoice on finding him. Mary was one of those who went forth bearing precious seed; she went forth weeping, but she returned to the disciples rejoicing, bringing her sheaves with her, for she had a good message for them. She had sown in tears when she went to seek her Lord, but she wept with joy when she found him in the garden. Happy was that woman who found Jesus and believed; truly she might rejoice in him, for she was highly favored among woman. You see, then, that there is much sweetness, more than I can tell you, in the thought that Mary Magdalene was the first person who was chosen to see the Lord Jesus Christ.
II. We will notice, secondly, some reasons for the prohibition GIVEN IN the text. Why was it that Jesus said, “Touch me not 1” And why was it that he gave this very strange reason — “For I am not yet ascended to my Father ‘?’* There seems to me to be very great comfort in this; I know it has comforted me if I understand it aright. When Mary Magdalene saw her Master, and had called him Rabboni, her next impulse was to cast herself upon him and embrace him. But Jesus Christ said, “No; embrace me not” — for that is the fuller meaning of the word — “I have got something for you to do, I cannot allow you to stop to do that; there will be plenty of time to do that another day. I must send you to my disciples with a message; therefore, cling not to me. The strengthening of my disciples is preferable even to the embracing of your Lord. Cling not to me, for I am not yet ascended.” It strikes me that Mary was half afraid that her Master would go directly; and she thought, “That is him — I know his voice. But he will go; I know he will vanish; the Spirit of God will take him away.” She thought just as Obadiah did of Elijah. “And when Obadiah saw him, he said. Go tell the king, behold, Elijah is here. And he said. Not so, my lord; what, have I sinned that thou wouldst deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab 1” So Mary thought, “Oh! he will be gone.” And she thought, “But I will hold him fist. This may be my only opportunity; I will hold him fest.” But he said, “I am not going; I shall be here a little time longer; there will be time enough for embraces — time enough for touching me. The first thing I want you to do is to go to my disciples, and tell them that I am about to ascend to heaven.” If you ask me, “Why should Jesus tell her that 1” Let me suppose some of you have said, “I will have an hour of contemplation; I will cast myself upon my knees; I will open the Word of God; I will seek the Spirit to rest upon me; and I will hope that I shall be able to see Jesus, and to clasp him in my arms.” A friend has called the day before, and says that he has an engagement for you. Perhaps you are called to attend a prayer-meeting, or to visit the sick, or to see some inquirer, or to do something for the Lord’s cause, and you say, “There now; I expected to have had that evening for contemplation. Oh, I wish I had not so much to do with the church, I see that it robs me of my quiet hours. I love those sweet seasons of retirement when I can touch the Saviour, and embrace him to my heart. Why is it that I am to go out and feed the flock, and not find time for fellowship and communion so long and frequent as I desire ‘?” Oh! when you think that, think you hear your Master saying,” Embrace me not, for there is time in heaven for that. Go thou to my brethren, and tell them some sweet words of con-Christ’s manifestation to mary maodalene. 417
solation; for while it is sweet for you to embrace me, it is sweeter to me for thee to go and embrace my poor brother, and show him the way to the kingdom.” God forbid that we should say one word against the high joy of contemplation; it is a sweet thing. But sometimes work is better than worship, or rather, work is worship in its best form. Sometimes it is a better service to go to see the sick than to be at home on your knees. Sometimes it is a more devout serving of God to be busy for the church, even in what seem to be temporal matters, than to be seated at home, like Mary of old, at the feet of the Saviour, listening to his words, and doing nothing. I believe Martha is sometimes a great deal better than Mary. If Mary had always sat at the Saviour’s feet, she would have deserved no commendation. It was well for Mary that she sat there then, for it was a proper occasion; but if she had sat there always, and left Martha to attend to the serving, then it would have been an abuse of her privilege. There are times when the Master must say, “Embrace me not, but go to my brethren, and tell them that I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
And now, having just noticed these incidents on the surface of our text, which I think after all are full of comfort — if not to you they certainly have been to me — I will now endeavor to dilate upon some of the leading heads of the subject.
1. Jesus says, “Go and tell my brethren.” Now it is a remarkable fact that the higher Jesus Christ gets in glory the more sweet are his expressions of love. You know when he was on earth he said, “Henceforth, I call you not servants, but friends.” But he never called them “brethren “until after he had risen from the dead.” Friends” he called them when he was a suffering man; and I dare say some of them thought, “If he should rise from the dead he will be ashamed of us poor fishermen. He called us friends when he was in his poverty, will he not return to that word ’ servants ’ when he rises in majesty from the tomb ]” No; when we should have expected Christ to relax his love, when he had risen in dignity, it was just the reverse. The higher his dignity, the lower his condescension. “Go and tell my brethren’’ And there is another thing about that sweet word “brethren.”
The disciples were never in a more sinful condition than they were a this very time; or rather they had never so grossly sinned as just before the Saviour’s resurrection. Before the Saviour died they were with him every day; they were, all of them, in a measure faithful, never forsook their Master, never denied him, that I hear of, till he came to die. And yet all the time they were true and faithful he never called them any thing better than friends; he never called them “brethren.” You would have thought that when they ran away from him, that when three of them slept in the garden during his agony, when all forsook him and fled, and when Peter especially denied him, the Saviour would have said, “No, I called you friends when you were faithful, I will now see whether I can stretch a point, even to call you servants.” But we see the blacker their sin, the stronger his love; the more defiled they were, the more sweetly did he talk to them. He said to them, in deeds though not in words, “Henceforth, I call you not friends, for a friend hath no relation to his friend; but I call you brethren, for my Father is your Father, and my God is your God.” Now carry those two sweet thoughts away with you, for sweet they are if the Spirit leads you into them — that the higher the Saviour gets the more free is he in the expression of his love; and that other thought, that the farther the disciples ran away from their Master, the more lovingly did he call them back again. Marvellous and strange, but nevertheless true. Who cannot derive comfort from such a thought as thisl I know, ye feeble followers of Jesus, ye have sometimes thought that he loved his people when he was on earth, but that now he reigns exalted on high, he has forgotten such of them as you. Oh, be assured, inasmuch as he reached the summit of his glory he doth now manifest the summit of his love. The more he is exalted the more doth he manifest himself.
2. And I know again, you are saying that you have so greatly sinned that you cannot expect him to love you. Do again appropriate this thought, that the sweetest promises in the Bible are for the very people that deserve them the least. There are promises for those who follow close to their Saviour, and very sweet ones too: but some of the tenderest promises in the Word of God are for those who have wandered away the most. Take, for instance, that sweet word, “He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.” A Christian is nothing better than a smoking flax. It is very likely, through simple neglect, that the believer does not burn brightly; and if he is a bruised reed, the bruise is the effect of some great backsliding. There is the sweet word in the promise, “He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed.” Blessed Jesus, when we should have thought that our sins would cause thee to speak harshly, we fmd that thou hast the softest words for those who have most erred; and that our sins, that would seem to make thee angry, seem to make thee only to invite us back again with sweeter words than to those who have not erred so much as ourselves.
3 Now note here again — every time Jesus Christ says any thing to his brethren, it is always something that requires faith on their part. Why did he not say, “Go and tell my brethren I am risen V Because they did not want any faith for that. He was risen; that was a fact that they could discover by their eye-sight, and some of them by their touch.” No,” says he, “I will only make large drafts upon my peoples’ faith. Go and tell them that I am about to ascend. Do not tell them I am risen; there will be nothing for their faith to lay hold of. Tell them that I ascend; that is something for them to believe,” Now do you know this, Christian? The more thou hast of the manifest presence of Christ the more faith do you require. Have you not often asked to have a promise brought home to your heart by the special influences of the Spirit ‘? Now, recollect, the more promises you have, the more faith you will require. The words of Christ demand faith at our hands. A manifestation from Christ is as truly a demand upon our faith as when he hides his face from us. When he hides his face he requires us to believe, even when he says nothing; but when he speaks, he requires us to believe something that he says. The more manifestations, the more your need of faith. “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” Oh, Luther was right when he said that all the pith of divinity lay in the pronouns — “my Father and your Father.”” He is * my Father ’ by eternal generation. ‘I was begotten of my
Father from before all worlds.’ He is ’ our Father ’ by regeneration. He hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He is ’ my Father,’ as I am the Head of the Church, — man and God, Christ — I call him Father in my Christhood, and I stand as your representative and say it; and inasmuch as you are all gathered up in me, he is your Father too — my Father and your Father.” How sweet the word Father! He is your Father because he has the deepest love to protect you; and if you doubt whether his power is equal to his love hear what Jesus says — “I am going to my God and to your God.” And inasmuch as God is omnipotent, and the Father is love, you have all the love you want, and all the power equal to that love. It seems sweet to hear Christ calling his Father God. As he was a man the Father was his God; as he was Christ he calls the Father God over him — “My Father is greater than I,” speaking as a man; God being greater than a Mediator. “As man I worship him as you worship him; as man I look up to him as my Father the same as you do. He is my Father as he is your Father.”
4. This leads us to make only one other remark — How beautifully the Saviour refers to the believers union with himself. The whole Bible, when it is rightly understood, points to union with Christ, and this sweet verse is just full of it. Christ and his people have united interests. When Christ calls God his Father, we may call God “our Father,” too. In his property we have a joint interest; he is heir of all things, and we are joint-heirs with him. In relationship Christ and his people are united. His brethren are our brethren; his Father is our Father. Even in service, as Christ was man, as he was the servant of God for our sakes, so the Master whom he served is the Master whom we serve, and we together take the same service upon ourselves, believing that we together shall have the same kingdom conferred upon us, and shall reign with him — “Tell my brethren that I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.”
An old divine calls Mary Magdalene apostolorum apostola, that is, the greatest apostle of the apostles; for she was sent to be the apostle to the apostles. An apostle is one sent, and Mary Magdalene was sent to those whom afterwards Christ sent to the ends of the earth. So may a poor humble woman be an apostle to one who shall afterwards be a great divine. Let us hear what this great apostle says to us. Once more, she does not tell us that Jesus Christ is about to ascend; she tells us that he has ascended; and whenever we draw around the table of our Lord, let us derive sweet influence from the fact that Jesus Christ has ascended. He has ascended — then he ascended as a Conqueror, leading captivity captive. Now he has ascended — then he ascended as a Forerunner for us, entering within the veil. He has ascended — then he has ascended as one to make preparation — “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go away I will come again to receive you to myself.” He has gone as an Intercessor, there he sits and there he stands for ever interceding before the throne of God for us, his children, his friends, his brethren. Oh that we may now put our unfeigned and constant trust in him who died, putting equal trust in him that rose again, making this our glory, both in his dying and in his rising, that he hath ascended up on high, and sitteth at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Oh that those who are dead in sin were quickened by God that they might know something of the preciousness of having a Father in heaven, the same Father that Jesus Christ had! Sinner, I pray the Lord to make thee believe in Jesus Christ; and if thou hast sinned with Mary Magdalene, may he help thee to believe with her, that thou mayest share in her sweet manifestations, and have some sweet message some day to tell to the rest of the brethren.