Lifted Up and Set in Motion

This week in Chapel we had the first of two different but interrelated stories of the Resurrection from the 20th Chapter of John’s Gospel. One concerns the encounter between Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ (John 20. 11-18); the other, to Jesus appearing behind closed doors to the disciples and then again to Thomas (John 20.19-29). The two stories speak to the question of epistemology, to the ways of knowing that belong to our humanity.

 

The first story is quite moving and touching (if you will pardon the irony since in the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, she is told, “Touch me not”!). Mary Magdalene comes seeking the body of Christ only to discover, first, the empty tomb, and then Jesus himself whom she doesn’t recognise because she assumes he is dead. She has come not just in perplexity and confusion but in grief and sorrow. Yet she has come with a holy and humane purpose: to honour and respect the body of the deceased. There is something universal and profoundly human about that sensibility. It already suggests that we are more though not less than our bodies, a sense that death does not completely define our humanity.

 

In ancient Greece, Anaxagoras argued that it was not the material elements of earth, water, air, and fire in various combinations, material causality, as it were, that provide an ultimate understanding of reality but mind, what he called nous. As Aristotle famously said about him, “he was like a sober man in the company of drunks.” I often think of that remark in relation to these stories of the Resurrection in John’s Gospel. How does Mary come to know the Risen Christ? It happens through her encounter seeking one thing and finding another and being changed by that encounter. She mistakes Jesus for the gardener and asks him where you have laid him so that she can take him away and do the burial honours. Jesus simply says her name: “Mary”.

 

She turns and says, “Rabboni”, meaning master or teacher. Jesus first says to her: “Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” But then he bids her “go to my brethren, and say unto them, I am ascending to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”

 

Theology consorts with images to bring us to understanding and life. Our challenge is always to attend thoughtfully to the images in order to enter into their meaning and understanding. We are being awakened to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human through our being opened to the truth and life of God, even in the face of our uncertainties and sorrows. So what does Jesus mean? By telling her not to touch, he is really saying don’t cling to me, don’t hold onto the things of the past or just to the things of the body. He is lifting her up into a greater understanding of who he truly is: the Son of the Father. Here Resurrection is immediately connected to the Ascension, to what the Fathers of the early Church called “the exaltation of our humanity”.

 

The idea is that in Christ’s Ascension to his Father we are lifted up to the truth and dignity of our humanity with God as Trinity. It is not the negation or denial of the tangible body but a strong reminder not to seek to limit God to the material world. There is mind and spirit at work in all of this that speaks beyond the material aspects of our being. They are lifted up into an understanding of ourselves as spiritual beings, mind and body.

 

But he sets her in motion as well to the other disciples. As the Fathers of the early Church also note, Mary Magdalene is Apostle Apostolorum, an Apostle to the Apostles. Christ’s words here are particularly significant; he is actually quoting another story from the Hebrew Scriptures, the story of Ruth. The story of Mary Magdalene coming in grief and sorrow complements the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi. Both are in grief and sorrow. Naomi has lost her husband and her sons, one of whom was the husband of Ruth the Moabitess. They are both in grief and mourning. Naomi decides to return to her homeland in Bethlehem. Ruth decides to go with her and says “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God”. These are the words that Christ uses in setting Mary in motion to the disciples.

 

In being lifted up and set in motion, there is a wonderful transformation in Mary not unlike what we saw in Luke’s Gospel about the Road to Emmaus. Mary comes in grief and sorrow but leaves in joy and gladness. Even more, she learns to know Christ not simply in a material and physical way but as the risen and ascended Lord in whom we are lifted up and gathered to God and to service towards one another. She is meant to know Christ in the radical truth of his relation to the Father and to discover the truth of herself as lifted up into that understanding. Lovely.

 

The scene as depicted by Fra Angelico (1442/44) adds an important detail that is emphasized in the second story from this chapter of John’s Gospel. In the fresco, Jesus is depicted in a garden as a gardener but his feet and hands bear the marks of the crucifixion, a testament to the reality of the body and his Passion. The Passion is not eclipsed in the Resurrection. The Resurrection makes visible what is hidden in the Passion, the essential life of God upon which all life ultimately depends, the divine life which alone makes something good out of human evil and human limitations.

 

And it sets us in motion. Mary came in grief and sorrow; she leaves in joy and gladness to convey the good news to the others. She has been lifted up into a new understanding but only through the encounter and dialogue with Jesus. No longer clinging to the body but to nous, an understanding of Christ’s redemption and restoration of our humanity and creation.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English and ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy