Noli me tangere: The Risen Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden the first Easter dawn. Fra Angelico, Florence, San Marco
EASTER GOSPEL TEXT: Easter Day (John 20:1-18)
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because 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.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
The Bible texts of the Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
COMMENTARY by the Rev. Raymond Webster
These comments on the Easter Gospel above are from my Easter Sermon in 2010. I want to wish you a very happy Easter.
On Easter Day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. On a day in our history, Jesus died on the cross, in love for us. He was buried and on the third day rose. The heart of the Christian faith and hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we will be with him in the new life in heaven.
With him. I have printed above, as something of an Easter present, a photo of the fresco of the today’s Easter Gospel, painted in the 1400s by Fra Angelico, in Florence, Italy. Fra or Brother Angelico was a Dominican friar. This is one of an extraordinary series of frescoes of scenes of the story of Jesus he painted in a Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. The last time we were there my wife Eve told me, that the building just next to San Marco was the main building of the University of Florence when she was a student there.
Fra Angelico shows the scene where Mary Magdalene has come to the garden, and encounters the risen Jesus. It was just before dawn, and in the dark she thought he was one of the gardeners in the place, so Fra Angelico painted Jesus holding a gardener’s hoe.
Fra Angelico painted the original in the room of one of his brother friars. The original is big, my memory is life size. Fra Angelico painted a fresco in each of the monks rooms.
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Jesus told us that when we pray we are to go into our own room and shut the door. Paul said that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We go into our room, we go within ourselves to the place inside where we think and feel and hope and fear and know and wonder – and there God gives us the stories of Jesus to remember and listen to and picture.
Our Easter Gospel is this story Fra Angelico has pictured.
While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the place where they had buried Jesus. She had been there when they took him down from the cross, and the mother held him in her arms for a time, and then they brought him here to this garden and buried him.
That first Easter morning, in today’s story, when someone was there in the dark she thought it was one of the gardeners, and she spoke to him. And then she heard him speak her name, perfectly simply -- Mary.
And she recognized him. It was Jesus. And she said in recognition, “Rabbi.” “Teacher.”
Then he said to her what is often the title in Latin of paintings of this scene, Noli me tangere, don’t hold on to me, do not hold on to this risen visible presence, given for a short while so you and the others might know what has happened, that he has been raised from the dead, that God who was with you in him is with you again in him. Truly with you. Present.
Jesus would not remain visibly present. He would ascend to the Father – to the heart of God, where God is. Beyond us, other (and so the imagery of up) and also – and also, deep in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible, out of the theology of God’s presence in the Hebrew Bible – also with us. Unseen. Present.
We listen for his voice in the stories of what he said and what he did. .
We take the bread and wine as signs of God’s presence with us in him, in his love.
And he is with us, to offer forgiveness, friendship, purpose, calling, vocation – God calls each one to follow him as his disciple. His last words in Matthew, the Gospel of the Sermon on the Mount, are his Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples of everybody. Our mission of empowering and enabling and teaching.
And at the heart of it all, he who is risen and living at the heart of God is with us to love with us with the love we see in his story, in his cross – the living love given to us and if we accept it and trust it and live in it, we forget self and love with something of his love and die to self and come into his new life.
Mary Magdalene left the garden and went and told the others she had seen the Lord – the first witness to the resurrection, the first preacher of the gospel good news of Easter.
A happy and blessed Easter in the love of Christ!
(These comments are based on a sermon preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster on Easter Day, April 4, 2010 in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago.)
