The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for The Fourth Sunday After Easter (8:00 am service).
“Noli me tangere” – “Touch me not”
We are all like Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb of Jesus, I suppose. Whatever and whomever we love, we want to hold onto; in short, to possess. Too much of our love for one another is really only for ourselves. Our love is not really for them; it is for ourselves. It is always ourselves – our self-love – which gets in the way of the deeper lessons of love. We have, like the disciples, a hard time letting go.
Yet, love is not love when it is possession. Christ has not given himself for us so that we might possess him. If anything it is the other way around. We belong to him. He does not belong to us. And yet, our belonging to Christ is no possessive love, for his love by which we are his is self-less love. It sets us in motion. And it makes us more, not less, than ourselves. When individuals and churches become obsessed with questions about personal salvation, then they are in danger of wanting to possess Christ and to keep him to themselves, against all others.
But that is not what Christ wants for us. He does not want us to possess him but to enter into the freedom of his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. He who cannot be contained by the grave of death can hardly be contained by us.
What cannot be contained must be proclaimed. The Resurrection is the truth which cannot be contained. It must be proclaimed. And the truth of the Resurrection is not that the Risen Christ is a resuscitated corpse, like Lazarus to be returned into the hands of his family and friends, but that he is going to the Father and that he is going to the Father in the soul and body of our humanity which he has perfected and made adequate to the life of God. The truth of the Resurrection lies in his going from us.
“Because I go to the Father” is the recurring refrain of the Easter season. And rightly so, for “If ye then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.” He is not risen so that we can possess him. He is risen so that we can be where he is in the perfect and self-less love of the kingdom of heaven; in the perfect and self-less love of the Son for the Father and Father for the Son in the bond of the Holy Spirit. That love is to be proclaimed and celebrated. It cannot be contained.
Jesus teaches us the most about the Holy Spirit. And yet, paradoxically, it is only by the Holy Spirit that we come to understand what Jesus is saying. Why? Because we would possess him and keep him for ourselves rather than keep his words and enter into the truth and meaning of them. The Holy Spirit, Jesus tells us, is “the Spirit of truth” who “will guide you into all truth” and, as against our tendency to want things for ourselves and to be all absorbed in ourselves, the Holy Spirit teaches us not about himself, but about the spiritual reality of Jesus Christ. Indeed, he “brings to our remembrance all the words” which Jesus has spoken to us. It is precisely in Jesus’ going from us that the Holy Spirit can bring all his words to our remembrance, for then we are freed from the temptations to possess Jesus, to hold him for ourselves over and against the freedom of his love for us in his love for the Father. Then we are free to proclaim Christ’s Resurrection.
It is all part and parcel of the first words of the Resurrection. The Risen Christ appears to Mary Magdalene but he does not allow her to possess him or hold onto him. “Noli me tangere,” he says to her, “do not touch me,” do not hold onto me, “but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” You see, he sets her in motion: Don’t hold onto me, as it were, but go and say. Don’t contain me; go and proclaim me.
And so her love is freed from its possessive tendency. She is lifted out of her early morning grief and set in motion. She is sent to the brethren, Apostle Apostolorum, an Apostle to the Apostles, say the Fathers. Such is the movement of the Resurrection in her. And such is love towards one another. The Risen Christ would free us from the tyranny of our possessive loves.
The content of the proclamation is the meaning of Christ’s Resurrection: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” He is risen to draw us into the intimacy of his divine life where his Father is our Father, where the God of his humanity is our God, not to possess but to proclaim.
And if indeed, we are like Mary Magdalene, then let us go and say that Christ is risen indeed.
“Noli me tangere” – “Touch me not”
Fr. David Curry,
Easter IV, 09, 8:00am