Don't cling to me
…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.’ (John 20:14-17).
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Sometimes, especially for Lenten penitents, Easter Sunday is celebrated as Giant Christian Party Day. Christ has risen! Break open the chocolates! Ring the handbells (if you've remembered them)! Wear something really bright and full of life - like the amazing pink and gold sari Jacopa di Cione has given Christ in the image at the top of this page.
All the waiting, renunciation, and brutality is over. Death hasn’t won. The powers that be haven’t won. Let’s celebrate, then get on with life again!
But of course it’s not like that in the Gospels, or in the arc of the spiritual journey, too.
Mary, the first witness to the resurrection, doesn’t recognize Jesus to begin with. She just sees an ordinary gardener - one who fits in, without comment or second thought, who is natural, who isn’t out of place. Christ has to address her directly - using her name - to break through Mary’s trauma and unbelief. Seeing him alive, she is overcome - and naturally wants to hold and touch him again.
Our Buddhist brothers and sisters would have a field day with these words - do not hold on to me .
Why on earth not? He allowed Mary of Bethany to anoint and wipe his feet when alive. He lived so closely to this Mary, Mary of Magdalene, and the other beloved men and women. Some said far too close. Why all the caution and distance now?
‘Never interfere with an astral body as it leaves the earthly plane’. That Christ is vulnerable to human hands at this critical juncture? Surely not! That Christ will be reminded of her love, Mary’s touch, be reminded of his attachment to physical life, and want to turn back from the journey ahead? Perhaps!
Who can fathom the mystery of ascension! Perhaps one thing we can say is that Christ is still in process. He's still, radically, on the move.
Will this end when he reaches the Father? When, if you’ll permit the esoteric ‘subtle body’ metaphor to continue, his astral body will have decisively left earth plane and made a permanent home in the stars? When he’s finally become the great I AM, when his physical form has been absorbed back into Oneness?
Of course, there is no point in asking these questions, and no hope of suppressing them either. We are curious!
Addressing the theme of God as Oneness, Thomas Keating observed that we can speak, perhaps, of many ‘oneness-es’:
That is to say, this Oneness manifests itself, or we come across it, in any infinite number of ways. While it always remains in a sense the same, it is always a different oneness. Perhaps this is because God is always happening. Some theologies think of God as as a kind of static or abstract entity of one kind or another, and this is useful information as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough! For instance, God is so dynamic and goes so fast, that you can never see him. In other words, he's always on the move faster than light, which is pretty fast. And that's why, perhaps, Elijah on the mountain only saw him from behind! He'd already gone by!
He goes on:
We certainly need to remember God at every moment, but one problem with this is the speed by which God goes by. You can't catch him, because there's nothing to catch, because he's already here. In other words, he goes by so fast, that by the time you take a peek, he's already back here! They say that God is changeless - that's the old theology - but I think it would be better to say that, yes, God is changeless, but what doesn't change is: He’s always changing!*
If this is true, if God is truly present with, or at-one-with, any infinite number of changing forms - “for your immortal Spirit is in all things” (Wisdom 12:1) - and this flow and cosmic process isn't just some great spiritual illusion, hiding a changeless, static essence underneath (as some theologies, Christian and non-Christian, believe), then how on earth can we ever hold onto God, to one form, one moment, however beloved?
The gardener. The stranger on the road. The one who turns up for breakfast, unannounced.
The rain dripping on this roof, as I write. The blackbird stitching its morning tune.
We have so many wonderful depictions of the resurrection in art. Christ bashing open the gates of Hades in icons of the Eastern Church. Christ sliding out of a cold stone tomb, holding something like the flag of St George, surrounded by sleeping armoured men, in Western art. The image at the top of this page is probably my favourite, mostly because of the amazing pink and gold sari that Christ is wearing. But we can’t hold onto any of these images, finally. Or even any of our experiences. This is the moment in the Christian story when taking snapshots is most fraught. When the teaching becomes most intense and challenging, and when the religious mind is most revealed as endangering the spiritual journey.
Religion - which comes from the Latin word ‘religare’, which means to fasten, attach, or bind to something - always wants to cling on. It wants to take holy snapshots, put them in great gilded albums, and keep having special, dramatic, anniversary days. Fair enough. For God’s immortal Spirit is in all things, including, surely, with great mercy and compassion, those beloved holy forms of our devotional life, which guide us in the way of fire.
And yet, even the most sacred form known to Christianity - the body of Jesus Christ - we are told (not even asked!) to let go of.
Receive me, here, but don't hold on. Recognize me, and then let go.
I once attended a contemplative service in a church beside the sea. The minister asked us to clear our minds, then visualize ourselves back on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and imagine Jesus walking across the sands (pebbles?) towards us. It was evening, in actual life, and sparrows were gathering on the top of the church roof outside, beginning their raucous cheeping. Without any apology to God, or diminishment of faith, I dropped Jesus and listened to the sparrows.
References:
*Thomas Keating, “Oneness and the Heart of the World”, retrieved from https://youtu.be/88UukqH3kDQ?si=R7r2D0mnJTdXZgR0.
Image at top of the page: Noli Me Tangere, Jacopo di Cione, painted about 1368-70.
