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"Don't
Touch Me!"
by
Richard
Allan
The above are curious words
spoken by our Lord and Savior at the most ecstatic moment in the life
of Mary
Magdalene. Why on earth would
the newly
resurrected
she had watched as her
Lord was crucified and now here He was, alive and standing in front of
her. Exploding with joy unspeakable, Mary,
in the
first moments of sheer delight, moved uncontrollably towards Jesus to
embrace
Him, but He stopped her forward motion with words
that must have
arrested her
advance like an invisible wall, when He said, “Don’t touch me!”.
when I’ve been at the
airport
arrival gate and watched the public display of unrestrained happiness,
played
out by those who have been physically separated from loved ones. And I now try to imagine how utterly
impossible it would be to try and stop that intense and raging flow of
love
energy.
But Christ does just that with
the words, “Don’t Touch me!”. Have
crueler words ever been spoken? As if
Mary had not suffered enough, considering
the events of the past three
days. Now all that pent up sorrow and
pain is transmuted into unbridled delight, only to be met with the
command,
“Touch Me Not!”.
most Bible
commentators.
It’s significant that the only Gospel writer to convey this garden tomb
encounter is John the beloved, for only he could
deeply identify with
what Mary
must have gone through at that moment.
Only he, as the most beloved of Jesus, had the right to give us
a peek
at this extraordinary stop action moment.
I’ve already posed the question, “Have crueler words ever been
spoken?”, My answer is, to the contrary,
these
words of
Jesus were the most loving words He ever uttered. And
not only were they motivated by love,
they were provoked by an alarming urgency
and abruptness.
Let me explain why I say this.
bowl of sacrificial
blood. He applied the blood to the Mercy
Seat, or lid, of the Ark of the Covenant and then left.
And he got this blood from a bull
and a goat
he had just sacrificed in the outer court of the tabernacle. Once this high priest had washed and cleansed
himself and then begun this Atonement Day blood ritual, he could not
come into
physical contact with anyone until the rite of purification and
atonement was
over.
people how long it was after the
crucifixion
that Christ ascended to His Father. Just
about every one of them would say 40 days later, or ten days
before
Pentecost. But if this were the case,
why would we have the author of the Epistle of Barnabas (a very early,
non-canonized epistle written
ust after 70 A.D., or within a
generation after
the crucifixion of Christ) say, “And we too rejoice in celebrating the
eighth
day, because that was
when Jesus rose from the dead, and showed Himself
again,
and ascended into heaven”. Then, in a
footnote to this quote from Barnabas’ epistle,
we have a recent
commentator
stating the following, “Barnabas perhaps believed the Resurrection and
the
Ascension to have occurred on the
same day”.
Perhaps??!!
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”.
hand, His Perfect cleansed Blood into the heavenly
Holy of
Holies, where our Almighty Sovereign God dwells. And
all this began and was
completed on the 8th
day, or the 1st day of the week.
This is why the early followers of “The Way” celebrated
communion and
worshipped on the
1st day of the week! For
it was to commemorate that day of days
when Christ resurrected and ascended, and took His own Blood into
Father
Yahweh’s Presence and hand delivered the only acceptable payment that
could
satisfy (propitiate) the perfect Justice of God. The
moment that
Blood connected with The
Almighty in His Heavenly Throne Room, Adam, and all who were once in
him, were
potentially redeemed out of the
prison house of death.
This instant in time and space was the final
straw that broke the back of Satan, eternally.
It was the climax of all that had
gone on before in Biblical
recorded
history. And with that in mind, we can
now see how unbelievably catastrophic it would have been if Mary
(defiled and
still polluted with personal and Adamic sin) had been allowed to touch
our
purified High Priest during His movement from the tomb
into the
heavenly Throne
Room. Had she made physical contact with
Jesus, the entire Plan of Salvation would have been short-circuited. Again,
this is why I say, “Touch Me Not”, are
the most loving words ever spoken by our Savior.
curred between Luke
24:12 and Luke
24:13. Take a moment to see for
yourself.
peared as a fellow traveler to a couple of
very sad
and dejected believers on their way back to the village of Emmaus. But now it would be
different.
Now our Jesus could touch and be
touched. But for a while He would appear
as a stranger, seemingly uninformed of the tragic events
leading up to
His
Crucifixion, as He walked and talked with the two most fortunate men in
history. I say this because what we have
here are the
first of all those that would soon have their hearts set
ablaze by
the power of God’s Word, followed by an experience that over and over
again
would be duplicated in every individual regenerated by God’s Word. This experience is that glorious moment when
God opens our eyes to Who
Christ is. For
these two crestfallen travelers, it was the moment Christ stretched
forth His
Hands, at dinner, and broke the loaf of bread that was
on the table in
front of
Him. We’re not given the details of how
they recognized it was Jesus, but I’ve always felt it was when they saw
His
nail
pierced wrists that were exposed to them when our Savior reached
out for
the bread and broke it. What a moment,
what a recognition scene.
And in one way
or another, it’s been repeated down through time over the past 2,000
years for
all those who have been touched by God and
have had their eyes opened
to see
Jesus.
with His disciples in very
intimate
ways, even to the point of having Thomas put his finger into his side,
for it
was now perfectly all right for Jesus
to be touched.
He had already ascended, delivered His Blood
to His Father and returned to be with his disciples for a 40-day visit
before
His
second and final ascension into His Father’s Presence.
place (where there was an earthy
copy of the
heavenly Throne of God). Christ, our
Perfect High Priest, moved into God’s Presence carrying
with Him His
Perfect
Blood. Once there, He presented the
representation of His Perfect Life to the bar of Justice and forever
satisfied
God’s
just demands regarding sin.
on that 1st New
Creation day of
the week, a day Barnabas described when he wrote, “It was the eighth
day that
Jesus rose from the dead and
showed Himself again, and ascended into
heaven”.