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F e a t u r e A r t i c l e
Touch Me Not?
By Kenneth D. Whitehead
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This Rock
Volume 11, Number 9
 September 2000 
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A young man inquiring into the faith recently asked me why Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, the first witness of his Resurrection, "Touch me not" (John 20:17). While on a trip to Europe, this young man had visited an art museum where he saw a painting that greatly moved him. It showed Mary Magdalene and Jesus reaching out their hands to each other yet holding back from touching. The young man was moved by the painting because it seemed to him to express our yearning to be with God.
All four Gospels testify to the fact that Mary Magdalene was among the women who went to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning on the first day of the week and found the tomb empty. The full story of the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene by herself, though, is told only in chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. When the women arrived at the tomb, they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene apparently then separated herself from the other women and went off to tell Simon Peter the startling news.
Peter and John then ran to the tomb and also found it empty. John, narrating the event, says that he came to "believe" when he saw the burial cloths of Jesus lying on the floor in the empty tomb. Peter and John went away, but Mary remained, peered into the tomb, saw a vision of two angels, and then, weeping, asked where the Lord had been taken. Then she turned and suddenly Jesus himself was there, but she did not immediately recognize him.
This non-recognition of their Master in his glorified body was the typical first impression of the disciples who encountered the risen Jesus. It happened on the road to Emmaus, as Luke relates (24:13–35). It happened to the group of the apostles on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1–23). Mary Magdalene recognized Jesus only when he spoke her name, "Mary." She replied, "Rabboni" ("teacher"). It was then that Jesus told her not to touch him, giving as the reason for this the fact that he had not yet "ascended" to his Father (John 20:17).
This scene has captured the imagination of artists, and the theme of not touching has been prominent in many representations of the scene. This is no doubt because the Scripture passage in question was known to them in its Latin Vulgate version as "Noli me tangere," or "Touch me not." The famous paintings of this moment by Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Titian, for example, all have the title Noli me tangere. Any of these paintings could have been the one the young man viewed in Europe, or it could have been yet another painting, since the theme was popular with Christian artists. What is quite clear both from these paintings and from the text of the Gospel is that Jesus did not, in fact, want Mary to touch him, much as she longed to do so.
The meaning of the original Greek in the New Testament here, though, conveyed a meaning more like "Don’t hold on to me," or "Don’t cling to me"—which Mary Magdalene, in her impetuosity and great joy at recognizing Jesus alive after what had seemed the irreparable loss of Good Friday, evidently attempted to do. (We know from Matthew 28:9 that the women embraced the feet of the risen Jesus when they saw him for the first time). Some modern versions of the New Testament such as the New American Bible and the Revised Standard Version accordingly translate the passage as, "Don’t cling to me," or "Don’t hold on to me," having dropped the word "touch" entirely.
But why did Jesus not want Mary Magdalene to touch or cling to him? Ten verses farther on in the same chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus tells doubting Thomas to touch him: "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing" (John 20:28). Jesus wanted to prove to Thomas that his glorified body was real, that he was no ghost or apparition, but that he had indeed risen from the dead.
The best explanation I know for why Jesus did not want Mary Magdalene to touch him—unlike Thomas, she already believed he was Jesus—is that his saving work was not finished. That is why he gives as the reason why she should not touch him that he had "not yet ascended to the Father." As Mary Magdalene no doubt well knew, along with the other disciples of Jesus, Jesus had promised before his crucifixion, "A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me" (John 16:16).
And indeed, the disciples had seen him no more him as his crucified body was laid in the tomb. But now, "again a little while," Mary was seeing him. In her joy she no doubt threw herself towards him, but Jesus, in effect, said to her: "No, not yet. I’m not back among you for good. My saving work will in fact not be completed until I send you the Holy Spirit, as I promised I would, to be with you always, and I return again."
For Jesus had also said that he was "leaving the world and going to the Father" (John 16:28)—that is, that he was "ascending" to the Father, as he again told Mary this time around. He had also, of course, promised the disciples as well that he would send the Holy Spirit "to be with you forever" (John 14:16).
Mary, like the other disciples—and all Christians to this day—had to receive the Spirit before the fullness of Christ’s saving work would be effective. Nor would her—nor our—joy be complete before joining Christ with his Father in heaven. Mary must not, meanwhile, cling to him as if everything had been accomplished and he had returned for good. Nevertheless, her ardent desire to touch him does aptly symbolize our yearning to be with God.
Biblical scholars generally agree that Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ. Jesus then told her, "Go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). Having appeared first to her, he told her to break the news to the apostles, whom he had appointed earlier to be the witnesses to his Resurrection before all mankind (cf. Luke 24:48, Acts 2:32). Now, as a woman of that time in history, Mary Magdalene’s testimony to the fact of the Resurrection would not have been accepted like that of a man’s. Jesus nevertheless appeared first to her, in defiance of the customs of the time, and then told her to go tell the men. Some scholars cite this fact as one of the strongest proofs that the Resurrection actually took place: If the story had been fabricated, no one would have made a woman the first witness to the defining miracle of Christianity.
It is a marvelous story, and it is not surprising that it has had great appeal to Christian artists down through the centuries.
Kenneth D. Whitehead is a former U.S. assistant secretary of education and the author of One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church, forthcoming from Ignatius Press, parts of which originally appeared in This Rock.
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