Read:

Read John 20:1-18.

As you read (or listen below), what are some things that strike you about Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene? What stands out to you? Does anything surprise you? How does Jesus treat Mary? How does she respond to Him?

Reflect:

As we come to Easter every year, I am struck by something in the resurrection story. It is the exchange between Jesus and Mary Magdalene outside of the empty tomb.  It is Jesus’ words to Mary: “Do not cling to Me” (John 20:17). 

Did Jesus really say that?

I can almost feel His strong hands gently prying His robe from her fists. Why couldn’t she hold on? She had come broken. She had come grieving. Confusion and despair descended when Jesus was not there. But then her heart had rejoiced to hear Him speak her name. Her spirit leapt to realize He had risen. Her hands reached. And they clung. I can understand why.

But then He made her let go. My heart aches for her at the thought of it.

Why? I ask Him as though it were my own hands clutching His robe. And another verse of Scripture echoes in my mind: “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32).

I’m sorry, I want to say, I do not understand what You are talking about. But I do. He is talking, I think, about hearts that cling to the way things were while He is moving us forward. He is talking about our longing for familiarity at the expense of His will. He is talking about clutching what we’ve always known when He has something so much better in mind.

As God ushered Lot and his family from Sodom and Gomorrah, sparing them from the judgment that He poured out on those cities, Lot’s wife looked back. She longed for some strangely idealized memory of what had been. She ached for what once was. She feared what was to come.

And so, before Jesus’ death, when He spoke of His coming kingdom and His future return, He reminded them of Lot’s wife.

Perhaps so that they wouldn’t look back in a way that prevented them from going forward.

Will we miss the Coming King because we hold too tightly to the world we’ve known? Will we cling to our kingdoms and miss the one He’s ushering in?

My heart breaks for Mary because I am a clinger. I want to hold on. I want to clutch the things I’ve known. I will white-knuckle “the way it’s been” as though I might convince God to let me stay. Or perhaps I have my feet planted firmly in the familiar, and I’m clinging onto Him in hopes that He’ll stay. I think maybe that’s what Mary was doing. Maybe she was holding onto the Jesus she’d always known, to the way that He had always been, when He was doing a new thing. He had risen from the dead after all! Things could never be the same. But that didn’t keep her heart from longing for familiar. It didn’t keep her hands from reaching for the One she’d known.

Mary, feet planted by the empty tomb, clung to the Lord, silently begging Him to stay right there. He was on His way to the Father, though. He would send the Holy Spirit. He would establish the church. He would roll out the kingdom of God onto this fragile sod. He would – He will – one day return in glory and power. Without realizing it, Mary held onto the way it had been and risked missing His greater glory.

But she didn’t miss it, and I don’t want to either.

I look down at my white knuckles. Am I clinging to Jesus in a way that begs Him not to move? Am I hesitant to let Him lead me into the new? I am tempted to cling to the way it’s always been, but He whispers a promise that it will be better, even if it’s hard.

I am clinging to a life with which I am familiar, and He is beckoning me to lay it down.

For just a moment I’m frozen right there with Mary, and Jesus has just spoken words I never thought I’d hear: “Do not cling to Me.” And I want to ask Mary if it was worth it. Do we let go? Do we lay this down? Do we actually leave this here? Even though it hurts? Even though it’s scary? Even though we don’t know what’s to come? Do we let Him go so that He can lead?

Mary, did He really ask you to let go? How did you summon the strength to obey?

Instead of her reply, I hear the voice of her Lord: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). My death-grip loosens, and I realize, with an exhale, that I’ve been holding my breath.

I can let go because He never will.

Sometimes He has to pry things out of our hands so that He can show us how tightly He holds us in His.

Questions:

1. Mary sought Jesus in a place where He no longer was. Circumstances had changed. He was still present, and He would continue to be present by the pouring out of His Spirit, but it would be different. She needed to learn to see Him with different eyes. Where have you been looking to find Jesus in your daily life but failing to see Him? Are there places or ways that you have seen Him before that you no longer sense Him in this season? Might He be inviting you to see Him in new or different ways as your circumstances change? Spend some time considering where you have been “seeking” Him and then how you have been “seeing” Him. Ask Him to give you eyes and faith to see Him and recognize Him as He meets you in these days.

2. Read about Lot’s wife in Luke 17:28-33. What is Jesus’ exhortation in verse 33? Summarize, in your own words, what you think that means.

3. What are you tempted to cling onto in this season of your life? I know that in this season of “social distancing,” we’ve all been involuntarily fasting from what we have no control over losing. But in that, I’ve found myself clinging more tightly to what I can control. As though, since I’ve lost some of what I had, I somehow have more of a right to hold to what I do still have.

4. How does it encourage or challenge you in your own life to consider that Jesus may be asking us to let go of some of the things we cling to in order to realize how tightly He is holding us? Can you think of a time in your life when this proved true—when you let go of something and found yourself more tightly held by the One who promises that nothing can snatch us from His hands?

Respond:

During this time when it feels like so much of what we thought was sure is shaking, we may be uniquely positioned to recognize those things to which we are tempted to cling. What is it that we fear we could not live without? What do we lay awake at night worry about? Our health? Our freedoms? Our families? Our finances? Things we used to take for granted no longer seem guaranteed. Many things on that list are good, and it’s right to value them, but perhaps Jesus is asking us to re-entrust them to Him so that we can move forward in the confidence that He holds us more tightly than we could hold to this world.

Spend some time, quietly in the presence of the Lord, examining those things with the Spirit of Christ. Confess the fear that cause you to cling. Ask Him to teach you how to surrender those things to Him. Ask Him what it looks like to “let go” of them even if you don’t “get rid” of them. Ask Him to show Himself faithful, even if His faithfulness going forward looks different than His faithfulness in past seasons.

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