On a fresco in a chapel in Padua, Italy, there is a famous painting depicting the dramatic post-resurrection scene in John 20 with Mary and Jesus outside of the garden tomb. Giotto di Bondone painted it in the early 14th century. Jesus is striding from the tomb with a victor’s flag in his left hand. But he is stiff-arming Mary Magdalene, keeping keeping her from coming close. This part of the fresco has been called Noli me tangere (“Do not hold me”).
There are problems with Giotto di Bondone’s interpretation of this biblical story. He depicts the resurrected Christ as aloof, cold, as one who is onward and upward, leaving for higher concerns—one who cannot be held back by this woman. “Do not hold me” seems to mean “I’ve got more important things to do.” And Mary drops to her knees in tears longing for her beloved.
Our English word “Maudlin” derives from an Old English and French way of pronouncing Magdalene. When I was in Oxford, England, some years ago, browsing one of the gift shops near the University, I inquired about C. S. Lewis’s college—“Magdalene College,” I said. I was quickly corrected by the shopkeeper—“It’s pronounced maudlin college,” she told me.
Mary Magdalene has traditionally been characterized as maudlin—eyes bright red from weeping, the foolish tears of sentimentalism. Well, is this what we ought to take away from the story in John 20? Mary the sentimentalist, maudlin Mary? And Jesus, the one who has no time for this weepy woman?
More recently, Dan Brown in his novel The DaVinci Code has given us a thoroughly modern Mary Magalene. The secret wife of Jesus, and with a love child, too. There’s no need to rehearse the details of his steamy reinterpretation.
Thankfully, there is another, better tradition in the church that gets it largely right. In the Western liturgy, Mary Magdalene is remembered on July 22nd with appropriate prayers and Scripture readings. The OT reading at her feast day is from the Song of Solomon.
According to this tradition, Mary Magdalene is symbolic of Daughter Jerusalem, the Bride of Yahweh, believing Israel who has searched for her divine Husband and Lord throughout the long night of the Old Testament era. She, faithful Israel, the Church, the Bride, is the one for whom the Messiah has suffered and died, and now risen triumphant over the death and hell.
So when she, the Bride, is acknowledged by her victorious Lord and Savior, she clings to him, wanting nothing more than to embrace him and hold on to him for good. But Jesus, the victorious Husband, who has given himself for her, whose sole passion has been to free her from bondage to sin, death, and the devil, who has poured out his blood to cleanse her and make her a glorious bride, must tell her that the work is not yet complete. She must not cling to him yet. There is more to do:
“I must ascend to my Father in order to prepare a house for you, my bride, my beloved. Noli me tangere. Do not cling to me yet, my dear. My Father is your God and my place in his house will be yours as well. Wait, my darling, I will come again one day and we will finalize our marriage and I will bring you into my Father’s house forever, and your joy will be made complete. Trust me. Go tell my brothers that that you have seen the resurrected Lord!”
This is the message of Easter morning for the church, the beloved Bride of the resurrected Son of God.
That one of the final scenes in John’s Gospel should symbolize the Lord’s transformed relations with his Bride fits with one of the themes of John’s Gospel. Earlier in his Gospel we learned that John the Baptizer had interpreted Jesus calling people to himself as the voice of a bridegroom calling his beloved. And that the baptisms that were being performed were nuptial baths. When John’s disciples complain that so many people are “going over” to Jesus’ camp and are now being baptized by him, John rebukes them:
“A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.” (John 3:27-30).
And remember John 4:4-42. The Samaritan woman who comes to draw water at the well of Jacob has been the wife of five husbands, but now she meets the one who will truly fulfill that role. Jesus is her true Husband who will guard her and provide for her. Like Jacob of old (Gen. 29:1-12) he will drive away the false shepherds and give her living water to drink.
More than Mary
With that background in mind, we return to John 20 and see how that message is carefully embedded in that story. Jesus is the resurrected, victorious Lord and Husband of his people, his Bride, the Church. Here at the tomb in the Garden Bride, symbolized by Mary, meets her beloved Husband.
Mary is more than Mary. Mary Magdalene herself was from a town called Magdala in Galilee located just north of Tiberius on the West Coast of the Sea of Galilee. She is mentioned by Luke (8:1-13) in a list of women from Galilee who followed Jesus to Jerusalem to attend to his needs (Matthew 27:55). In passing Luke tells us that Jesus had cast out 7 demons from her. Even here she is more than Mary; she is symbolic of Israel, the bride of Yahweh, whose demonic possession is seven-fold. She appears for the first time in John’s gospel in 19:25, at the foot of the cross.
John, however, tells us nothing about the details of Mary’s life. He does not want us to think of these biographical details. Mary Magdalene is not literally Jesus’ lover. Jesus Christ Superstar and other modern fictions get it wrong, blasphemously wrong. She is for John (moved by the Holy Spirit, of course) a representative figure, symbolic of the Israel, the church, the people of God, the Bride of Christ. This is not to say that she was not a real woman or that this story didn’t really happen or that what transpired in at the Garden tomb didn’t mean something very specific, very personal to Mary herself. But Mary is acting out her role in God’s great story. Her interaction here with Jesus represents something greater—Christ the Husband and his beloved bride, the Church.
Gary Burge puts it like this: “For John [the story of Mary Magdalene] is an important vehicle for telling us things about Jesus and what it means for Christians to have a transformed relationship with the resurrected Lord” (The NIV Application Commentary, p. 551).
How do we know this, you ask? Well, we know it because we pay attention to the unusual details of the story, which we will do in the next essay.
Click HERE for Part 2.
Jeff Meyers is Senior Pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, and Chairman of the Board of Theopolis.