Holding on
- Gary Fritsch
- Apr 21
- 2 min read
Jesus appears to Mary Magdelene in the garden, and she sees Him as a gardener. I think this is a fitting image. Jesus was planted in the ground so that something new might grow. He makes a curious statement to Mary. He says 'stop holding on to me'. He has not yet ascended to the Father, He is not as He will be for them for the rest of time - yet.
Over the course of the next fifty days, Jesus will become MORE present to them than He is to Mary in the garden. He doesn't want Mary to hold on because He has something so much better and more complete than she can imagine at the moment. Is it more that we can imagine? We often think that the Jesus of the Gospels must have been the greatest to be around, the most amazing person to experience, the greatest expression of the Son of God. While I admit that meeting Jesus face to face, talking with Him, hearing Him preach sounds like an experience of a lifetime, that is not what Jesus is telling Mary, and it is not what He shows us.
Peter walked with, talked with, was called by, taught by, and personally mentored by the Jesus of the Gospels. He even saw Him in His glory at the transfiguration. Yet all of this resulted in Peter denying that he even knew this Jesus. But take notice in the reading from Acts what Peter does after his experience of the way Jesus planned to be with them (and us) forever. He boldly proclaims who Jesus is, and calls out His persecutors, which results in 3,000 people being baptized. I guess Jesus was right. If Peter had held on to the Jesus he had followed, we would never have heard of him.
But Peter embraced the Jesus of the Resurrection, the Jesus of The WORD, the Jesus of the Sacraments and also - the Jesus who would send the Holy Spirit. Jesus' plan was not to shrink from the time of the Resurrection forward, but to grow - and Peter's boldness and action are evidence of what this greater presence of Jesus was intended to do.
Are you ready to allow yourself to enter into the Jesus of our time, the Jesus of all time? Or are you holding on to a Jesus that won't change you into someone who will be remembered 2000 years from now? Are you ready to embrace a Jesus that doesn't just want to know you or teach you, but wants to be one with you, fill you with His Spirit, so that you can bring Him into every corner of your world. Don't hold on.
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