20:17
Jesus tells Mary not to cling to Him. She would be so overjoyed that He was alive that the natural reaction would be to want to hold on to Him, possibly physically, but emotionally, to want Him to be here on earth in bodily form. Jesus reminds her that He has to ascend to the Father, that is all part of the plan, and an essential part of it. Instead she is to go to “my brothers” (meaning the disciples, rather than Jesus’ natural brothers) and tell them that He was ascending to “my Father and your Father, my God and your God”. Some place an emphasis on the distinction between Jesus’ relationship with the Father, and the disciples’ relationship, but this is not the point here. Of course, there is a difference, none of us have created many universes! We were not with the Father from all eternity etc. However, the point here, and one that is consistent with all that Jesus has been teaching them, is that the relationship that they have seen Jesus have with the Father is in so many ways the relationship that we are meant to have.
20:18
So Mary Magdalene went and told the disciples “I have seen the Lord”, and she told them the other things that Jesus had said to her. This is probably more than we have recorded in the gospels. It is interesting that a woman was the first witness to the resurrection. Women, as much as men, are to be witnesses to the truth of Jesus Christ.
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