I'll be honest: such a focus may not help us understand the resurrection any better than we already understand it. But I do think that focusing on what Jesus says at his own resurrection might help us see how faith in the resurrection has the power to transform lives and relationships.

We begin then, in the garden. Once Mary recognizes Jesus, she cries out, "Rabbouni," and her first instinct is to reach out and grab hold of him, for he responds with, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father."

What a strange thing to say: "Do not hold on to me." Other translations render his words more forcefully: "touch me not," or "do not touch me," or even "stop clinging to me." I don't think Jesus is saying this because his body's sore after three hours on a cross and three days in a tomb. No, it's clear from the Doubting Thomas episode later on in the same chapter that the resurrected Jesus is happy enough to allow someone to touch his wounds. So why does he say to Mary, "Do not hold on to me?"

The reason he gives is just as strange: "because I have not yet ascended to the Father." So what? All the better reason to cling to Jesus now, while he's still around to be touched! Looking at this statement in its broader context, though, I see this: When Mary cries, "Rabbouni," which means not just "Teacher" but "Our Teacher," a term of endearment and respect, she cries out in deep intimacy, and Jesus responds by telling her, in essence, that an even deeper intimacy awaits her. Jesus asks Mary not to hold on to him not because he wants to be distant, cold, or rude, but because if she holds on to her old image of Jesus, she will be unable to participate in the greater intimacy with him and with the Father that Jesus points to in the ascension.

Jesus asks Mary to let him go, so that she can then be sent out on a mission proclaiming the greater intimacy that awaits her and all of the disciples: "But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Of all the things Jesus could have instructed Mary to tell the disciples, this is what he says: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Why does he point forty days into the future, to his ascension? Why think of that now? Shouldn't we just focus on this amazing event? What does the ascension mean in relation to the resurrection?

If we take Easter Day and Ascension Day as two ends of one event, we can begin to see that they depend upon each other, and that each reveals the inherent meaning of the other. For the resurrection without an ascension lacks significance beyond the bizarre, and the ascension without a resurrection would be impossible. The point is that Jesus was resurrected in order to ascend, and that in his ascension, we are given the blessed hope of our own resurrections and ascensions, as well.

The Greek fathers of the early Church put it something like this: The divinity came to share in our humanity so that humanity could come to share in divinity. That is, God loves us so much that God wants to share God's very life with us, and the way the Father chose to do this was through the resurrection and ascension of the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thereby, we are drawn into the very divine lovelife of the Holy Trinity itself. I love the resurrection because it shows God's love for us. I don't claim to understand the resurrection, nor can I fathom the depths of God's love, but I can respond in wonder, love, and praise to God's mighty deeds, among which the resurrection is the mightiest of all.

Wonder, love, and praise. Our worship this morning is, by its very design, a participation in the divine lovelife of the Holy Trinity. Our participation in God's life through worship translates into action in the world around us, in the reclamation of God's creation, in the proclamation that because of Jesus, his Father is our Father and his God is our God, and in the acclamation that because Jesus is risen, his Father and God is not only our Father and God alone, but the Father and God of all people.

"But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" This is the Easter message, from the mouth of the One without whom Easter would not be. But, really, what does all this stuff about "deeper intimacy" with God mean? The key is in Jesus' use of the word "Father" to refer to God-something we're used to, but which at the time was pretty revolutionary.

It is impossible to hear Jesus' words to Mary with first century ears, of course, but we can get a sense of the radical change in humanity's relationship with God that is indicated in the two words "your Father." Greek scholar Gerhard Kittel links the word for "Father" used in this passage to the Hebrew "Abba," the familiar term of endearment within a family, much like the English word "Papa" or "Daddy." As Kittel writes, Jesus "applies to God a term which must have sounded familiar and [get this] disrespectful to His contemporaries because used in the everyday life of the family. In other words, He uses the simple 'speech of the child to its father'… this Father-child relationship to God far surpasses any possibilities of intimacy [heretofore] assumed…introducing indeed something which is wholly new."

By contrast, Geoffrey Wainwright, the great liturgical scholar, writes "[Abba] was the word used from child to parent, from disciple to rabbi; it combines intimacy and [get this] respect, familiarity and esteem, affection and reverence. Jesus used the word to address God. Christians have the same privilege in worship. The word characterizes the whole relationship to which God is calling humanity and which believers already know. The mighty Creator also provides and cares for his creatures with a parent's love; the sovereign Lord wants children, not slaves."

Wainwright alludes in those last words to two passages from St. Paul's epistles. The first is from his letter to the Galatians, where Paul writes: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son…so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God." And the second is from the famous eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans, which I'll get to in just a moment.

For now, it's important to point out that when Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him, Jesus is saying to Mary, in effect, "Do not hold onto me as an imploring slave might hold onto to her master, but let go, get up, and go. Tell your fellow disciples that you are no longer only my disciples, but you are also my brothers and sisters-for you have all been adopted as God's children through faith in me." The message that Christ himself proclaims on Easter morning to the Apostle to the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, is one of intimacy with God, the Father, our Abba, by whom we are adopted in Christ's resurrection.

This is good news, indeed! And while being God's children does not mean being exempt from the heartaches and pains of human existence, the slings and arrows of sin and death, it does mean that these things cannot in the end gain mastery over us. Indeed, as we read of our Abba in Romans eight:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also…For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

And a bit later on, Paul writes:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?…Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In these majestic words, we find that death-defying hope in God's eternal love for us that is at the center of the resurrection. It is in this hope that we can live with confidence, knowing that through our adoption as God's children, we have been called to serve each other and the world around us as brothers and sisters in Christ's name, come what may.