Easter Sunday (B)

So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.

Jn 20:1-9

v. 1. On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb.

Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early:

The last time the word “early” was used in the gospel was at the time when Jesus was being led to the Praetorium forty-eight hours earlier. So swiftly does the new era begin.

Saw the stone removed from the tomb:

All four gospels record that the stone was rolled away before the women came. Matthew tells his readers that an angel moved it (Matt. 28zff). The tradition was evidently thought important by the evangelists, though it finds no place in the traditions about the resurrection in the epistles. Whatever rise the tradition has done, it has kept Christians from any temptation to seek communion with their Lord through physical `relics' of his body. This is entirely in keeping with the theology of the fourth gospel.

v. 2. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

It is possible, as some commentators have suggested that the double object of the verb here implies that Peter was staying with the beloved disciple. This is not an impossible suggestion; Mary was certainly thought to be there by the author.

They have taken the Lord from the tomb:

This is an equivalent to a passive form of the verb and so possibly meant to ascribe the action to God. 

It seems to express, when read with the following sentences, simply the conviction that the body of Jesus had already been moved to its final resting-place, and that Mary did not know where it had been taken, or by whom it had been removed.

v. 3. So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.

Mary had evidently expected that someone at the house would have known about the removal of the body. But no one did; hence Peter and the beloved disciple set out to investigate.

v. 5. He bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.

It would seem that though the tomb could be entered easily, it was not possible to survey the contents without stooping down. The entrance would not be very high.

v. 6. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there.

When Lazarus was raised, he came from the tomb swathed in his cloths. The fact that the cloths were left lying seems to suggest that the Lord left the tomb in a manner different from that of Lazarus' resuscitated body. Resuscitation is not resurrection!

v. 8. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

This can hardly be read save in the light of what John has to say about the word of the Lord to Thomas later  in the chapter. The beloved disciple saw the empty tomb and the abandoned cloth lying in it. On that sight, he believed. So does the evangelist begin to make it clear that it is not by seeing the earthly Jesus that one' sees'  the Lord. He can be 'seen' in this profounder sense through the witness of an empty grave.

v. 9. For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

John does not specify what scripture he had in mind. But it may also be noted that the process of understanding all that Jesus Christ was and did sets the Christian out upon an unending adventure in coming to know more and more of the fullness of God's purpose as revealed in scripture.