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§47 The Empty Tomb and the First Appearance (John 20:1–18)

The story of the empty tomb is Mary Magdalene’s story. To this point in the Gospel, Mary has been mentioned only once, with no further identification (19:25), probably because she is presumed to be well known to the Gospel’s readers. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke she is mentioned first among the women who came to the tomb on Sunday morning, but here she seems to come alone. Only her statement that we [plural] don’t know the whereabouts of Jesus’ body (v. 2) betrays a consciousness of others present with her at the tomb (contrast I don’t know in v. 13).

From the fact that the stone in front of the tomb had been moved, Mary inferred that Jesus’ body had also been moved. Without looking into the tomb she ran to tell Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, that someone had stolen the body (v. 2). The account of the two disciples’ race to the tomb and of what they saw is given neither for theological reasons nor to enhance the apostolic authority of either man but simply as the historical recollection of an eyewitness. The beloved disciple reached the tomb first and looked in at the strips of linen (cf. 19:40) but did not enter the tomb (vv. 4–5). When Peter arrived, he entered the tomb at once; what he saw is carefully described (vv. 6–7), but his reaction is not. Finally the beloved disciple went into the tomb, and his reaction is described: He saw and believed (v. 8). The implication is not that Peter saw but did not believe; it is only that the narrator tells Peter’s story as an external observer but the beloved disciple’s story as his own. He can say with confidence that the beloved disciple saw and believed either because he himself is the beloved disciple or because his account rests on the beloved disciple’s testimony (cf. the anonymous eyewitness testimony mentioned in 19:35). It is likely that even the description of the placement of the strips of linen and the burial cloth which had been around Jesus’ head, though introduced in connection with Peter (vv. 6–7), actually rests on the beloved disciple’s report. He and Peter both saw it, but he is the one “who testifies to these things and who wrote them down” (21:24). He is the storyteller, and the entire scene is viewed through his eyes.

But what exactly did the beloved disciple believe? And was his belief based simply on the fact that Jesus’ body was gone, or on the precise arrangement of the linen wrappings and headcloth described so carefully in verses 6–7? The most plausible answer to the first question is that he believed Jesus had returned to the Father, just as he said he would (cf. 14:29: “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe”). The basis of his belief was the simple fact that Jesus’ body had disappeared. The presence of the wrappings and the headcloth served to rule out the possibility that someone had stolen the body, for what thief would carefully unwrap a corpse before carrying it off? They ruled out even a miraculous resuscitation like that of Lazarus, whom Jesus had called from his tomb with “his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face” (11:44). The mention of the headcloth in particular may be intended to recall the Lazarus story, but it is doubtful that the exact position of the headcloth in relation to the linen wrappings has any significance beyond an eyewitness’s attention to detail.

Though the faith of the beloved disciple is valid faith and his testimony is a valid testimony, it is not quite the fully developed resurrection faith of the Christian church—for two reasons. First, it is based solely on a word of Jesus, not on the prophecies of scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead (v. 9; contrast the disciples’ postresurrection faith, based according to 2:22 on “the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken”); in Luke’s terms, the beloved disciple’s mind had not yet been opened to understand from scripture that “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day” (Luke 24:45–46; cf. 24:25–27). Second, the beloved disciple, unlike Mary and unlike the disciples as a group (cf. vv. 18, 25), had not yet seen the Lord. The risen Jesus was for him an absent Jesus, for what he saw was that Jesus was not in the tomb. Though formally he saw and believed, his actual experience matches the experience of “those who have not seen and yet have believed” Jesus (cf. v. 29).

Mary’s story resumes after Peter and the beloved disciple went back to their respective lodgings in Jerusalem (cf. 16:32; 19:27). The narrative presupposes that she had followed them from where they had been staying to the tomb, and now she was alone again, outside the tomb crying (v. 11). Finally she looked into the tomb as the beloved disciple had done (cf. v. 5) and saw something that he, as far as we are told, did not see: two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot (v. 12). This second experience of Mary, even more than her initial discovery of the open tomb, corresponds to that of the women as a group in the synoptic Gospels (cf. Mark 16:5, “they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side”; Matt. 28:2, “an angel of the Lord came down from heaven”; Luke 24:4, “suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them”). The mention of two angels recalls Luke in particular, but what happens next is closest in structure to Matthew. Mary Magdalene is addressed first by the two angels and then by the risen Jesus:

Angels	Jesus
Woman, why are you crying? (v. 13a)	Woman, … why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for? (v. 15a).
Mary	Mary
They have taken my Lord away, … and I don’t know where they have put him (v. 13b).	Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him (v. 15b).

Structurally, the exchange recalls Matthew 28:5–10, where Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph were addressed first by an angel at the tomb and then by Jesus himself. The angel said, “Do not be afraid … I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you” (Matt. 28:5–8). On their way from the tomb, the women met the risen Jesus, who echoed the angel’s words: “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me” (Matt. 28:10). Both in Matthew and in John, an encounter with an angel (or angels) at the tomb is reinforced by an encounter with Jesus himself. The main difference is that in Matthew the angel bears testimony to Jesus’ resurrection, whereas the two angels in John merely ask Mary why she is crying. Yet in John’s Gospel the very positioning of the angels one at the head and the other at the foot in the place where Jesus’ body had been (v. 12) dramatizes the testimony in Matthew, “Come and see the place where he lay” (Matt. 28:6).

Another difference between the two accounts is that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognize Jesus when he appeared to her (cf. Luke 24:15). She fulfilled the role that Jesus had envisioned for his disciples in 13:33 (“You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come”) and in 16:16 (“In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me”). He had told them that “you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy” (16:20). Now Mary was crying because she was looking for her Lord and could not find him. When he first spoke to her (v. 15), she thought it was the gardener (cf. 19:41), and when he made his identity known to her by speaking her name, her sadness was indeed turned to gladness (v. 16). Mary Magdalene, no less than the beloved disciple, here typifies the experience of all Jesus’ followers. As the “Good Shepherd,” Jesus “calls his own sheep by name,” and when he does, they “know his voice” and respond (10:3–4).

Mary responded at once with a term of recognition (Rabboni, or Teacher, v. 16), and Jesus’ immediate warning, Do not hold on to me (v. 17), presumes that at the moment of recognition she embraced him (or possibly that she “clasped his feet and worshiped him,” as in Matt. 28:9). The prohibition serves to remind her that the time for reunion has not yet come. Even though she has seen Jesus and recognized him, it is still true that “where I am going, you cannot come” (13:33). He is the departing one, and not yet the returning one. Her experience is like that of the two disciples at Emmaus who finally recognized the risen Jesus only to have him disappear immediately from their sight (Luke 24:31). Before he departs, Jesus leaves a message for his brothers (i.e., the rest of the disciples) just as he does in Matthew, but instead of summoning them to Galilee (cf. Matt. 28:10), he explains (to Mary and to them) why he now calls them his brothers (contrast 2:12 and 7:3–5, where his “brothers” are his natural brothers): I am returning [lit., “ascending”] to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God (v. 17). For the first time in the entire Gospel, God is seen as the Father of believers as well as of Jesus. He is their Father because he is Jesus’ Father. By rejoining the Father who sent him, Jesus will now establish a new and more intimate relationship with his disciples as well. From now on they will be his “brothers” and “sisters” (cf. Mark 3:35), united to him by faith and privileged, with him, to call God Father.

Mary Magdalene was to bring this good news because she was the first to have seen the Lord (v. 18; cf. v. 25). Step by step, Jesus has disclosed himself to his disciples in a series of incidents arranged to form a chiasm (i.e., a pattern that can be represented a b c b’ a’):

a Mary Magdalene looked at the tomb from the outside and saw that the stone had been moved (v. 1).

b The beloved disciple looked inside the tomb and saw the linen wrappings (v. 5).

c Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen wrappings and the headcloth arranged in a particular way (vv. 6–7).

b’ The beloved disciple entered the tomb, saw what Peter saw, and believed (v. 8).

a’ Mary Magdalene looked inside the tomb, saw two angels, and finally saw the Lord himself (vv. 11–18).

The effect of the arrangement is to emphasize the role of Mary Magdalene (and, to a lesser extent, the beloved disciple) in the story of Jesus’ resurrection. She, not Peter (cf. 1 Cor. 15:5; Luke 24:34), was the first to see the risen Jesus. The disciples are never called “the apostles” in John’s Gospel. The Greek word apostolos, “apostle,” occurs only in 13:16, in the sense of “messenger.” But Mary was a kind of “apostle to the apostles,” a messenger sent to Jesus’ gathered disciples with the good news that he was rejoining his Father—and theirs (vv. 17–18). The Lord himself was close behind his messenger and would shortly confirm the good news in person (vv. 19–23).