No one saw it coming. No one. On the Sunday following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ no one really expected what happened (or at least it they didn’t fully comprehend it). They should have. Shortly after confirming to His men that He was the Messiah, Jesus said: Mark 8:31 “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, be killed, and rise after three days.” So why, when it happened, did no one expect it?
Don’t get me wrong, the principals involved in the death, and burial of Jesus did have expectations, and I want to explore those a little bit as we celebrate the resurrection.
First, let’s look at Mary Magdalene:
John 20:1-2, 11-18
Mary was from Magdala, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Mark 16:9 tells us that when Jesus encountered her, she had seven demons inhabiting her body. Jesus drove them out and she followed Him from then on. Jesus was all she had. She stood by the cross along with three other women. When He died, something in her must have died as well. Her psyche simply could not accept the reality she was witnessing.
After Jesus was taken down and prepared for burial Mary must have followed Joseph and Nicodemus to the place where they laid His body. After the Sabbath was over, while still dark on Sunday morning, she and Mary, the mother of James of Joseph, came to the tomb to anoint His body—to complete the burial ritual that was hurriedly performed by the two men on Friday.
Matthew tells us that as they arrived a large earthquake occurred, or that’s what it seemed like, and somehow the tomb was open. John focuses only on Mary Magdalene, perhaps because she was the one with a speaking role.
But for now, all she knows is that tomb is open—which meant—what?
She runs back to tell Peter and John, who we’ll get to in a moment. She then follows them back to the tomb and after they went inside, she manages enough courage to look in. It would have been very dark in the tomb but God thought enough ahead to provide two angels in bright white clothing to show clearly that Jesus was not there.
She is crying and so the angels ask her why? Here is where we see her expectation. She tells them that someone has stolen the body of her Lord and she doesn’t know where they put Him. Dead or alive, she cannot part with Jesus. She is in a state of horrendous mourning and grief. Other gospels tell us that the angels instructed Mary that Jesus had risen from the dead. Here, John just records the voice of Jesus Himself asking a crucial question: “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
The question is important because 1. There was no need for mourning and 2. She was looking for the wrong Jesus. The Jesus she was looking for was a dead helpless body that people had “put” somewhere. In reality, of course, Jesus was alive and better than ever—and more than that, was now a source of incredible rejoicing, having paid the penalty for Mary’s sin, and everyone else so we could be alive and free forever!
She thinks that Jesus is the gardener, apparently he wasn’t dressed in bright white clothing. He looked different—the blood stains were gone, but not the scars, though they were not visible to Mary at this point. It wasn’t the sight of Jesus that broke through her expectations, it was the voice of Jesus calling out her name: “Mary.”
Peter and John
At the crucifixion of Jesus, Peter, who had denied the Lord three times, was nowhere to be found. He was cowering in fear—hiding away somewhere, filled with shame and guilt. John stood by the Lord and was given responsibility for Mary, Jesus’ mother. But after that John must have gone to where Peter was, because Mary Magdalene found them together after seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb.
She reported that Jesus’ body had been stolen, but gave no indication about a resurrection or anything. Luke’s gospel records the reaction: that it was idle tales. They did not believe the women at all. We don’t know exactly why, but the two bolted away and started running. Perhaps they worried that it was going to get light soon, and that if caught during the day, they could face the same fate as Jesus. Maybe they felt a sense of responsibility to look after the body since they were Jesus’ main men. It’s possible they felt some guilt at not having the courage to ask Pilate for the body as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had done.
So when they arrived (John having outraced Peter) John stayed at the entrance and allowed Peter to go in first. What he saw was crucial. The worry was that grave robbers or the religious leaders had made off with the body. But the way the grave clothes were arranged and the head covering neatly folded—could not have been done by any grave robber. The clothes were not in a messy disarray but neat, as if someone had literally just passed through them.
Up until this point, a resurrected Lord was not on the plate of possibilities. But John writes that when he saw the grave clothes he “saw and believed.” So it now dawns on John that Jesus had not been stolen but had risen. It was incomplete belief. John writes that they had not put all the pieces together of the biblical prophecies concerning the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. That would come later.
Conclusions
Mary had preconceived ideas of what Jesus would be like and was very hard to convince. It took Jesus approaching her and personally touching her life by His Word to make the difference. What preconceived notions do you have about Jesus? If they come from what you read about Him in the culture, you are probably mistaken. Let Him speak to you personally.
It took John personally seeing the remnants of the burial to convince him. This happened so that John and Peter could be eye witnesses. Jesus was not resuscitated—and they didn’t just make up the story of His resurrection. What would it mean to you that Jesus was actually resurrected? Would it cause you to listen to His Words and His claims as Savior more closely? It should.
Why is all of this so crucial?
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most pivotal moment in human history. It meant that Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins took—it worked. His freedom from the grave means our freedom from death if, and only if, we cling to Him.
It means that we can be confident that what Jesus started in us He will complete.
It means you no longer have to fear death.
But maybe you, like Mary, are hard to convince. I would encourage you to 1. Hear the words of Jesus in the gospels and then 2. To listen to Him speaking to your heart.
Maybe, like John, you want to believe but you want all of the pieces put together in a nice neat package. My encouragement to you is to have patience. See what the eye witnesses have laid out, see and believe, then ask for further wisdom as you get to know Him better.
For believers:
Jesus meets us where we can best relate. For Mary it was on a relational level. What she needed was to see Jesus because she had come to rely on that relationship so deeply and it had been severed. Her passion around that relationship was pretty powerful. For her to see the grave clothes resting in a certain way would not have been meaningful—she needed to see the man, and she did.
John, on the other hand would not have had as meaningful experience as Mary had he seen the risen Lord prior to seeing the empty tomb. Questions might have remained: did Jesus come back to life, was He simply resuscitated? John needed to be touched on a cognitive level…seeing the grave clothes showed him logically that Jesus had been resurrected.
During this Easter season, know that Jesus has just the right method to reach you just where you are in a way that is most meaningful to you. Let Him speak or show you what you need to restore or reinvigorate in your own relationship with Him.
