The Resurrection Of Our Lord
JOHN 20:1-9 (Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8)
It was the first day of the week, Sunday to us, a workday for the Jews of Jesus’ time. One of his most faithful disciples, Mary of Magdala (Magdalene), came to the tomb of Jesus very early, so early that John writes, “while it was still dark.” The Sabbath rest, which excluded travel beyond a limited distance, was now over. Time to be out and about. Magdalene noticed that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. Many tombs were carved into porous rock on the side of a hill. A groove was carved into the rock at the bottom of the tomb entrance. A flat circular rock would be placed into this groove in which the rock could be rolled to close or open the entrance to the tomb. These rocks or stones were quite heavy. The weight of the stone explains the concern of the women expressed in Mark 16:4, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?”
Mary Magdalene immediately ran back to where the disciples of Jesus were concealed. They were afraid of arrest for being followers of a man executed as a king supposedly in rebellion against the Roman authorities in the Holy Land. She finds Simon Peter “and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.” Is this beloved disciple John the son of Zebedee, brother of James? That is the usual interpretation, but John of Zebedee is not the only possibility. The Gospel of John never names the so-called “Beloved Disciple.” Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, brother of Martha and Mary, is another possibility. In John 11, the message Martha and Mary send to Jesus reads, “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” Again, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” In verse 11 Jesus calls the brother “our friend Lazarus.” In verse 36 the people witness Jesus’ tears over Lazarus, and say, “See how he loved him.”
There is no valid reason to exclude Lazarus from the Last Supper. Leonardo da Vinci is not the final word on who was present and who was not. The apostles were family men and were prob-ably accompanied by their families to the Passover Feast in Jerusalem. The narratives of the Last Supper were highly stylized in the gospels and were written forty to sixty-five years later. In the other three gospels Mary Magdalene is accompanied to the tomb of Jesus by one or two or a group of women, but in the Gospel of John she goes to the tomb alone. Even John’s version betrays knowledge of more than one woman at the tomb that “Sunday” morning, since Mary is described saying, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have placed him.” John however excludes from his story “the other Mary” (Matthew), or “Mary the mother of James, and Salome” (Mark), or “Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them” (Luke). By the time John wrote his gospel, (the nineties of the first century A.D.), traditions about Mary of Magdala had developed, while memory of the other women at the tomb had faded.
After Magdalene’s report, “Peter with the other disciple came outside and went toward the tomb.” With a hint of humor John notes, “They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter….”
That the other disciple outran Peter invites speculation and humor. One commentator suggested that the “other disciple” could run faster because he was unmarried! (He always got away when pursued?) We know Peter was married, so would Sirach 25:23 apply? There we are told that weak knees, (which would certainly slow a man down), are signs of an unhappy marriage. We are also confronted with 1 Corinthians 7:32-33, where Paul points out that the unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, “how to please the Lord.” Would this cause an unmarried disciple to run faster? Paul adds that the married man is anxious to please his wife rather than the Lord. Thus Paul implies that marriage impedes pursuit of the Lord. The opposite is often true.
Leaving levity aside, the author may be illustrating the greater love of “the Beloved Disciple.” He was at the side of Jesus at the Last Supper and at the foot of the cross in the Gospel of John. If love makes the heart beat faster, it can also get the feet moving faster. John has already described the Beloved Disciple closer to Jesus than Peter and will do so again at the seashore in chapter 21. John next tells us that this other disciple stooped down, (Tomb entrances could be close to the ground.), and looked into the tomb, but did not go in. Simon Peter, coming along a bit later, did go in. He was after all the leader of the apostolic group. More importantly, Peter would become the primary proclaiming witness for the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.
Peter noticed the linen burial shroud lying there. The napkin, (Greek sudarion), which had been wrapped around Jesus’ head, was rolled up near by. John intends the presence of shroud and head-covering to be evidence that Jesus was alive again. If the body had been stolen, thieves would not have stopped to unwrap the body, nor would they have rolled up the sudarion (literally, a sweat cloth). The other disciple enters the tomb, “and he saw and believed.” The one whom Jesus loved is the first to believe, while Peter, at least for now, remained clueless. What John noted in 2:17, 22, he now repeats. The disciples only later came to an understanding of the Scriptures that Jesus must rise from the dead. Peter was first in dignity, but love was first in faith.
