20 20:1Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 20:2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 20:3So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 20:4Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 20:5And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 20:6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 20:7and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 20:8Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 20:9for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 20:10Then the disciples went back to their homes.
11 20:11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 20:12And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 20:13They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 20:14Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 20:15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 20:16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 20:17Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 20:18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
Arguments can be made defending the notion that Jesus was raised from the dead, and those arguments have their place. What John gives us in 20:1–18 is more testimony than argument, more narrative than exposition. Arguments are aimed at our reason, at our heads. Testimony and narrative, on the other hand, often work on our gut-level emotions, at our sense of how things are—our senses that work when we are not reasoning through a syllogism but responding to experiences. John testifies in this chapter that Jesus was raised from the dead. John presents the world as the kind of place where a dead man, an executed man who was certifiably dead, comes striding out of the sepulcher to speak peace to his people.
Perhaps they were shocked and discouraged, ashamed of themselves for leaving Jesus when his hour came, concerned about whether the authorities would press the case against them. Yet Mary Magdalene cannot stay away. Luke 8:2 tells us that seven demons had gone out of her. She stood by the mother of Jesus as he died (John 19:25). And now she comes to the tomb in the pre-dawn darkness of the first day of the week.
Mary Magdalene is likely acting at a visceral level. It seems she is drawn to the tomb to weep and pray, and probably has not much of a plan beyond that. She is so shocked by the fact that the stone has been rolled away (20:1) that she runs to Peter and the beloved disciple, likely John himself (v. 2). Her words to the effect that someone has moved the body of Jesus to an unknown place show that Jesus’ resurrection is not on her radar. She thinks someone has taken away the body of Jesus. She probably regards the Jewish or Roman authorities, the coalition of crucifiers, as the likeliest candidates.
This is a woman who was one of “many” who traveled with Jesus and provided for him “out of their means” (Luke 8:1–3). She almost certainly would have heard him speak of how he would be killed but then rise on the third day, yet from the time of her arrival at the tomb to her flight to Peter and John (John 20:1–2), and then in her return to the tomb and lingering there (vv. 11–15), she has only one theory: someone has removed the body of Jesus. She does not appear to have conceptualized the possibility that he had been raised from the dead.
Peter and the beloved disciple both start running for the tomb, but the beloved disciple outpaces Peter and arrives first (vv. 3–4). He stoops to look, sees the linen grave clothes, but does not enter (v. 5). Peter arrives and—unsurprisingly, given what we know of him—enters the tomb (v. 6). There he sees the grave clothes and the face cloth, which has been folded up and placed by itself (v. 7). At that point the beloved disciple also enters the tomb, and, having seen, he believes (v. 8).
What did he believe? What the beloved disciple saw in that tomb convinced him that Jesus had been raised from the dead, as verse 9 makes clear. John then explains that to this point he and Peter, and probably the other disciples as well, had not yet processed the OT indications that it was necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead. What Scripture had they not yet understood? We saw in 2:17 that the disciples remembered Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for your house will consume me” (cf. comment on John 2:13–17), and we saw that Jesus had invoked the visitation of God’s wrath at the destruction of the temple and the three-day motif when he said in 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John then explained in 2:22, “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
John does not cite a particular Scripture that the resurrection brought into focus for him, likely because he has in view broad themes and many texts, such as those related to the fulfillment of the exodus pattern in the death of Jesus (cf. comment on 19:36–37) and the fulfillment of the righteous, suffering servant-shepherd-prophet (cf. comments on 12:37–43 [at v. 38]; 13:18–20 [at v. 18]; 15:18–25 [at v. 25]; 19:23–24 [at v. 24]; 19:28–30 [at v. 28]; 19:36–37 [at v. 37]).
John 20:10 states, “then the disciples went away again to them” (AT). Since we find the disciples together in one place in verse 19, verse 10 does not seem to indicate that the disciples dispersed to their homes in their various cities of origin. Rather, this verse seems to indicate that Peter and John (“the disciples”) returned to “them,” which seems to refer to other disciples.
John “shows and tells” in these ten verses. He shows Mary coming first to the tomb and testifying that the body of Jesus is not there. The testimony of women was not highly regarded in John’s context, so if someone were inventing a fictional account to deceive people, he would not make a woman his first witness. Further, if an account were being invented, it probably would not cast the disciples of Jesus in such a bad light. They are surprised to find that Jesus did what he said he would do (i.e., rise from the dead), and they are very slow to understand both Jesus and the Scriptures (cf. Luke 24:25). There is a paradoxical validation of the historical reliability of this account in its weakness. Mary, a woman, is a weak witness. Peter and John, surprised and slow to understand, do not come off as great champions of the cause. As eyewitness testimony, however, the narrative carries the ring of truth.
John shows exactly what happened in order to let the historical facts stand for themselves. The disciples were as elated by the resurrection of Jesus as they had been devastated by his crucifixion. The crucifixion crushed them; the resurrection surprised them. This turning point is on display in the Gospel of John: the resurrection of Jesus is the fulcrum of history, the moment when a crucified failure is revealed as the triumphant King. The resurrection of Jesus testifies that God has once and for all triumphed over death, and nothing will ever again be as it once was.
20:11–18 Mary at the Tomb. Peter and John left the tomb to return to the other disciples (v. 10; cf. vv. 2, 19), but Mary lingers at the tomb, weeping and stooping to look into it (v. 11). There she sees two angels where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the feet (v. 12). It is as though the place where the body of Jesus was laid in the tomb has become the mercy seat in the Most Holy Place, overshadowed by cherubim on either side (cf. Ex. 25:10–20). Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest of Israel took the blood of a slain bull and goat, entered the Most Holy Place, and sprinkled the blood over the mercy seat to make atonement for the Holy Place, cleansing the tabernacle (Lev. 16:14–16). Now these two angels station themselves at the fulfillment of the mercy seat, where the true blood of atonement was sprinkled, blood that cleanses what the tabernacle and temple symbolized: the whole world.
If it is correct that the angels place themselves where they do in order to show that the empty tomb has fulfilled the role of the Most Holy Place, then when Mary looks in and interacts with them, she goes where only the high priest could go under the old covenant. It is as though this scene enacts the way that the crucified body of Jesus has opened the new and better way for us to go behind the veil (Heb. 10:20), entering the presence of God.
Whereas the high priest had to do exactly what was prescribed “so that he does not die” (Lev. 16:13), the death and resurrection of Jesus have made it so that Mary interacts with these angels in complete safety. They ask why she weeps, and her response shows that she still has not processed the resurrection but is thinking that the corpse of Jesus has been moved (John 20:13).
Mary then turns and sees Jesus but does not recognize him (v. 14). This would seem to indicate that the resurrected body of Jesus was more like the body of an ordinary human being than like that of an angel: Mary seems to have known that she was speaking to angels in verses 12–13 (they are called angels in v. 12), but when she starts talking with Jesus in verses 14–15, she thinks he is the gardener.
Jesus asks her why she weeps and whom she seeks. John relates that Mary thought he was the gardener, and she asks if he has moved the corpse of Jesus (v. 15). He has, of course, but not in the way her question assumes!
In verse 16 Jesus does not cause his glory to be manifest in a theophany to reveal himself to Mary; he speaks her name. When he does so, she recognizes him and names him as her teacher. That John chooses to include the Semitic term, Rabboni, which he then translates, seems to add a note of intimacy, devotion, and affection to the way that Mary addresses Jesus.
The reply of Jesus to Mary in verse 17 holds her at arm’s length even as it beckons his people near. He tells Mary not to cling to him because he has not yet ascended to the Father. He seems to be saying that his work is not yet done; before long, he will ascend, so Mary should not think she could hold onto him in a permanent way. When he sends Mary to his “brothers,” however, he shows that he holds no hostility toward them and once again elevates their status. The disciples of Jesus had abandoned him; Peter had denied him. Nevertheless, he sends Mary to them and refers to them as his brothers. In 15:15, he had said they were no longer slaves but friends, and here in 20:17 he draws them another degree closer, calling them brothers. With this, he says that his Father is their Father; his God is their God. These statements hint that the death and resurrection of Jesus have made it so that those who trust Jesus share the same standing before God the Father that he himself enjoys.
1 Greek his
2 Or Hebrew
1 See, e.g., N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).
2 Each of the Gospels notes that the resurrection of Jesus took place on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1;
John 20:1,
19). Luke states that “on the first day of the week” Christians “gathered together to break bread” (
Acts 20:7), and Paul instructs the Corinthians to set money aside “on the first day of every week” (1 Cor. 16:2). John refers to “the Lord’s day” in Revelation 1:10, and the fact that he does not need to spell out which day he means indicates that he assumed his audience would know: the first day of the week. Taken together, these statements indicate that the day of the week on which Jesus rose from the dead was so significant for the early church that they referred to it as “the Lord’s day” and came together on that day to worship the risen Christ in song, to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and to hear the word of God read and taught. From this evidence of the earliest Christians in the NT, Christians around the world and across history have typically gathered to sing God’s praise, to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and to receive instruction from Scripture on the first day of the week.
3 The ESV and NIV render Hebraisti as “Aramaic,” while the NASB renders it as “Hebrew.” The terms are similar, but in this case there are forms in the Aramaic Targums very similar to what we find here in John, indicating that the Aramaic dialect spoken at the time is likely what he references with the term Hebraisti.