Last goodbyes are difficult. Most goodbyes are only temporary. We usually expect to see our loved ones again. However, last goodbyes are forever – the final words of a relationship.
Death is the ultimate ending. The last goodbye offered to a dying loved one is the most painful goodbye of all. It is so final, so complete. It officially embraces the end of a relationship. The curtain comes down; the story of lives shared together is over.
But, what if endings are never final? What if there is more to the story? What if the end – even the ultimate end of death – is not truly the end, but a new beginning?
This promise of life beyond death is the hope of resurrection. If resurrection is true, death is not the end. Instead, death is a new beginning. Last goodbyes are only an illusion – merely a temporary transition. The end of the story is not the end. Death is not the final word. Life is!
It is impossible to overstate the staggering significance of Jesus’ resurrection for those who believe – and the seeming foolishness to those who reject it. For believers, the hope of the resurrection is the centerpiece of faith. For agnostics and unbelievers, resurrection is a pipe dream – the stuff of fantasies and fairy tales. To them, the resurrection accounts sound like they should begin with, “Once upon a time,” and conclude with “and they lived happily ever after.” It just seems too good to be true!
And yet, this is what we embrace when we confess, “Jesus is risen!” We proclaim that a new force has been let loose in creation – a new life, new light, new hope, new love. That which Israel anticipated at the end of history has broken into the middle with astounding implications for the present and the future! The life of the new age has begun. Eternity is in our midst. And it all began on the first Easter – the first day of forever.
The Discovery of the Empty Tomb
Our story (John 20:1-18) begins and ends with Mary Magdalene. Despite the recent interest generated by the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, we know very little about Mary from the Bible. In fact, John 20:1-18 is the only extended narrative about her in all four Gospels. Before meeting Jesus, Luke records that she had been possessed by “seven demons” (Luke 8:2). In ancient culture this could refer to either a profligately immoral life or extreme mental illness.[1]
We can assume by her reactions in this story that she arrives at Jesus’ tomb exhausted from a sleepless night spent in deep grief and heavy weeping. Her profound sense of loss is intensified by her discovery of the empty tomb. Her initial conclusion is that grave robbers have raided Jesus’ tomb. Initially, this must have felt like a cruel twist of fate. Hadn’t she suffered enough?
It is important to note that the empty tomb did not prove the resurrection or even suggest it to Mary. Far from it. She interpreted the removal of the stone as a sign of robbery, not a sign of resurrection. She was no more prone to believe in resurrection than we are.[2]
Upon her discovery, Mary runs to tell Peter and John, who describes himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). Upon hearing the news, Peter and John race to the tomb ahead of Mary.[3] When they arrive, they examine the tomb more closely than Mary. They are surprised to discover the unwrapped cloths laid out in the shape of a body “like a collapsed balloon when the air has gone out of it.”[4]
Something did not seem right. This did not appear to be the work of grave robbers. But the giveaway detail was “the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself” (John 20:7). From this clue, “John decides that robbery is out of the question. Grave robbers would not have unwrapped the corpse. And even if by some strange perversity they had, it is difficult to imagine them taking the time to neatly fold the head kerchief and set it aside.”[5]
The scene puzzles Peter and inspires John. Curiously, the text reads that John “saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:8b-9). What exactly did John believe? He did not quite believe in the resurrection yet. He believed, but he obviously did not completely understand or grasp what had occurred.
The strange saying about John demonstrates that his faith is in formation. It is not complete. It is fledgling, grasping to make sense of the situation. Perhaps he has just begun to experience the first stirrings of hope that something truly special has happened to Jesus. Perhaps he is telling us the story of the birth of his belief. Regardless, he will not completely understand until he filters his experience through the lens of sacred scripture.[6]
In spite of this new stirring of faith, John and Peter’s participation in our story ends abruptly: “Then the disciples returned to their homes” (John 20:10).[7]
The Revelation of the Resurrected Jesus
Peter and John see the empty tomb and curious clues that begin to arouse faith. Mary, however, is granted the first sight of Jesus. After Peter and John’s departure, Mary stays behind to grieve outside the tomb. While weeping, she bends over to look into the tomb and sees “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet” (John 20:12). The angels ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Her answer reveals that she still believes that Jesus’ body has been stolen by grave-robbers: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:13b). After saying this, she turns around and sees someone whom she assumes is “the gardener.” He asks her the same question and an additional one: “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” (John 20:15).[8] Still determined to recover Jesus’ body, Mary begs, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15).
With one word – “Mary” – Jesus removes the scales from her eyes.[9] In a poignant moment of recognition, Mary’s sorrow is transformed into joy. With one word – “Rabboni!” – she proclaims her deep relief and overflowing love. “The term Rabboni combines the deep reverence for a person (rabbi) with an affectionate intimacy (probably something like “my dear Teacher”).”[10] Mary runs to Jesus and holds him close.
This Hallmark moment turns into a new lesson from the Teacher. If this were a Disney movie, we can imagine that this big hug would be followed by these words from Jesus: “It’s great to see you, Mary. Now, go find the others. I’m coming home!” But Jesus says something much more profound and mysterious: “Do not hold on to me, because 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’” (John 20:17).
Why can’t Mary cling to Jesus? It is not because he is incorporeal. Jesus is not a ghost, or a purely spiritual being, who cannot be touched. This would hardly make sense in light of the upcoming account with Thomas. Furthermore, it appears that she is already touching Jesus, and he commands that she stop doing so.
Mary can’t cling because – in light of the resurrection – she must now learn to know Jesus in a new way. Something extraordinary has occurred. This is the start of a new beginning – a new creation. Mary’s relationship with Jesus cannot be resumed on old terms. Easter is not a return to the past, but the opening up of a new future. The good old days are gone; the future is now – in the words of an 80’s pop song – so bright she’s got to wear shades.
The new hope is not true for Mary only, but for the world. Tom Wright says it well,
Up to this point Jesus has spoken about God as ‘the father,’ or ‘the father who sent me’, or ‘my father’. He has called his followers ‘disciples’, ‘servants’ and ‘friends’. Now all that has changed. Feel the force of verse 17: “Go and say to my brothers, I am going up to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’
Something has altered, decisively. Something has been achieved. A new relationship has sprung to life like a sudden spring flower. The disciples are welcomed into a new world: a world where they can know God the way Jesus knew God, where they can be intimate children with their father.
They can be, in other words, true Israelites at last. Israel’s calling was to be God’s son, God’s firstborn (Exodus 4:22).[11]
Until this point in John, only Jesus is called the son of God. Now, his disciples are invited to share in his relationship to the Father. What is true of Jesus’ relationship with God is now true of the disciples’ relationship with God. Jesus’ disciples share the Father’s love, life, and fellowship. As John promised in his prologue, Jesus has given “his own” the right to become children of God (John 1:12-13). They are not just disciples, servants, or even friends – they are brothers!
In light of this new beginning, Mary is commissioned by Jesus to witness what she has seen. “She is the first apostle, the apostle to the apostles: the first to bring the news that the tomb was empty.”[12]
The Beginning of New Creation
John has done something extraordinary in his Gospel. He has retold the story of creation in respect to the resurrection of Jesus. This has been the trajectory of his Gospel from the beginning.
He begins his gospel by retelling the story of Genesis reconsidered in light of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. He takes us back before the beginning to the shared life between God and the Word – the Father and Jesus – before first creation.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-5, 14)
Just as the first creation was produced by means of the Word, so the new creation is produced by means of the Word made flesh. This new beginning – new creation – that arises from the old is at the heart of our story. John – along with the other three gospels – emphasizes the fact that resurrection begins “on the first day of the week” (John 20:1). It is noteworthy that the gospel authors specify the first day of the week rather than the third day of Jesus’ passion predictions (e.g., Matthew 16:21).
Through the use of “first day” language, John intends us to see the allusion to Genesis. Tom Wright says it well,
John declares from the start, with the obvious allusion to Genesis 1.1, that his book is about the new creation in Jesus. In chapter 20 he makes the same point by stressing that Easter was ‘the first day of the week’ (20.1, 19; when John underlines things like this he clearly wants us to ponder the point). On the sixth day of the creation narrative, humankind was created in the divine image; on the sixth day of the last week of Jesus’ life, John has Pilate declare, ‘Behold the man!’ The seventh day is the day of rest for the creator; in John, it is the day when Jesus rests in the tomb. Easter is the start of the new creation.[13]
Once we read the narrative in this way, other allusions arise. “Mary comes to the tomb while it is still dark, and discovers the new light and life which has defeated the darkness.”[14]
Consider who Mary mistakes Jesus for: a gardener! “This is the new creation. Jesus is the beginning of it. Remember Pilate: ‘Here’s the man!’ Here he is: the new Adam, the gardener, charged with bringing the chaos of God’s creation into new order, into flower, into fruitfulness. He has come to uproot the thorns and thistles and replace them with blossoms and harvests.”[15]
A new way has been opened through the new creation of the Word made flesh. The Jesus who ascends to the Father does not return in the same way he had come forth. He returns with glorified human nature. Unlike original creation, God has forever altered his status with humankind. Through the incarnation, God in Christ has forever united humanity with deity in the person of Christ. “The Word, who was always to be the point at which creator and creation came together in one, is now, in the resurrection, the point at which creator and new creation are likewise one.”[16] By participation in his life by grace, we enter into the first day of forever!
One final Old Testament allusion remains: It is very likely that there is great significance in the position the angels take upon the grave slab. With one angel at either side of the slab, they “function like the cherubim at either end of the mercy-seat of the ark (Exo. 25:18); the true god, John may be suggesting, is to be found in the gap.”[17] The mercy-seat sat atop the Ark of the Covenant that rested in the Holiest of Holies in Israel’s temple. To an ancient Israelite, the place of God’s greatest presence and fullest forgiveness was in this place. Once a year, one person – the High Priest – would enter into the Holiest of Holies and make atonement for Israel’s sins. Now, the place of God’s greatest presence and fullest forgiveness is found in the person of Christ – our temple, our ark, our mercy-seat, our priest, our sacrifice.
This is the good news we declare: Easter is the first day of forever, the beginning of new creation, the first day of God’s new week. Like Mary, our sorrow is transformed into joy. Death is not the end. Last goodbyes are temporary. There is more to the story, for every ending in a cosmos impregnated with Jesus’ resurrection glory holds the seed of a new beginning. “And they lived happily ever after” is not too far off the mark, if resurrection is true!
Resurrection changes everything. It transforms every end into a new beginning!
[1] Mary first appears in John’s Gospel at the foot of the cross with the other Marys (John 19:25). Outside of this, John tells us nothing of Mary.
[2] Tom Wright argues that “nobody expected the Messiah to be raised from the dead, for the simple reason that nobody in Judaism at the time expected a Messiah who would die, especially one who would die shamefully and violently.” Robert B. Stewart, The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006), 19.
[3] “They run, too. (There is more running in these verses than in the rest of the gospels put together.)” Tom Wright, John for Everyone: Part 2, Chapters 11-21 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002), 141.
[4] Wright, John for Everyone, 141.
[5] Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Navpress, 2006), 22.
[6] John is a prototype of subsequent generations who will believe without seeing (John 20:29). He comes to faith without seeing Jesus.
[7] John and Peter’s participation in this story helps to establish two or more witnesses to this event.
[8] “What are you looking for?” echoes John 1:38. “Jesus invites those who seek him to reflect on and be ready to expand their understanding of what it is they are looking for?” Lamar Williamson, Preaching the Gospel of John: Proclaiming the Living Word (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 278.
[9] Perhaps an allusion to the shepherd who knows his sheep by name and the sheep who know the shepherd’s voice (John 10:14).
[10] Peterson, Living the Resurrection, 23.
[11] Wright, John for Everyone, 144-145.
[12] Wright, John for Everyone, 140.
[13] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003), 667.
[14] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 667.
[15] Wright, John for Everyone, 146.
[16] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 667.
[17] Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 668.
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© Richard J. Vincent, 2006
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