Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped round Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (He still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
It is at first sight a puzzle: on the first Easter morning, all that the apostle John sees in Jesus’ tomb are the linen strips in which His body had been wrapped. And yet he saw and believed – believed, that is, that Jesus must have risen from the dead.
How did he reach such a conclusion on such apparently scant evidence?
It seems to me the likeliest explanation is that it rang a massive bell for him. He’d seen this before. Back in chapter 11, the disciples accompany Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus, a man who’d been dead for four days. Jesus calls him to come out – alive! This is what happened next:
The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in strips of linen, and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (John 11:44)
Discarded grave clothes, from the head and the body! So when John hears that Jesus’ body has disappeared and sees the same thing, he realises there may be a better explanation than that it has been stolen. It’s happened again – a man raised from the dead!
(Note in passing John’s emphasis: he saw and believed. Seeing leading to believing is a major emphasis in John’s gospel: indeed, he loves words like see, witness and testimony, as if presenting an evidential case for Jesus. Not for John is faith a leap in the dark!)
Not, of course, that this was yet a full understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. That would only come later, when John and others had seen the risen Jesus, and also understood the big picture of the Bible: that it was always God’s plan that the Messiah He would send would suffer but then rise. This is an explanation without which even the resurrection appearances don’t make full sense. At this stage, John tells us, he did not yet understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.
But John did see enough to bring him to a preliminary conclusion. And the fact that he reached it without thinking of what the Scriptures foretold indicates that it was entirely unexpected: there was no confirmation bias here!
This Easter Sunday we’ll be looking at this very passage, and then how the risen Jesus appeared to Mary, and then to the disciples, and then to Thomas. In the evening we’ll be taking a fresh look at the evidence for the resurrection.
Happy Easter!
