John 20:1-18 | The Resurrection
Let’s open the Bible now to John 20:1-18
We’re at the end of John’s gospel. We’ve seen Jesus's death and burial, and today, we see his resurrection.
Let’s read it now.
The Resurrection
1 Now 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 So 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 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They 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 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus 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 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus 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 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
This is God’s word.
Introduction
If John’s gospel were a typical biography, all we’d have left at the end would be a few final words about Jesus. Instead, we find something anything but typical. The story doesn’t end; it begins anew. We find a new hope, a new dawn, a new day, an entirely new era.
This new era is why John wrote the book. Jesus's resurrection is the foundation of the Christian faith. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” But he has been raised! We are not still in our sins! That’s the whole point.
The resurrection ensures our salvation. In Romans 4:25, Paul said Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” If our transgressions were the reason for his death, then his resurrection is the reason for our justification. In other words, Jesus’s resurrection confirms that his payment for our sins is sufficient and wholly accepted by God. We are free and forgiven in Christ from all unrighteousness.
Jesus’s resurrection is the exclamation point ushering in the new chapter of God’s story, the new age of new life where all who believe receive glory in heaven with Jesus, where we will experience in resurrected bodies the ultimate love, peace, and joy, where everything sad comes untrue, and where we are loved forever by the one whom the Bible says is love (1 John 4:8).
At the end of his gospel, John wants to leave us with the reality and the hope of the resurrection. So, today, we’ll consider those two purposes.
The reality of Jesus’s resurrection.
The hope of Jesus’s resurrection.
First, the reality of Jesus’s resurrection.
The Reality of Jesus’s Resurrection
Three days after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene arrived at Jesus’s tomb early in the morning on the first day of the week. The newness of the day and the newness of the week point to the newness of the age Jesus is ushering into the world with his resurrection. Something new is happening. It’s not a normal morning. It’s not a normal week. A new day is dawning.
Now, Mary didn’t go to the tomb looking for a resurrection, and when she got there, she didn’t even consider it a possibility. She saw the stone had been taken away from the tomb, and her heart did not soar; it sank. Mary uses the word “taken” three times—here in verse 1 and again in verses 2 and 12. “Taken” was the narrative running in her mind. Jesus had been taken. Her Lord was gone.
Heartbroken all over again, she ran back to the disciples and told them the devastating news. Peter and John ran to the tomb. John arrived first, looked inside, and saw the linen cloths lying there. Then, Peter went inside the tomb and saw the clothes as well, and he saw an additional detail—the face cloth that had been on Jesus’s head folded up by itself.
In his book, Hope in Times of Fear, Tim Keller points out that the Greek word used for the word “saw” is important in this passage. When Mary “saw” that the stone had been removed, John used the typical Greek word for sight. But when Peter and John “saw,” John used a Greek word that means to reason, theorize, ponder. Keller says, “In other words, they were not merely glancing. They began theorizing about the condition of the grave clothes—they began to posit hypotheses in their minds that could account for what they saw. This is the same reasoning process that a scientist uses in seeking a working hypothesis to explain a phenomenon.” [Keller, page 89]
So, John is taking us on a scientific-method-type journey. What happened in that tomb?
The details about the linen cloth matter. They saw that the linen cloths weren’t disturbed. Dead bodies were wrapped in long strips of cloth. But Jesus’s cloths were just lying there without a body inside.
Now, we have to wrestle with this. There are many proposals about what happened to Jesus.
First, there is what I call the Mostly Dead Hypothesis. Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. He somehow survived the beating, crucifixion, and spear thrust into his side. He didn’t resurrect from the dead; he just recovered from injuries. In other words, he was only mostly dead. Now, thanks to the classic movie The Princess Bride, we know there is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. As Miracle Max explained to Inigo Montoya, “Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, there's usually only one thing you can do—go through his clothes and look for loose change.”
Jesus was all dead. But if Jesus was only mostly dead, there is still a problem. When Miracle Max revived Westly, he couldn’t stand or walk. Andre the Giant had to push him in a wheelbarrow and carry him around. But the mostly dead Jesus had enough strength to unwrap himself and move the stone?
A more realistic and biblical example: when Jesus raised Lazarus in John 11, he told the people to “unbind him and let him go.” Lazarus was raised to life with enough strength to walk out of the grave and yet even he couldn’t unwrap himself. He hadn’t been beaten and crucified. No spear went through his side. Jesus was in far worse pre-death condition. But the mostly dead Jesus had enough strength to unwrap himself and move the stone?
I don’t think so. Jesus was all dead. Professional executioners saw to that.
Then there is Mary’s Hypothesis: someone took Jesus’s body. Maybe grave robbers went through and looked for loose change, as it were. But why not take the one thing valuable in the tomb—the linen cloths? Or maybe his friends took him. But why would they unwrap him in the grave and presumably take him away naked? Wouldn’t that only further degrade and disrespect him?
Regardless, the Greek text doesn’t allow for the unwrapping hypothesis anyway. The Greek word John used for “lying there” is used for things kept in careful order. In other words, the cloths weren’t disturbed at all. They were lying there in the same shape and form as they had been wrapped around Jesus. The only difference was there was no body inside. It was as if Jesus passed through them and left them behind. Apparently, death not only could not bind him as it had Lazarus; it couldn’t even hold him down.
The final hypothesis I’ll mention is the Folklore Hypothesis. Jesus didn’t really rise, but the story of his resurrection grew to be considered true over time, like a piece of folklore. His followers were so heartbroken that he was dead that his resurrection became true to them in some spiritual way as they sensed his presence guiding them. After all, weren’t those people less scientific than we are? Weren’t they more open to the idea of a bodily resurrection because they just didn’t know as much as we know now? C.S. Lewis calls that “chronological snobbery.”
Besides, it’s not historically accurate. In his book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright spends a lot of time proving that no ancient society had a category for bodily resurrection. It was discussed, but the verdict was clear: it simply did not happen. It wasn’t possible. Everyone knew that. Even among the Jewish people of the time, it was nuanced. Of the various sects of Judaism, the Sadducees didn’t believe in a resurrection at all. We’re not sure if the Essenes did or not. The Pharisees did, but they didn’t teach anything remotely like what happened that first Easter Sunday. They taught a resurrection at the end of time but not in the middle of it. When Jesus stood with Martha outside Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She believed in a last-day resurrection, but no one had a category for a resurrection in the middle of history. Yet that’s exactly what happened in the resurrection of Jesus.
The point is that no one thought it could or would happen. That’s why Peter and John had to think through what they saw. If they already had a category for bodily resurrection, why wouldn’t they jump right to that conclusion? It’s not that they got to the tomb and said, “Oh, yeah, of course Jesus is alive. We knew that was going to happen.” No, they didn’t know that at all.
Now, it wasn’t because the Bible was silent on the matter. John says in verse 9 that “as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” That’s an admission that it was there all along. Jesus even told them it was going to happen. But they just didn’t see it or understand it. Later, they would. But they didn’t at first. They didn’t believe in the resurrection until it happened, and then they believed because it had happened.
In verse 8, we see the light dawning on John. Speaking of himself, John said, “Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.” Some commentators say that just means John believed what Mary said—that the tomb was empty. But that’s not all it means. The Greek word for “believed” doesn’t just mean to assent to some truth claim intellectually. It’s not mere agreement with facts. Something else is going on here.
John uses the word “believe” a lot. The word in verse 8 is the same word, for example, in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Greek is literally, “whoever believes into him…” The belief John is talking about is something that takes us into Christ. It’s more than agreement. It’s an entrance into a whole new way of thinking, a whole new life, a whole new trust, centered in and resting on Jesus. It’s something you enter into deep in your heart, not something you pass along the way with a nodded head.
Let me illustrate it this way. By 1908, the Wright brothers had invented the first airplane. They were trying to sell their invention to the US Army, but the Army said they needed it to hold a passenger before they would sign the deal. So, the Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk, NC, to create and test a new two-passenger plane. A friend named Charley Furnas went with them. They designed the passenger plane and began test flights. At first, Wilbur or Orville would fly alone with a sandbag in the passenger seat. Once they were comfortable that it would work, the day came for the first human passenger. Who would dare to take that first ride? Their friend, Charley Furnas, would. Now, Charley was there for all the test flights. He believed it would work. But on May 14, 1908, he put that belief to the test. He got into the plane. Biblical faith is more than knowing the truth. Biblical faith is, as it were, getting into the plane with Jesus. This is the belief John is talking about. He didn’t just agree that the tomb was empty; he believed into the new life of Christ.
Have you believed into new life in Christ?
You might think, “Well, you know, John was actually there that morning. I wasn’t. I can’t see the empty tomb. I can’t see the risen Christ like he did.” Ah, yes, that’s right. You can’t. But let’s think about this for a minute.
You know, John didn’t say he believed after he saw Jesus’s resurrected body. What did he say? When did he see and believe? At the empty tomb. He hadn’t seen Jesus yet. That’s really interesting, isn’t it? This makes John the only apostle we’re told of who believed in the resurrection before seeing the resurrected Jesus. Later, Jesus will tell Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John was the first to do that. That means he’s a model for us. John was in the same spot we are today, and he’s asking us to believe into Christ along with him. I think that’s something to consider.
Of course, more could be said about this, but let’s think about what the reality of Jesus’s resurrection means for us. If Jesus has risen, it changes absolutely everything. How we live today hinges on what we think about Jesus’s resurrection. If it happened, it means Jesus has shown us his people’s future already. If Jesus already defeated death, that means he can defeat death for us too.
Because the resurrection of Jesus really happened, we can know our resurrection will really happen, too. We can have hope now, too. We can live backward, as it were. We can live today as we will live in that day. We can live as citizens of heaven in a fallen world that needs the light of Christ. We can be joyful in hardship. We can be generous in tough times. We can be hopeful in times of despair. We can serve selflessly. We can love with all our hearts. We can admit our sins and failures because we know redemption has been accomplished for us, and we have nothing to prove except Jesus’s grace and mercy. We can lay down our lives for God and others because we know that whatever happens, God will raise us up again. We can follow Jesus wherever he leads because even if he takes us through the valley of the shadow of death, we know it’s only a shadow. He took the real death for us, and he’s only leading us now into green pastures and beside still waters to a glorious resurrection like his.
This is the hope that John went home with. And remember who John cared for in his home now. Jesus’s mother, Mary. She was about to hear the news that her son lived, and because he lived, she would live, too.
And it’s the same hopeful news another Mary, Mary Magdalene, would soon receive, which leads us to our second point, the hope of Jesus’s resurrection.
The Hope of Jesus’s Resurrection
Verse 11 shows Mary Magdalene weeping outside the tomb. The word used for “weeping” means to weep or wail, with emphasis upon the noise accompanying the weeping [Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 303.]
This was one of those full-body, overwhelming bouts of sadness that accompanies the loss of someone dearly loved. Some of us know that feeling all too well. Mary had already wept for the loss of her friend. She now wept for the loss of even his body. None of him was left. He was totally gone.
She looked into the tomb again, and she saw something that didn’t seem to register with her in her grief. Two angels in white sat where Jesus had lain, and they asked her why she was weeping. Her Lord has been taken. Why wouldn’t she be weeping?
But then things started to change for Mary. She turned from the tomb and saw someone standing before her. She didn’t recognize that it was Jesus. Perhaps that was because she wasn’t expecting him. Perhaps it was because her eyes were too blurred from tears. She thought he was the gardener. (By the way, that is just filled with all kinds of biblical imagery. It was in a garden where Adam threw the world into death, and it was in a garden tomb where the new Adam defeated death. As the poet George Herbert said, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.”)
Jesus spoke to Mary, asking the same question the angels had: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Jesus was reasoning with her, metaphorically beginning to wipe the tears from her eyes.
Then, in verse 16, Jesus said something that changed Mary. Look what he said. One word that changed everything. He said, “Mary.”
Something happened inside her when he spoke her name. She recognized him instantly. It was his voice—the voice she thought she would never hear again. She turned to him and said, in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” John used the Aramaic word there. You can see the parenthetical note “which means Teacher.” John wants to preserve the scene, how intensely personal it was. Jesus said Mary’s name as he always had, and she called him Rabboni as she always had.
Why did that one word open her eyes? Think back to John 10. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” Mary knew his voice. But at first, she didn’t. So, what’s happening? There is a hearing that isn’t really hearing, and then there is a God-given hearing. Mary experienced both in a matter of minutes. There was the hearing with dead ears and then the hearing of ears alive in Christ. What was the switch? It was Jesus calling her name. His sheep heard his voice. It was a knowing call. It was a faith-giving call. My friend T.J. says, “This is the shortest sermon in the Bible. Just one word. And yet it is the heart and goal of every sermon preached in the name of Jesus Christ: that we would all hear our names spoken.”
The hope of the resurrection is that it not only brought Jesus back to life but also brings his sheep back to life. The hope of the resurrection is not reserved for Mary only. We will see next week this hope surging through the disciples and eventually out into the world. The hope of the resurrection is the power of the Spirit bringing people to life in Christ. It is the power of God turning weeping into joy. It is the Gardener doing his work in our hearts, uprooting unbelief, and planting the flower of faith that saves.
Between verse 16, when Mary’s eyes were opened, and verse 17, when Jesus again spoke, Mary hugged him. We don’t know how long that hug was, but I doubt it was a short one. It was the hug for someone she thought she would never see again. She didn’t ever want to let go. But Jesus told her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Now, that’s a very difficult verse to understand. What does Jesus mean? D.A. Carson put it this way.
The thought might be paraphrased this way: ‘Stop touching me (or, Stop holding on to me), for I am not yet in the ascended state, so you do not have to hang on to me as if I were about to disappear permanently. This is a time for joy and sharing the good news, not for clutching me as if I were some jealously guarded private dream-come-true. Stop clinging to me, but go and tell my disciples that I am in process of ascending to my Father and your Father.’ [Carson, The Gospel according to John, 644.]
Jesus told Mary that his resurrection was good news for everyone, and she now had an important job. He made her the apostle to the apostles. She would be the one to share the good news of the resurrection. Jesus entrusted that honor to a woman who, at that time, would not even be allowed to testify in a court of law. Isn’t that remarkable?
We know from Luke 8 that Mary was once possessed by seven demons. Jesus drove them from her. Now, at his tomb, he drove another darkness from her. He was alive! There is no greater joy. And Jesus, in his massive grace, charged this once demon-possessed woman with taking the news of the resurrection to the apostles. Don’t tell me Jesus can’t change someone’s life!
Mary was in a unique position that day, but she is a model for us all. We, too, have been delivered from darkness, and we, too, have good news of Jesus’s resurrection to share.
Mary knew the resurrection changed everything, and the other disciples soon would, too. But imagine for a second that you were one of Jesus’s disciples that day. You had walked with him throughout his ministry, but by the time of his arrest and crucifixion, you weren’t the friend he needed at that hour. You couldn’t stay awake and pray, as he asked. If you were Peter, you denied knowing him three times. Would you receive the news with great joy or with also a little fear as to how he would respond?
Some of us don’t have to imagine that. We feel so unworthy of being his disciples that we can barely rejoice in his life. We fear him coming to us. Our sins are many. Oh, but his mercy is more! Look at verse 17. What did Jesus say to Mary? “Go to my brothers.” He could have said, “Go to those failures,” but he didn’t. That’s not who they were to him, not because of his life, death, and resurrection. They were his brothers.
Because of the cross and resurrection, all whom Jesus calls are no longer outsiders hoping to get in. All in Christ are insiders. Brothers and sisters. Like the disciples, we aren’t in God’s family because we earn a spot; we are in God’s family because he purchased us on the cross and gathered us in his resurrection. That’s why He told Mary he was ascending to “my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” We don’t earn our way in, and we can’t sin our way out. His cross is our deliverance from darkness, and his resurrection is his welcome into his kingdom.
So, as her Lord told her to do, Mary went and, full of joy, announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”
I love how Sally Lloyd-Jones describes what that joy might have been like in The Jesus Storybook Bible.
Mary ran and ran, all the way to the city. She had never run so fast or so far in all her life. She felt like she could have run forever. She didn’t even feel like her feet touched the ground. The sun seemed to be dancing and gleaming and bounding across the sky, racing with her and shining brighter than she could ever remember in the clear, fresh air.
And it seemed to her that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world had been made anew, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy—the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds…her heart.
Was God really making everything sad come untrue? Was he making even death come untrue?
She couldn’t wait to tell Jesus’s friends. “They won’t believe it!” she laughed.
Of course, we don’t know if that’s what Mary thought as she ran to the disciples, but it sounds about right, doesn’t it? The resurrection changes everything. Everything sad is coming untrue.
Jesus has risen! He has risen indeed.
Let’s pray.
