“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 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."

Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple out ran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”  (Jn. 20:1-9)

This selection from the fourth gospel brings forward reminiscences that had been preserved for devout recalling. The story opens with the darkness of the night, the small hours before the dawn. We glimpse the veiled silhouette of Mary Magdalene. She is still devoted to Jesus, despite all the horrors of his execution and the emotional shock of his hurried burial. She moves away from the rugged city wall of old Jerusalem to the newer garden of Joseph of Arimathea. The latter had obtained official authorization to bury the corpse. The great round stone had been rolled aside; the door of the tomb was gaping open and defenceless, utterly improper, and suggesting only one explanation to her shocked mind: Some people had removed the body of Jesus! She had no idea of their identity, their purpose, or their location. She takes the only course open to her; she runs in great haste to the leaders of the disciples, to “Simon Peter and the other disciples.”
Peter and John answer the summons. They run to the tomb to ascertain for themselves what the situation would reveal.

The Empty Tomb
John probably related to his disciples later how he out-paces and out-distanced Peter. Commentators have seen a significant symbolism in Johns reaching the tomb first but yielding to the head of the church before entering the tomb. Such thoughts were hardly present in their minds at the time. John, “the one Jesus loved,” was probably overcome with emotion and preferred to wait for Peter’s company to aid his judgement of the scene. He had “stooped to look in” through the low entrance of the inner chamber, and had seen something he never forgot.
Twice our text explicitly mentions what might seem to be a circumstantial detail: The burial shroud and the wrappings are lying in the tomb. A message must be contained in this deliberate emphasis, recorded many years later, and after three gospels. Would not grave robbers, intent on stealthily getting away the body of Jesus, have left the wrappings on the body?
There is something else. There is no indication that the cloths are on the ground, on the contrary “He saw the linen cloths lying there.” Is not the evangelist telling us that the cloths were laid out, in the tomb niche corresponding to the position of Jesus’ body?
What is more, the cloth “which had been on his head” is not lying out in a flat position with the other cloths; it is “rolled up” in a distinctive manner, “in a place by itself.” Is the evangelist telling us that the head cloth was “rolled up” at the very spot where Jesus’ head had rested?
Whatever the precise meaning of those terms, the disciples reach the conclusion that something very special has happened. They reached a different view from that of Mary Magdalene. They believed! It was not yet in a fully explicit and verbalized manner, but they believed!
The whole of the New Testament is written after the event of the resurrection. The telling of the story of Jesus and the experiences of the early disciples has the resurrection as a backdrop. The risen Jesus of the New Testament thought was also the crucified, the persecuted, the wounded, the Broken One. His resurrection was not a remote or theoretical problem but part of the meaning of their daily living and aspiring.
The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus are about our lives as well. The potency of the message of the resurrection lies in the fact that it shows us the way in which life itself works in a new way. Every fresh step we take, from the very act of being born, to forsaking childhood, to leaving home, to choosing a career, to being pummelled with injustice—until death itself-is a form of dying to the past.
Similarly every occasion of spiritual or inner growth, from losing this or that prejudice to gaining any fresh insight into ourselves, others or the world, means a mini-death, or a rebirth. The resurrection of Jesus means that we too shall one day be resurrected. But the real power of the Easter Message is what it says about life here and now.
Paul began the process of finding words for this new meaning in life. Speaking of Baptism he says: “you have been buried with him when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead.” (Col.2:12)

What Does It Mean Today?
How do we speak of the resurrection today? What does it mean for us? Is it only something in a remote past involving one person, Jesus, and in an even vaguer future, an object of our personal hopes? Would I be laughed at or written off if I were to address Christians today with the words: ’realize that you have been raised from the dead,’ or ’the most important energy of my life flows from the risen Christ’?
Happily the impact of the resurrection in our lives is not tied to our capacity to talk about it, not even to our awareness of it. Would we list it among the most important remarks we would make about today’s living? Let us explore but one insight into the resurrection.
The resurrection means that Jesus is forever part of the present. This means that whether I am driving a bus, changing oil in a car, cleaning windows, researching a school project, or preparing a lecture, or cooking a meal, or whatever, Jesus, alive and well, is part of the scene.
It means that if I want to list the most important constituents of this or any moment the presence of Jesus tops others. We are never alone whether dying of hunger in a starving ghetto or of boredom in a resort apartment gorged with luxury. In danger, in dying, in caring in loving we are never left to our own resources. A presence links our person, our actions into the network of unfolding creation. Nothing is insignificant. Everything is marked by the event we call the resurrection. Beautiful!

A Bread and Butter Issue
Resurrection is a bread and butter issue of the meaning of our lives. It enriches the perception of every moment, grounds more deeply the roots of hope, and strengthens the risk of love. To find that wavelength we need contemplation as a very ordinary activity of living. For people who really celebrate Easter it should be like breathing out and in—living in the atmosphere of eternal life.
At the moment of his soul’s returning to his sacred body, Jesus saw his now immortal body immediately clothed in robes of glory. To our eyes, it would be not unlike the Transfiguration, when “His garments became glistening, intensely white” (Mk 9:3). The burial wrappings he simply left undisturbed , not open or unwound, intact empty shells. Later that day he was to pas through the closed doors of the upper room and leave them intact too.
Jesus glorified humanity now belonged to a universe with its own laws of physics, its own systems, “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev.21:1). To that universe Mary in her assumption already belongs. To that universe too shall we belong, we who are “in Christ.”

“Over and over, we struggle out of the tomb
Feet tangled in the winding sheets
Decay just setting in;
Over and over catch the scent of clean air
As the stone yields
And over and over, turn again
To the dawn, to the new light.”