Category: John 20

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

When people tell what they saw at the movies or an accident scene, each person remembers something different. That is how we are. We each have an eye for different details. In Matthew’s gospel account we read, “Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.”* John adds, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

The risen Jesus is in a very unusual situation. He appears in his heavenly body to people who knew his earthly form. To Mary, it seems that Jesus is back, and he is. Yet he is no longer of this world. He has conquered death and his body is no longer subject to sin’s temptations. He cannot stay in our world physically because he is no longer physical.

Mary, in her relief at seeing Jesus alive, falls at his feet and holds on to them worshipping Jesus. Jesus allows himself to be touched. This is important: Jesus allows himself to be touched. He has the power to do that. Yet he tells her not to. His reason? He has not yet ascended to the Father.

Ironically, once he has ascended, all people have the opportunity to cling to Jesus.

Application: Jesus appears to Mary first, to let her know that he is alive. That he does this speaks volumes about how much he cares for her and her devotion to him. Yet, Jesus is between crucifixion and resurrection, between two worlds; the physical and the spiritual. He is leaving to go to his Father. He goes ahead of us to the place we all want to be. He goes to prepare a place for us. Like a man standing on a train station platform, he says, ”Do not hold on to me.” Mary has to let him go a second time, but this time he goes with a promise that we will see him soon.

Food for Thought: How does Mary feel about obeying Jesus in this situation?

*Matthew 28: 9

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Continue reading “Touched – John 20: 17a”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

If this were a scene in a movie the camera would fill in many of the blanks that John leaves us with. We would be able to see the garden in the early morning light. John and Peter have just left the garden. They had been running when they arrived, but now they were walking. Their shoulders drooping in puzzlement.

Mary arrives as they are leaving. She barely sees them. She stumbles a bit as she makes her way through the garden to the tomb. She looks defeated. Three days of crying have left marks on her face. The trails of her tears make her look older than she is. Slowly, almost blindly, she finds her way to the open tomb. The camera backs away as she walks to the opening. She looks in. We see her reach out with her hand to steady herself. Her fingers gently touching the stone over the mouth of the tomb.

The scene shifts. Now the camera is next to her head. We can see over her shoulder into the darkened tomb. Two angels sit on a stone ledge next to the abandoned grave clothes. A soft light surrounds the two beings and fills the cave. The angels speak in unison, in perfect harmony, “Woman, why are you crying?”

Continue reading “Reunion Movie – John 20: 16”

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

A man approaches a woman in a garden by a tomb. The woman is crying. She has been crying for three days. Her eyes are swollen and bleary from the tears. Her face a mask of loss and anguish.

As the man gets closer he asks her, “… why are you crying?”

Then, he reveals himself a little. He already knows why she is crying. He knows that she is upset because Jesus’ body is missing. He knows she is looking to find Him. He asks, “Who is it you are looking for?”

Mary, in turn, tells us a little about her thinking. John tells us that she thought she was talking to the person who owned or cared for the garden. Perhaps she was worried that someone had objected to Jesus’ body being put in the new tomb. Maybe instead of a nefarious scheme to hide the body, it was only a misunderstanding. They had put Jesus’ body somewhere else because it wasn’t supposed to be in that new tomb.

“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Mary’s devotion is on full display. Jesus is dead. His body has been shuffled aside. She is ready to do whatever is needed for Jesus.

”… tell me where you have put him…”

Application: Wrapping our heads around the idea that the God of the universe could become a man is difficult for us. We have no reference point to use in gauging our expectations. We do not understand. If we are to fully relate to our God we have to resort to wonder and awe. There is nothing we can do to comprehend our Creator.

Food for Thought: How does the way Jesus approaches Mary help her to adjust to the fact that he is no longer dead?

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Continue reading “Devotion – John 20: 15”

At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

Have you ever looked at someone and thought, “Do I know you?” It is an odd feeling! The human ability to recognize another person is remarkable. So remarkable that we tend to take it for granted. When the gears don’t mesh, we can look right at someone and not “see” them.

Mary did not expect to run into Jesus that Sunday morning. After all, he was dead. She had seen him killed. She watched in horror as the soldier thrust a spear into his side. She may have watched Joseph and Nicodemus take the body down, prepare it for burial, and put it in the tomb. Jesus was dead.

Not so long ago she had watched as Jesus called her brother Lazarus out of another tomb. Lazarus had been dead four days. So long, that Martha was worried about the smell! Yet at the word of Jesus, Lazarus walked out of the tomb under his own power. He returned to the land of the living and full health because of Jesus.

That was then. Who was left to call Jesus out of the tomb? The man who gave life was himself dead.

Application: Expectations play a lead role in how we experience life. If our expectations are too high, we suffer disappointment. If our expectations are too low, we might not make the effort to participate. Sometimes, when we least expect it, we are surprised by God.

Food for Thought: What happens when our expectations of God do not align with the reality of who God is?

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Continue reading “Expectations – John 20: 14”

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

Mary is back at the tomb. When we last saw her, she was telling Peter and John that she had found the tomb empty. Peter and John ran as fast as they could back to the tomb. They, too, found it empty. John then reports that, “… the disciples went back to where they were staying.” (V10)

Mary must have followed them back to the tomb. I expect that she probably walked back. She had already run the whole way to tell the men what she had found. She is sad. Did she see John and Peter as they came back along the way? She must have. John doesn’t say.

Mary finds her way back to the tomb. All she knows to do is cry. The pain of losing Jesus twice is more than she can bear. She hurts and she cries. Eventually, she looks into the tomb. Have you ever done that? Looked a second time to make sure what you saw was real? I have! She looked again. This time there are two angels in the tomb.

Often when angels appear they are in the form of men. Sometimes it seems difficult to recognize that they are, in fact, angels. In this passage, there is no doubt. No description of two “men” sitting there who appear out of nowhere. Mary knew immediately that these were angels. Interesting!

The angels speak: ”Woman, why are you crying?”

Perhaps they honestly don’t know! It might be that all heaven was so busy celebrating Jesus’ victory over death that it seemed unthinkable that all Creation wasn’t doing the same.

Application: Sometimes the human view is very different than the heavenly view. From heaven’s perspective, there was no mystery of where Jesus was. They all knew. They had to. The Son of God was not someone whom Heaven could ignore. His resurrection was a victory unlike the universe had ever seen before or will ever see again. Sometimes faith is trusting that God has all the information even when we do not.

Food for Thought: When you find yourself in dire straits and all you can think to do is cry, is God any less in control than when things seem to be going well?

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Continue reading “Crying – John 20: 11-13”

Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

As John recounts his memory of this most unusual morning, he says something odd. He says, “He saw and believed.” Okay. If he had stopped right there I would think, “John is telling us that he believed that the Lord had risen.” But right afterward he adds parenthetically, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” So what did John believe when he stepped into that tomb?

I don’t know. Sorry, but no one does. God knows, of course. So we have to trust His guidance in these matters. Beyond that, I advise much caution.

Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” (1 Corinthians 10: 32-33)

The purpose of this blog is to promote a deeper understanding of Scripture through a detailed examination of each passage. Perhaps I walk too fine a line here. If I do, I apologize. I hope that our journey together brings us closer to God.

When I look at this verse I wonder, “Did John simply mean that he believed Jesus was gone?” It almost seems too simple, but in light of his parenthetical statement, I’m not sure what else makes sense.

Application: Throughout the history of the Reformation, there has been a battle between the plain meaning of Scripture and the value of the historic traditions of the Church. It is as easy to fall off on the side of easy Grace as it is to fall off on the side of legalism. Active, living, daily faith in Jesus is neither, and to some extent both. I find that turning to Scripture every day is invaluable. I hope you find that, too.

Food for Thought: How do you avoid falling into arguments about matters of faith, or do you think that is a good thing? How does arguing reflect on your faith in God?

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Continue reading “What Did John Believe? – John 20: 8-10”

He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.

About a year ago a man gave a presentation at our church on the Shroud of Turin. He had a full-scale copy of the shroud on display and a fascinating number of stories and facts related to the shroud’s history and meaning. If I remember correctly his background was in nuclear physics. One of the more interesting aspects of his talk centered around the physics of what may have created the image on the shroud.

Part of his theory was the idea that when Jesus ascended from the dead, every atom in his physical body gave up its energy at one time. He thinks that this energy was focused in such a way as to leave the impression found on the Shroud of Turin. Even if the shroud was not the actual cloth that was used to wrap Jesus’ body, his point about the atoms evaporating still makes sense.

When Jesus is seen in the “flesh” after his resurrection, this is not the same physical flesh that he occupied during his time on earth. He no longer has a body that dies, but an eternal spiritual body. (I hope that I do not sound off track here. I believe that this statement makes sense even if the discussion of atoms doesn’t.) If the physical body shed its physical parts, and if the resurrected Jesus could walk through walls (In John 20: 19 and 26 we see Jesus appearing in a locked room) it seems reasonable that the linen strips would fall where they lay as the body transitioned from dead flesh to living God.

John describes a cloth that had been wrapped around the head of Jesus’ body. The rest of the grave clothes, according to John, consisted of strips of linen. What is interesting to me is how he describes the position of the cloths. The strips of linen were laying “in its place.” Presumably, this means they were lying where the body had been. The cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head was “separate from the linen.” This is what you would expect if the body left without disturbing the cloth.

Application: Sometimes we gloss over details without taking in their meaning. The detail that John gives us in this passage is stunning. If you want to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, think about the scene that John describes here.

Food for Thought: Does it help or hinder faith to ponder the nexus between what we know of physics and what we know of the Bible?

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Continue reading “Details II – John 20: 6b – 7”

Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb.

Two men hear that the body of their Lord and master has been taken from its tomb. Immediately they run. Charging into action they race each other to the tomb. John outruns Peter and arrives first.

The two men are very different. Peter is more outspoken than any of the other disciples. John is possibly the youngest of the disciples. The style of his gospel sets him apart as a man who is thoughtful and emotionally sensitive. At the tomb, John hesitates. Peter does not. Peter runs straight into the tomb.

All this time, from the moment Mary set out to go to the tomb, the earth has continued its rotation. The sun rises and begins to warm the land. The great City of David starts to come to life. After the quiet of the Sabbath events start to move again. It is as if the whole of history comes to a complete stop for a day. Now, after the Sabbath rest, history begins again.

As John and Peter approach the tomb their eyes confirm that the stone blocking the door had been removed. The tomb stands open. Once inside, Peter is confronted by its emptiness.

Application: The cross is a symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins. The empty tomb is a symbol of His power over death. It is important to keep both of these symbols in mind when thinking about our Lord.

Food for Thought: How important is the empty tomb to Christianity? Should we talk about it more? Is it irrelevant in light of Jesus returning in person later on?

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Continue reading “The Race – John 20: 4-6a”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.

Peter and John have just received the news that the tomb is empty. Mary has also told them that someone had taken the body and put it somewhere else. The first part of the message was true. The second part was speculation which turned out not to be true.

If Peter and John had taken what Mary said at face value, they probably would have started a search party to find the body. Instead, they do a very human thing. They want to see for themselves.

The third part of Mary’s message was not conveyed with words, she conveyed it with emotion. She was panicked. The urgency in her voice and the fact that she had run from the tomb frightened Peter and John. It galvanized them into action.

Instead of worriedly pacing around debating what they should do, the men ran. But what if they hadn’t? What if they had believed her? Then they would have believed something that wasn’t true. They would have believed that Jesus’ body had been taken by someone.

Application: When it comes to knowing the truth, it is important not to take someone else’s word for it. We can each know Jesus for ourselves. In fact, we need to know Jesus.

Food for Thought: Sometimes an action can be a distraction. What sets the action the disciples took apart as the right thing to do?

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Continue reading “Men of Action – John 20: 3”

So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

If you wanted to get somewhere fast in Jesus’ day, you had to run. Mary was in a hurry. She had to tell someone what she had seen and she needed to tell them now. She ran. We don’t know how far, but it is a safe assumption that it was a fair distance. She ran as fast as she could because she carried important news.

Perhaps the sun was coming up by now. John again is sketching his narrative quickly. Where did she find Peter and “the one Jesus loved?” (For the sake of our meditations we will assume “the one Jesus loved” is John, himself.) What were Peter and John doing? Were they sleeping? Were they awake and talking?

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Details like that do not add a lot to the story at this point. John gives us the key information when he quotes Mary saying, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb…”

She is wrong, of course. Nobody took Jesus out of the tomb. Jesus walked out under his own power. But she doesn’t know that … yet. All she truly knows is that Jesus is gone. The tomb is empty. The idea that someone took Jesus and put his body somewhere else is the only rational explanation she can think of.

The message she conveys is a truth wrapped in her fears. That the tomb is empty, is true. She fears that the reason for the tomb being empty is someone has taken the body.

Application: I think there is an important point in this scene from the resurrection. It is common for us as people to “fill in the blanks” if we don’t understand something. For example, people generally accept our existence as a truth. Why do we exist? Some believe that thousands of nucleotides that make up our DNA were randomly formed in such a way as to create life. We don’t understand how creation worked so we make something up and call it “evolution.” Adding imagined answers to fill in the gaps in our knowledge does not help our understanding. Instead, it confuses the truth by obscuring it.

Food for Thought: Who do you think Mary imagines would have moved Jesus’ body and why?

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Continue reading “Partial Truth – John 20: 2”