After arriving at the tomb very early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph discovered that the tomb was empty where they had seen Joseph inter Jesus’ body Thursday evening. They found the stone rolled away from it when they arrived, not realizing it had been removed just moments before and that the “severe earthquake” they had experienced on the way was actually caused by it; Mat 28:2. They also found a guard of Roman soldiers who seemed unnerved, not realizing they had seen an angel roll away the stone and were terrified by his presence. Upon entering the tomb, they found it empty and also saw the angel, who appeared to them as a young man dressed in white. He told them that they were in the right place, but that Jesus was not there for He had risen; Mat 28:1-8, Mar 16:1-8. Fleeing the tomb to tell others what they had discovered, the spiritual vision of the angel quickly gave way to the physical reality that Jesus’ body was gone and to the rational explanation that someone must have removed it from the tomb; Joh 20:1-2. After Mary Madgalene reported this to Peter and John, Peter impulsively raced off to the tomb; John and Mary followed, with John eventually outdistancing him to arrive before Peter; Luk 24:12, Joh 20:3-4.
However, while Mary was on her way to tell Peter and John and before they got back, the other women who had arranged to meet the two Mary’s at the tomb had arrived, perhaps led by the other Mary who had fled the tomb with Mary Magdalene and quite possibly ran into them on the way. Initially they found only the physical reality of the empty tomb. But as they were perplexed about what could have happened, they were startled by two angels who suddenly appeared to them and reminded them of Jesus’ words that He would be crucified and rise again on the third day; Luk 24:1-8. This sparked the dying embers of their faith and so by the time Peter and John arrived they had departed to inform others. But their words seemed like nonsense to those they told, for the only hard evidence they had was that the tomb was empty, and as with Mary to Peter and John, their vision of the angels had only the substance of an ephemeral dream; Luk 24:11.
As John arrived at the tomb, what does he record that he did? See Joh 20:5. What did he see that was a clue that there was more to what had happened to Jesus’ body than it just being removed from the tomb? If someone had simply removed the body from the tomb, especially with the tomb sealed by the Jewish authorities, would they have taken the time to remove the linen cloths the body was wrapped in? And if Jesus had somehow been resuscitated from the dead as Lazarus was, would not the wrappings have remained upon Him, wherever he was, if only for a covering of clothes since His garments had been stripped from Him when He was crucified, rather than remaining in the grave? Cf. Joh 11:44.
For what reason did John pause and not enter the tomb until after Peter arrived and charged right in (Joh 20:5,8)? Recall that his mother Salome was likely the sister of Jesus’ mother Mary, and Mary’s relative was Elizabeth, a descendent of Aaron (Luk 1:5,36). John also knew the high priest well enough to gain entrance with Peter into the court of the high priest (Joh 18:15-16), so John may have had a greater affinity for ritual purity, thus hesitating at first to enter the tomb. It is also possible that due to his priestly connections he was better educated than were the women or Peter and could read and write, which was not nearly as common as it is today; cf. 1Pe 5:12. In this case he may have hesitated to enter the tomb because he could read the seal that had been posted by the Jewish authorities (Mat 27:66) that Peter possibly couldn’t read or to which being more impetuous he gave no heed. In this regard, why might Luke, who wrote many years earlier while Peter was still alive, have only noted that Peter stooped to look in, but not that he entered? See Luk 24:12 and think: had that become common knowledge, especially as persecution against the Church was raging by the Jewish authorities and increasing by the Romans, might that have been a pretext for which to charge and put him to death? Cf. Mat 10:16.
What does the fact that the physical body of Jesus was entirely gone indicate about there being some connection of His resurrection body to His previous physical body—like the transformation of a butterfly from the worm from which it came—as opposed to a separate creation altogether for His soul from new elements that simply left the physical remains of His old “carton” to return to the earth? Cf. Joh 20:20,25,27. Although who we ultimately are as a person is our immaterial soul, what does this remind us about who we are also being inseparably connected to our physical body, and hence the need for a resurrection of our physical body if who we are as a person is to ever truly live again? Cf. Gen 2:7, and recall that who we are as a living soul is dependent upon the ability of our physical body animated by God’s spirit to interact with the rest of His creation. What does this also teach us about the importance of caring for our physical bodies in a God-honoring way, knowing that they will in some way be a part of us forever? How does this help us to understand the traditional Jewish and Christian aversion to tattoos and piercings that mar the body God created in His own image? How does it also help us to understand why Christians throughout history have rejected cremation of their physical remains in favor of a burial that preserves some physical vestige of the former person?