"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 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!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 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. 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."
[John 20:1-7, NIV]
The fact that the grave-clothes where left behind confirms that
the body of Jesus was not stolen. Carrying a stolen naked corpse would have
been unthinkable to the Jew; remember that Jesus was born into a Jewish family
and Jesus and His disciples attended synagogues and temple, and observed most
of the Jewish customs. Even Jesus’ burial was a customary Jewish burial. We
need to be careful not to read current cultural practice into Jewish customs
that are more than two-thousand years old.
The second
fact we discover from John is that no human could have removed the grave-clothes
that wrapped the dead body of our Lord. I think William Barclay, in his Daily
Study Bible Series, John, Volume 2 revised edition, page 267 says it best; “the
grave-clothes were not disheveled and disarranged. They were lying there still
in their folds – that is what the Greek means – the clothes for the body where
the body had been; the napkin [better translated handkerchief] where the head
had lain…the description is that the grave-clothes…were lying there in there
regular folds as if the body of Jesus had simply evaporated out of them.”
The third fact
that we learn from the grave-clothes being left behind is that Jesus did not
need them anymore. When we bury someone, we dress him or her in some of their
best clothing to make the lifeless corpse look pretty for those who view the
body. When Jesus returns and the dead in Christ rise up in our glorified bodies,
we will not need our burial clothes either.
We must be
careful not read into Scripture, but rather let Scripture speak to us. The
resurrected Jesus had no more use for his grave-clothes than he did the locked
door protecting the gathering of disciples in Luke 20:19. Just as Jesus “evaporated”
through the grave-clothes, he passed through the locked door with the same
ease. Jesus was God incarnate, fully God and yet fully human. Even after the
resurrection, Luke describes Jesus with a physical human body that was flesh and
blood, even retaining the scars from the crucifixion.
Now I know
some of you will have difficulties with my use of the word “evaporated,” but it
is impossible for the mind of the created to understand the mind of the Creator.
Yet we must try to know God; it is only our knowledge of God that we carry with
us into heaven. Yet the masses spend more time seeking the knowledge of man
than the knowledge of God. If all the knowledge of humankind through all of
history was compared to the knowledge of God, all of the combined knowledge
of humankind would be no more than a cup of water compared to the all the oceans on earth. John
H. Sammis wrote “Trust and Obey” after hearing a convert during a Dwight L.
Moody crusade, say “I am not quite sure – but I am going to trust and I am
going to obey.” As a child will trust his father, we must learn to trust our
heavenly Father concerning things we do not fully understand.
Prayer: I ask that you
cleanse me from all my doubt and disbelief. Lord, I ask that you help me trust and
obey the teaching of Your Word even when I cannot understand it and find it
hard to accept. Enable me to be gracious and forgiving when they ask it of me,
and work with them to restore the relationship. Strengthen me, and enable me to
trust and obey your teaching and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
