Looking for the Wrong Thing (John 20:1-18)
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jeremy_1_05-31-2026_133024: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Rebuilding Faith.
These are 10-minute Bible messages for people with questions and doubts. Before I begin the episode today, I wanna let you know that my book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available on audiobook.
A number of you have told me that you were waiting for this. You're more of the listener type. Perhaps that's why you're listening to this, maybe, on a podcast. But if you are that person and you're interested in that, you can now find that. You can get the direct link to it at edgeoftheinside.com, or you can get the Amazon link or wherever you go and find that, and that is now available. And so that's super exciting. It's really well done. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and so I wanted to let you know about that.
Now, the episode today, what we're looking at is that Jesus has died. We addressed that last week, the crucifixion of Jesus, and now we get to see what happens next, the response [00:01:00] of these early followers of Jesus to the resurrection, to the fact that something else is going on here.
And so we're gonna read John chapter 20, beginning in verse one. " Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. And she said, 'They have taken the Lord's body out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him.'"
Now, this is a remarkable way for John to tell this story, because the first witness of the resurrection in the Gospel of John was a woman. Now, that may not seem like a remarkable detail to you, but this was in a time when women were not allowed to testify in public assembly by law. And with [00:02:00] that detail, this is one of the reasons why I find this story so compelling.
It would be a strange detail to make up if it wasn't a woman who happened to be involved in this way. And yet there's something beautifully inclusive about this story, especially in light of how many years since the church has excluded women, has told women you don't have the same right or the same seat at the table.
And yet right here in the text, one of the first people to see the resurrection, to experience it, to tell others about it, is not a man. And I love this detail. Verse three, Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn't go [00:03:00] in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there while the cloth that had covered Jesus' head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed.
For until then, they still hadn't understood the scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. And then they went home So you have a hilarious description about a foot race happening in the midst of this resurrection story. It's between Peter and the author of this gospel. This is how he refers to himself throughout the gospel.
He explains that he ran faster than Peter did, which has become quite the historical flex for all subsequent generations to be aware of, that John had wheels. He was fast. He wanted us to know he beat Peter to the [00:04:00] tomb. Now, I mentioned a few weeks ago that we know something about the author, that he had a connection.
He probably was a part of this priestly lineage. We saw that after the arrest with Jesus, and he's known to the high priest, and he's the one that gets Peter in. So probably had some connection there, and that would also explain why he won't go into the tomb here. So he gets there first, but he doesn't go in because going in there with a dead body would have made him defiled.
And if he is in the lineage of this priestly line, that would have been a big deal for him. Now, Peter does not have the same limitation, and so Peter just rushes in, and it's only after Peter tells John, "Hey, there is no body in here," that then John goes in. 'Cause now it's not, you know, gonna defile him anymore.
There's no dead body in there. And so now John can go in, but that explains maybe why John rushes to the tomb and then won't go in. [00:05:00] Then we get to verse eleven. " Mary was standing outside the tomb, crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying.
'Dear woman, why are you crying?' the angels asked her. 'Because they have taken away my Lord,' she replied, 'and I don't know where they have put him.' She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn't recognize him. 'Dear woman, why are you crying?' Jesus asked her. 'Who are you looking for?'
She thought he was the gardener. 'Sir,' she said, 'if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.'" "Mary," Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, "Rabbi," which is Hebrew for teacher. "Don't cling to me," Jesus said, "for I haven't yet [00:06:00] ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, "I have seen the Lord." And then she gave them his message. So now Mary is back at the tomb by herself, and she doesn't recognize Jesus in her midst, which is understandable because she's not expecting a dead guy to come back to life. Now, we know the story, but even John is pointing out they didn't fully grasp what Jesus had told them till after they saw it.
And so Mary's not looking for Jesus to be moving and talking to her. She's looking for a dead body. And it's only when Jesus says her name that it clicks for her, that she sees it. Now, Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him yet, which is [00:07:00] strange because later in this chapter, Jesus is gonna tell Thomas to touch his body and feel his wounds.
So something must have happened in the body of Jesus between these two encounters. The only explanation we have, Jesus says to her that he has not yet ascended, but then he tells her to tell everyone else that he is in the process of ascending. Now, this isn't referencing his final ascension up into heaven, which is gonna happen about 40 days from this point, because that wouldn't make any sense.
He seems to be indicating something else. This is purely speculative, but I get the sense that there's some final merging of the divine and the humanity of Jesus happening here, that the physical body of Jesus is coming into the fullness of his divine role, which maybe could only happen in this way after he had died, after the body had been, brought back to life.[00:08:00]
And so something is going on here. Now, here's what I wanna close with. Mary, in her role in this story, she doesn't come back with a theology of resurrection Right? That's not what she's doing. She doesn't come back with evidence or an argument for why everyone should believe in Jesus now. She comes back with one sentence, "I have seen the Lord."
That's the announcement that changes everything. You know, a lot of us, we were handed a faith built on certainty, on the right answers, and the right doctrines. And for many of us, we have watched that fall apart. It turns out that certainty is an illusion. But I suspect the most honest thing we can offer someone is not our theology, but our experience.
Not, "Here's what you should believe and why," but, "Here is what I've [00:09:00] seen." So you probably have lots of theological questions that you can't explain, but what have you seen?
That question reframes the whole journey for us. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith
