On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved
and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb
and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
The Gospel According to John 20:1-9
Happy Easter!!! There are enough curious points about this passage to fuel the careers of many Bible scholars, and they are way above my paygrade to comment on. So let’s focus on Simon Peter.
Simon has been with Jesus from the beginning, called from his fishing boat way up north in Galilee. In the Synoptics, he gets almost all of the disciples’ lines but here, even in John, where other disciples are given voice, it is Simon who enters the tomb first despite having been beaten there by The Beloved Disciple.
Simon is impetuous. He steps out of the boat on the Sea of Galilee and walks on water until he comes to his senses, loses faith and sinks. It is he who tells Jesus that he can’t go to Jerusalem to be killed, and is called “Devil” for his fear. And most famously, it is Peter who denies Jesus three times despite being told that he would do it. He clearly loves Jesus more than anyone else, yet he dioes not yet understand that Jesus would rise from the dead.
Peter stands stunned in this empty tomb. The rabbi he had followed around Galilee and to Jerusalem three times, who had done wondrous things, who had empowered Peter and other disciples to cast out demons, who knew he would die if he went to Jerusalem, who went there anyway and proceeded to provoke the religious leaders into murderous fear, this rabbi had been crucified like a common thief, like a revolutionary, naked, beaten, utterly disgraced.
And now Peter stands in an empty tomb. Where is the body??? Who took it? Why? The Jewish leaders? The Romans? Are they so scared of this hick preacher that they’ve taken the body? Will they come for Jesus’ inner circle next? Peter had been reco.gnized three times as a follower of Jesus, how long would it take for the authorities to find him? Peter must be scared out of his wits.
To stand in emptiness is a scary thing. When I was a child, I’d scare myself our of my wits by trying to imagine infinity. In the mountains, white-outs are terrifying; you can’t see anything but white, empty white. Peter stood in the presence of divine emptiness and he was scared. We avoid emptiness with all our might. We fill it with things and things to-do. Perhaps this Good Friday we could find an empty spot and try to sit in the presence of God