Dig Deeper into Sunday’s Gospel: Read John 20:1–9

My son is in the restoration business. His gift is seeking out worn, torn, and thrown-away luxury bags, wallets, and clutches. Seeing the potential, he upcycles and repurposes the leather with patience and precision, restoring its value and bringing it back to life. 

I love a good resurrection story.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, a most triumphant and joyous day—the resurrection of our Lord! After forty days in the wilderness, we can, at long last, rejoice! Death and sin no longer have the final say. We have the promise of eternal life. No other day on the calendar offers such profound hope. Jesus has risen from the dead!

I’ve been thinking about the resurrection. Tomorrow’s gospel (John 20:1–9) will bring us to the tomb with Mary Magdalene. We will race to the scene with Peter and “the other disciple.” We will all stoop to look in. The tomb will be empty. His body will be gone. And we will see and believe. 

But will we?

Not everyone will wake up on Easter morning and live like the resurrection matters. Not everyone sees and believes. Some argue that there is no compelling proof that Jesus’s body was resurrected from the dead. There are no eyewitnesses or Scripture that say, “And we saw the stone move, and out walked Jesus, fully alive!” Knowing how skeptical God’s children can be, I often wonder why Jesus didn’t leave us with hard evidence—unquestionable proof that the body of Christ was not stolen, but indeed, resurrected from the dead. 

It didn’t take much digging to realize that Jesus left plenty of evidence: the post-resurrection appearances, the apostles' transformation and martyrdom, and Saint Paul's conversion, to name a few. But we also find proof in our Easter gospel, neatly folded and set aside inside the tomb. 

“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” (John 20:6). 

We can be tempted to gloss over these details, acknowledging their peculiarity but concluding them as meaningless. But if you’re familiar with Scripture, you know that’s false. Scripture teaches that every word of God proves true (Proverbs 30:5), so there can be no throw-away word or description. Every detail matters.

The detail about the linen cloths left behind assures us that robbers did not steal the body of Jesus. I’ve never stolen a dead body, but if I were to quit my ministry job for a career in corpse theft, I doubt I’d use it as an opportunity to demonstrate good manners by carefully removing and neatly folding the burial cloths. But there’s a better, more vital detail to point out. At the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, the Jewish purity laws forbade contact with a corpse—you’d be considered unclean, and no one would risk defilement.[1]

There’s another detail in John’s gospel that points to resurrection: “Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed” (John 20:8).

What was it about these cloths that, upon seeing, the disciple believed? What detail might our gospel friends have left out? 

In his sermon on the resurrection of Jesus, Bishop Robert Barron poses the same question, leading us to the time he visited the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth preserved in a cathedral in Italy. This cloth has become an object of devotion because it bears the image of a crucified man, believed to be Jesus. I have read the scientific tests and research, and the debates on its authenticity, but Bishop Barron’s reason for belief grabbed me. Impressed on this cloth are the vague marks of a tortured man. Marks of the wounds on his wrists. Marks on his feet. Marks on his side. Marks from the crown of thorns on his head. Marks all over his body from the scourging.

The marks convinced him.

“The marks that you can see on the shroud are not from pigmentation, they’re not from any kind of coloration. They exist on only the absolute surface of the fibers of the shroud. Any kind of pigmentation would have gone deeper in. What produced them? Best guess, because no one’s been able to reproduce it … is something like an intense burst of radioactivity. Coming from the entirety of the body, all at once in a split second, this intense burst of radiation produced these marks.”[2]

The shroud’s credibility will forever be up for debate, but something about the intense burst of radiation speaks sense to my heart. It is something I can almost wrap my head around—that insane and miraculous moment when the Holy Spirit came down and, in an explosion of love, burst the Son of God up from the grave and back into life! That speaks of the power of resurrection!

While I find the Shroud of Turin fascinating, I don’t need to see it to believe. I have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, bursting me out of the dark back into life. Through an eruption of grace, He restored me. In an explosion of love, He made me new. What more do I need to see?

I pray for you this Easter Sunday that you will see and believe that the same Jesus who rose from the dead can resurrect you. We all need a resurrection from something. What old self do you long to put away? What tomb buries you? What stone do you need to roll away? No matter how worn and torn you are, you are never too far from God's hand, a hand that is patient and precise, that sees your potential. Remember, He rose to redeem you, to remind you of your value, and to offer a second chance. Easter changes everything. Let’s live like the resurrection matters.

Food for thought or journaling …

Do you live like the resurrection matters? How can you share the hope of resurrection with those around you?

Jesus, my Savior and Redeemer, You are in the business of restoration. I praise You for Your power, greatness, faithfulness, and love. Thank You for making all things new, for second chances, and for bringing dead things to life. I permit You to burst into my heart in an explosion of love and pray for the grace to live like the resurrection matters every day of my life. Amen.

[1] “Laws of Judaism Concerning Ritual Purity and Cleanliness,” religiousrules.com (accessed 4/10/2025), https://www.religiousrules.com/Judaismpurity03corpse.htm
[2] Bishop Robert Barron, “Evidence of the Resurrection - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon,” youtube.com (accessed 4/10/2025), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obDYEqVq2Kc