I never heard of someone rising from the dead. How do you know? John 20 is the Bible’s best single passage answering that question.

The chapter opens in the dark, before the sun had come up. In John’s use of symbolism, this signals that not even Jesus’ closest followers were expecting a resurrection. We know that, because Mary says—not once, but three times!—that someone had taken away the body from the tomb and because the writer says that Peter and the other disciple did not yet understand what scripture says about the Messiah’s rising from the dead (v 9). On the morning of the resurrection, they were still in the dark.

Then came the dawn, and they saw. The chapter is filled with verbs for seeing—seventeen of them. This telling of the resurrection is different from those in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here there are no bright lights, no dramatic declarations, and no angels to say, “He is not here; he is risen.” No; what this chapter does is to tell us what the people closest to Jesus thought and felt, and it makes two great arguments: The tomb was empty, and people saw Jesus alive after his death.

In the center of the chapter, we have accounts of those who saw him alive after his death. This is the argument from witnesses. At the opening and closing of the chapter, we have scenes of those who believe without seeing the risen Lord. This is the argument from the empty tomb.

The witnesses

Mary Magdalene is the first person to see Jesus alive. It’s striking that, although she’s the first person at the tomb, the opening scene of the story is not really about her. She’s there, as the discoverer of the empty tomb, but as the story moves ahead, she disappears for the moment (vs 1–3). It is later on, after Peter and John have come and gone, that she encounters Jesus. At first, she supposes him to be the gardener, but when he says her name, she reconizes him and acknowledges him as “Rabbouni,” “my Teacher” (vs 11–18).

The Ten are next (vs 19–23). They gather on the evening of the same day. Sudden violence has struck Jesus only two days before; they think they might be next and have locked the door from the inside. But Jesus appears among them anyway, shows them his hands and side, and they rejoice to see him.

Thomas is last (vs 24–27). It’s a week later, and he seems a little defensive. So would you be if your friends told you that a dead man had appeared at the Sunday evening service you skipped. And his skepticism is natural and only slightly over-the-top. But no one can ever say that Thomas believed only because he was gullible, and it’s good for us to know that. Thomas finally gets his chance for a rigorous examination—and seems not to take it. Instead, he says to Jesus, swiftly and passionately, “My Lord and my God.”

With all events of the past and with most events of the present, you and I cannot know them through our own first-hand experience. We rely on the testimony of witnesses whom we deem to be reliable. That’s just how Abe Lincoln knew the gloves were of dogskin. I don’t think he actually witnessed those four events—the killing of the sheep, the shooting of the dog, the tanning, and the sewing. But he knew those people.

So does John: He gives us the people who knew Jesus best when he was alive, who least expected what happened after his death, and who had the best possible chance to investigate.

• Mary was convinced in spite of her stubborn preconception.
• The Ten believed, even though they didn’t get it when Jesus told them ahead of time.
• Thomas was persuaded in spite of his scornful suspicion.

They have not been fooled, nor shall we, if we believe, on the strength of the apostolic witness, here recorded in credible detail.

The empty tomb

That’s the center of the chapter. Look now at its beginning and ending, always critical points in a carefully-told story. John 20 opens and closes with those who believe without seeing Jesus. This brings the resurrection right to our door, for we are those people who must believe without physically seeing the risen Christ.

And this brings us back to Mary, the first person to visit the tomb. Actually, the story doesn’t say that she looked into the tomb on that visit, only that she saw that the stone had been rolled away. (It’s only later that she stoops down and looks in and sees the two angels, v 12). When she sees the tomb open, she jumps to the conclusion that someone has taken the body. It must have been on her mind as a worry all night long, and she comes early to make sure it hasn’t happened. She assumes the worst and bolts to tell Peter and John. (The story speaks of Peter’s friend only as “the other disciple” [vs 2, 3, 4, 8], but it is often supposed that this means John, and I’m calling him that for convenience.)

Within only a few words in this story, those two abandon Mary’s anxious surmise and come to the conviction that Jesus has risen. But it all happens so fast, and the description is so brief, that we can hardly follow it. Assuming that the text gives enough information to see what they saw and to believe as John believed, let us try to think their thoughts.

The two of them take off for the tomb, running as in a heat to see who can get there first. John finally pulls ahead. But the whole time of their run, they’re thinking about what Mary told them, that someone had taken the body. Their brains are running as fast as their feet. As they run, they’re wondering, who would have done such a thing, and why? Before they ever reach the tomb, they’ve begun the process of inference that will lead to belief.

We know what the options are:

• First of all, Jesus’ enemies might have taken his body. Violence against the corpse would only continue the sudden and irrational hostility that had broken upon them the week before. Pathological hatred could easily produce such a desecration.
• Or, some of the disciples might have taken it. The Gospel of Matthew (27:62–66) already contains the tradition that the high priests asked Pilate to secure the tomb against a raid by the disciples themselves, who could then claim that a resurrection had occured. Peter and John consider this, wondering who among them might have done so.
• Or grave robbers, hoping to find burial gifts placed there by the wealthy women who had supported Jesus' ministry from the beginning (Mt 27:55), might have taken it.

But what John sees when he peers into the tomb is not so simple. It is not totally empty as he expected: He sees the “linen wrappings lying there” (v 5). This undercuts Mary’s statement. No one stealing the body in a clandestine raid will likely take time to unwrap it. They will grab the corpse and run. And besides, the word “lying” does not imply “unwound and scattered,” as if in a frantic tearing off the wrappings, but rather “in place.”

The wrappings show that no theory of abduction will work, and their ordered position shows that the body was not assaulted. Hmm. Strange.

Do you wonder why John does not go on in? He backs away to let Peter look, who comes puffing up behind him. But he may also back off in bewilderment, head spinning and brain racing to cope with new information. Perhaps he doesn’t feel quite comfortable walking into a tomb, given Jewish scruples about contamination and respect for the deceased. And then, there’s no need to go in, when it’s obvious that there is no body there; it’s not as if he’s from Homicide, itching to dust the place for fingerprints.

Peter, always the impulsive one, the eager one, goes straight into the tomb. He, too, sees the wrappings. But then, the lens of the narrative zooms in on something else. Peter sees Jesus’ head cloth—off by itself, folded up, parked—not visible to John’s look through the entrance. I think Peter doesn’t know what to make of it, and calls out, “Hey, look at this!”

“Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed” (v 9). What did he see? How did he reason?

Think of getting dressed in the morning, when you’re in a hurry. You pull off your pajamas, give them a toss, and run to the shower or begin to pull on your clothes. If you saw your room after you’d gone to work, you’d say, “This person got dressed in a big hurry.” But if your pajamas are carefully hanging on their hook in the closet, or folded and put under the pillow or in the dresser, you’d know, “This person had time to be leisurely.”

The folded headcloth shows deliberateness. Whatever took place in that chamber was the result of planning, care, order, and propriety. This person had time to be leisurely. The headcloth was folded, for Jesus will never wear it again.

What does John believe? In the moment of confronting the facts of the empty tomb and the grave clothes, he is helped by Jesus’ having spoken several times of his coming death and resurrection. Verse 9 shows us that those statements, and the Old Testament scriptures that buttress them, did not sink in at the time. But now, with the material evidence spread before him, those earlier teachings propel him towards belief (see also John 2:22)—what was already in his head from those many months with Jesus comes together with the scene in front of him. “He saw and believed.”

Since no one witnessed the resurrection in its event, the story holds back from saying what might have happened. The church has often supposed that God’s resurrection power created Jesus’ new body, which passed through the grave clothes without disturbing them, and that Jesus himself placed the headcloth apart. He went out into the early morning, the firstborn from the dead.

That’s incredible, of course. But if you suspend the incredibility for the moment, everyone in John 20 is utterly human and believable. We have disorienting grief and stubbornness in a wrong opinion, macho competition in running, mortal fear, and skepticism. This is the story the fourth gospel tells us at the end of the first century. It has had enough of bright lights and angelic announcements: It will tell us what people like us saw and felt.

This is how you believe without seeing the Person: by inference from the facts—according to the famous method of Sherlock Holmes—by eliminating what cannot be, and by accepting what remains, even when it is implausible. You may be tempted to call it a head game, although we play such games of weighing competing probabilities all the time. John reached his conclusion without the object of his faith being there, and it is the one form of verification that we can repeat, since the direct, physical experience of the risen Christ is beyond our present ability.

Here we balance the probabilities. No one would likely say it’s easy to believe that a man rises from the dead, but John found it easier than any of the alternatives.

The chapter that opens with Peter and John closes with us—with us, who “have not seen and yet have come to believe” (v 29). As the dawn comes for us, John’s Gospel calls on us to make our own the process of reasoning that Peter and John passed through at the empty tomb and to trust the Christ of the apostolic witness.

Not just to believe that he rose from the dead: That would be to stay in Scene One. No. The strong faith to which the church calls you today is more: Go clear through this chapter. Go on to claim Jesus as your Teacher; go on to rejoice in his presence and peace; go all the way and confess him, "My Lord and my God."