The Gospels consistently describe the resurrected Jesus as at first unrecognisable. Perhaps like seeing an old friend after forty years. Just not the same. The change in Jesus is significant, as we will see.

Jesus’ crucifixion was unjust, violent, shameful.

Having obtained Pilate’s permission, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took Jesus’ crucified body for careful and reverential burial.

Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about thirty-five kilograms. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was near by, they laid Jesus there. John 19:39–42.

In Israel the well-to-do dead were wrapped head to toe in othonia (ὀθονια), linen, a textile made from flax. It was stiff, durable, and expensive. Myrrh and aloes were packed between the linen strips to mask the smell of decomposition.

The head was wrapped separately in a sudarion, Latin for facecloth (Greek soudarion, σουδαριον). Usually made from wool, it was cheaper than linen but softer. So when Lazarus emerged alive from his tomb “his hands and feet were wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth was around his face.”

After a dishonourable death Jesus was, as Isaiah predicted, buried “with the rich in death” (53:9).

Matthew says that Mary Magdalene observed these preparations, and that the chief priests obtained a guard for Jesus’ tomb, so no one would steal his body and then claim that he had risen (27:61–66).

That was Friday. Now it is Sunday.

John 20:1

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.

We stand on sacred ground.

Because work was forbidden on the sabbath Mary Magdalene hurries to the tomb daybreak Sunday. Mark says that she and other women came with spices to finish embalming Jesus’ body (16:1–2).

Jesus had exorcised seven demons from Mary (Luke 8:2). She had stood on Golgotha near the crucified Jesus with a few others. All four evangelists describe her among the women who were the first to come to Jesus’ tomb. She is important to the Resurrection history.

Mary sees that the stone that had sealed Jesus’ tomb had been rolled aside, that Jesus’ body was not there.

John 20:2

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!’

John calls himself “the beloved” for Jesus had a special affection for him.

Mary is upset. It seemed the guards had allowed Jesus’ enemies to remove his body, perhaps to throw it in a pit among the corpses of other executed malefactors?

Peter and John waste no time wondering.

John 20:3–7

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, (ESV) and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.

Peter distinguishes the linen winding strips from the sudarion. The linen and facecloth lie separate.

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