John/Galilee Bridge

Jerusalem was waking.

John barely noticed.

The night’s cool still clung to the limestone. Above the roofs, the eastern sky had begun to pale, but the sun had not yet reached down into the narrow streets. Somewhere a wooden door scraped open. A donkey objected loudly to being led from a courtyard. Doves shifted along a roofline, then burst upward when a man passed beneath them carrying water.

A woman stooped to coax a household fire back to life.

Farther down the street someone lifted a covering from a baker’s table.

A child laughed.

The city was beginning another morning.

John heard all of it and understood none of it.

Mary’s words would not settle into meaning.

The stone was moved.

The tomb was open.

Jesus was gone.

Gone.

John walked faster.

Peter was beside him.

“What did she mean, gone?”

Peter did not answer.

“Who would take Him?”

Still nothing.

The word would not leave John’s mind.

Gone.

He had followed Jesus for years, but the memories arriving now did not come in order.

A younger John beside Jordan, listening to the wilderness preacher speak of One who was coming after him.

A first invitation to come and see.

Then the longer calling that followed—not an explanation of everything, not a finished understanding of salvation, but a vocation that swallowed the direction of his life:

Follow Me.

Boats left.

Nets left.

Roads taken because Jesus had taken them first.

Then another garden only days ago.

Torches moving in darkness.

Soldiers.

Weapons.

Jesus stepping forward.

“Whom seek ye?”

“Jesus of Nazareth.”

“I am he.”

Men recoiling.

Bodies falling backward.

John had seen it.

Power without a sword.

Then the court.

Questions.

Accusations.

The night refusing to end.

Peter somewhere inside his own terror.

Then Golgotha.

Mary beside him.

The sky.

The cross.

Jesus forcing words through a body already being destroyed.

“Woman, behold thy son.”

Then:

“It is finished.”

John had heard that too.

Finished.

He had watched Jesus bow His head.

He had watched death take the body.

He had watched blood and water come from His side.

There had been no uncertainty left about death.

Joseph and Nicodemus had carried what remained.

Now Mary was saying the tomb was open.

The body was gone.

John broke into a run.

Peter followed.

At first John stayed to the path.

Then the path bent and John did not.

He cut across.

His sandals struck hard ground and loose stone. Dust kicked behind him. He nearly collided with a man carrying a basket and heard an angry shout as he passed.

John did not turn.

I have to see.

His breathing shortened.

He pushed harder.

Mary had been grieving.

They were all grieving.

Could she have mistaken the tomb?

No.

She knew Joseph’s garden.

Could the authorities have moved Him?

Had the council decided that even burial in a rich man’s tomb was too much honor for the man they had condemned?

Could soldiers have come before dawn?

The stone.

Mary had said the stone was moved.

Who moved it?

John lengthened his stride.

His lungs began to burn.

His mouth went dry. He swallowed and gained nothing from it.

Peter’s footsteps had fallen farther behind.

John did not slow.

I have to see my Lord.

The thought struck him.

My Lord.

Even dead.

Even buried.

Even if someone had taken the body somewhere else.

He needed to see.

The last rise hurt.

His legs began to lose some of their strength. For several strides his pace shortened. A hard stitch pulled beneath his ribs. He bent slightly forward, dragged in another breath, and forced himself upward.

Then the garden came into view.

Joseph’s garden.

A place of rock and cultivated ground.

A burial place belonging to a man wealthy enough to have a new tomb cut from stone.

John slowed because his body forced him to.

He reached the opening and caught himself with one hand against the rock.

His chest heaved.

The tomb stood open.

Mary had not imagined that.

John bent forward, fought for breath, then raised his head and stared inside.

Darkness.

Cool air came from the opening.

At first he could make out almost nothing.

Then something pale.

Linen.

His own breathing seemed too loud.

A tomb.

A place of death.

Uncleanness.

Was the body still inside?

Had someone merely moved Jesus from where Joseph and Nicodemus had laid Him?

Was John about to step into the place of the dead?

He stayed at the threshold.

His hand remained pressed against the stone.

And then another fragment moved through his mind.

Isaiah.

A grave.

The wicked.

The rich in his death.

John knew the words.

They would not assemble.

Not now.

Footsteps pounded behind him.

Peter arrived gasping.

John pointed.

“The stone.”

Peter looked once.

Then walked straight past him into the tomb.

John almost laughed.

Of course Peter went in.

Peter disappeared into the darkness without spending even a heartbeat on the questions that had stopped John at the entrance.

For a moment there was only John’s breathing.

Then Peter’s voice came from within.

“John.”

John leaned closer.

“What?”

“The linen clothes.”

A pause.

“The cloth from His head is here too.”

John stopped breathing for half a heartbeat.

Then he went in.

The temperature changed immediately.

Outside, morning had begun warming the exposed stone.

Inside, the rock still held the night.

Cool.

Enclosed.

Earth.

Stone.

Linen.

And the burial preparations.

Myrrh.

Aloes.

Something sweeter beneath them.

And something sharper.

Resinous.

Medicinal.

Almost pine-like.

John knew where that had come from.

Nicodemus.

Even now, with fear pounding through him, John remembered the astonishing quantity the old teacher had brought.

At first it had seemed almost excessive.

Then John had looked at what Rome had done to Jesus’ body, and nothing had seemed excessive.

Joseph and Nicodemus had worked until there was nothing more human hands could do for a body that no longer breathed.

Now the evidence of their work remained.

The linen.

There.

More linen.

The cloth that had been around Jesus’ head, apart from the rest.

There.

And the place where the body had lain.

Empty.

John stepped closer.

His eyes adjusted.

He looked again.

If someone had stolen Jesus, why leave the wrappings?

Why remove them?

Why leave the head cloth apart?

Why this arrangement?

Why take the body and leave everything belonging to burial behind?

John did not know what had happened.

But simple theft did not fit what he was seeing.

Peter stood beside him looking from one thing to another.

John’s pulse was still racing from the run, but another pressure had begun building inside him.

Everything connected with burial remained.

Except Jesus.

John’s throat tightened.

“Peter.”

Peter turned.

John looked at the linen again.

Then the empty place.

“This is not what I expected.”

Peter gave a short, exhausted laugh.

“I don’t know what I expected.”

John moved nearer to where the body had lain.

“Mary thought someone had taken Him.”

Peter looked around the chamber.

“Maybe someone did.”

John stared at the linen.

“Like this?”

Peter did not answer.

John pointed.

“The linen is here.”

Peter’s breathing was still heavy.

“I can see that.”

“And the cloth from His head.”

“Yes.”

“Apart.”

Peter looked at him.

John lowered his hand.

He did not have a conclusion.

Not one he could name.

He had no Psalm opened in his mind explaining resurrection.

No Isaiah passage suddenly resolved.

No category large enough for what the empty place might mean.

He knew only that what he was seeing did not fit the explanation with which they had arrived.

Something had happened.

Something impossible.

Peter inhaled slowly.

The breath left him in a long, tired stream.

“I don’t know what to make of any of this.”

The force normally present in Peter’s voice had disappeared.

“My whole world is upside down.”

John looked again.

He did not understand the Scripture.

He did not understand why Messiah would die.

He did not yet understand that the Scripture required Him to rise from the dead.

He could not have explained what had happened in the night.

But he believed.

Not because he had solved resurrection.

Not because someone had explained prophecy to him in the tomb.

Not because he knew where Jesus was.

He believed because the empty place and the linen told him that Mary’s first explanation was not enough.

Jesus had not simply been taken in the ordinary way.

The certainty came before the explanation.

Faith arrived before John possessed the category that would later make sense of it.

Peter rubbed both hands across his face.

For a long moment neither man spoke.

Then Peter looked toward the light at the entrance.

“The only place my head ever made sense was on the water.”

John glanced at him.

Peter gave the faintest shrug.

“When I don’t know what to do, I know what a net feels like in my hands.”

He stepped toward the entrance.

John followed.

Outside, Peter drew a long breath of open air.

“Not today.”

John looked at him.

“Not today?”

Peter looked toward Jerusalem.

“Too much is happening here.”

Then his eyes moved north for only a moment.

“But when we get home…”

He did not finish.

John understood.

Boat.

Net.

Water.

Something Peter’s hands knew even if his life no longer did.

John turned once more toward the tomb.

The darkness no longer frightened him in quite the same way.

The place was empty.

And John believed.

He would spend years learning what he had believed before he understood it.