What follows is a reflection from my husband, G. Wray. It is simply an imaginative meditation on the imagery surrounding the resurrection in John 20.
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Sometimes Scripture speaks plainly. Other times it invites us to linger over its images and wonder what echoes they may awaken elsewhere in the story God has been telling all along.
With that in mind, take a moment to revisit John 20.
Notice what John records.
The stone is not merely rolled back for someone to peek inside. His language suggests something more dramatic. The stone is removed from the entrance entirely.
Then inside the tomb we find two angels, one at the head and one at the feet where Jesus had lain.
Hold those images in your mind for a moment.
Years ago, while researching for a Lenten project Gilda and I were writing, my imagination began to wander through that scene.
Standing outside the tomb in my mind, I found myself wondering:
Could the removed stone be viewed as a kind of covenant sign?
I do not mean that John explicitly teaches this. Rather, the image brought to mind the covenant of Abraham, where circumcision served as an outward mark that God’s people belonged to Him.
There at the empty tomb stands another covenant moment.
The old creation has passed through death.
The new creation is emerging.
And the removed stone becomes, at least in my imagination, an outward witness that something irrevocably new has begun.
Then my thoughts moved inside the tomb.
Two angels.
One at the head.
One at the feet.
Facing one another across the place where Jesus had rested.
And suddenly my mind was no longer in the tomb.
It was standing before the Ark of the Covenant.
There, upon the mercy seat, two cherubim faced one another while the glory of God dwelt between them.
The parallels may not be exact, but they are difficult for me to ignore.
What if John is allowing us to glimpse something here?
The place of death has become the place of mercy.
The tomb has become a sanctuary.
The One who lay there has become the fulfillment of everything the mercy seat pointed toward.
“I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
The symbols of covenant and mercy seem to converge in this resurrection scene.
Outside the tomb, a stone removed.
Inside the tomb, angels stationed like guardians of a holy place.
And at the center of it all, not an empty symbol, but the risen Christ Himself.
And then there is the facecloth.
John seems strangely careful to mention it. Not discarded in haste, but folded and set apart by itself.
I cannot help wondering whether resurrection is filled with this sort of imagery.
Throughout Scripture, veils are removed. Moses’ veil. The veil of the Temple. The things that conceal the glory of God are gradually pulled back until, in Christ, we behold God face to face.
I am not suggesting that John intended the facecloth to symbolize Moses’ veil. Yet standing in the tomb, seeing it laid aside, I find myself thinking of all the barriers that have now been removed.
Nothing covers Him.
Nothing confines Him.
Nothing stands between death and life.
Nothing stands between God and those He calls His own.
Whether John intended all of these connections, I cannot say.
But standing in that scene, these are the images I see between the words.
And I know what the image asks of me.
If the place of death can become the place of mercy, then perhaps I should be slower to call any buried thing hopeless.
Perhaps the places I thought were sealed shut are not beyond the reach of resurrection.
Perhaps the stone I keep staring at is not the final word.
And maybe that is the question this scene leaves with us:
What sealed place in your life might God already be turning into a place of mercy—and what new life might be waiting on the other side of that stone?
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Thank you for reading.
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©️ G. Wray. All rights reserved.