In the Gospel reading for Easter Sunday, we hear a curious detail about the empty tomb of Jesus. Mary Magdalene had run to John and Peter to tell them that the stone had been rolled away and the body of the Lord was gone, and the two apostles, in turn, run to the tomb to see for themselves. John, arriving first, sees the burial cloths, but Peter, arriving second, also sees “the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place” (John 20:7).
This is a strange, and strangely specific, description—one that it is easy to pass over as mere decoration. But it merits serious attention, because it shines a light on what was, as far as we know, the very first act of the risen Jesus. The resurrection of Christ from the dead, without which our faith “is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:20)—and indeed, that whole sacred time between his resurrection and ascension, when the glory of the new creation shone in the old—begins with this simple yet deeply mysterious gesture.
What does it mean? Gregory the Great in the sixth century offers three fascinating spiritual senses of this passage, especially focusing on the head cloth (or “napkin”). He writes,
The napkin about our Lord’s head is not found with the linen clothes—i.e., God, the Head of Christ, and the incomprehensible mysteries of the Godhead are removed from our poor knowledge. His power transcends the nature of creature.
And it is found not only apart, but also wrapped together. Because of the linen wrapped together, neither beginning nor end is seen, and the height of the divine nature had neither beginning nor end.
And it is into one place: for where there is division, God is not, and they merit his grace who do not occasion scandal dividing themselves into sects.
But as a napkin is what is used in laboring to wipe the sweat of the brow, by the napkin here we may understand the labor of God—which napkin is found apart, because the suffering of our Redeemer is far removed from ours; inasmuch as he suffered innocently that which we suffer justly; he submitted himself to death voluntarily, we by necessity.
But what about the literal meaning? Why did Jesus leave behind his burial wrappings, roll up the head cloth, and put the latter in a separate place? And why did the apostles notice this, and John record it?
1. This was no grave-robbing.
A classic answer, stretching back to John Chrysostom in the fourth century, is that the burial cloths were positioned to debunk Mary’s grave-robber hypothesis: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb” (John 20:2).
“If any persons had removed the body of Jesus,” Chrysostom asks in a homily, “would they have stripped it before doing so? Or if anyone had stolen it, would they have taken the trouble to remove the cloth, and roll it up, and lay it in a place by itself? They would have taken the body as it was.” Myrrh, Chrysostom adds, “glues linen to the body even more firmly than lead”; thus, unwrapping it would have been a painstaking process. No grave-robber could have taken that long or been that careful. “From this,” Chrysostom concludes, “the disciples believe in the Resurrection.” Indeed, the Gospel adds that after “the other disciple” goes into the tomb with Peter, “he saw and believed” (John 20:8).
A complicating factor in Chrysostom’s explanation is the strange clarification in the very next verse: “For as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” No less an authority than Augustine draws an uncomfortable conclusion from these two verses taken together: “He saw the sepulcher empty and believed what the woman had said—that is, that Jesus had been taken away from the tomb.” John’s “belief,” Augustine thinks, wasn’t in the Resurrection at all, but rather in Mary’s report that someone had stolen the body; therefore, the cloths didn’t serve as evidence for it—at least not in that moment. In support of Augustine’s view, the disciples, we hear, immediately returned home and locked the door (John 20:10, 19), which suggests a continued attitude of defeat and fear.
Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on this passage, puts forward both Chrysostom’s and Augustine’s reading but seems to favor the former’s by giving him the last word. And this has come to be the majority view: that John’s belief was in the Resurrection, and therefore the cloths served as evidence for it.
As for making sense of the next verse, there are various proposals. Perhaps “they” refers to Peter and Mary, not Peter and John; or perhaps it’s only the full scriptural context of the Resurrection they don’t yet understand, meaning John’s belief was still inchoate; or perhaps the line simply means that he had not yet believed until that moment.
Regardless of where we fall in this debate concerning John’s reaction, one thing seems clear: The cloths do communicate, in themselves, that this was no grave-robbing.
2. Resurrection, not resuscitation.
But doesn’t this feel, on its own, inadequate in explaining the risen Christ’s first act? Wouldn’t John, like the others, very soon see him with his own eyes and rejoice (John 20:20, 1 John 1)? And wouldn’t we, centuries later, believe without seeing him (or the empty tomb), regardless of whether John noticed the cloths or not? The cloths are certainly further evidence, in retrospect, in support of the Resurrection, but that evidence doesn’t seem essential either for John or for us.
Here, a second meaning presents itself: the contrast with Christ’s raising of Lazarus, and thus the unique quality of Christ’s own rising. Lazarus, we read earlier in the Gospel of John, is buried in linens and a head cloth, and he emerges from the tomb still bound in them. It is Jesus who commands that he be unbound (John 11:44). Lazarus’s raising is only partial and provisional; he’s been resuscitated, but he will one day be ensnared again by those same “cords of death” (Ps. 18:4).
Jesus, in contrast, leaves all the bonds behind in the tomb, fully in control of every detail. This raising was thus qualitatively different from Lazarus’s, and from anything else in the disciples’ frame of reference. Christ wasn’t back from the dead like a zombie or a ghost; he was standing, somehow, over and against death itself on the other side of it. “The empty tomb and the linen cloths lying there signify in themselves that by God’s power Christ’s body had escaped the bonds of death and corruption” (CCC 657).
This could help explain, too, why the head cloth is given such special attention. The head is, of course, the distinctively human locus of sight and thought, and therefore of all that goes wrong with both: the lust of the eyes, the darkening of the mind (1 John 2:16; Eph. 4:18). It’s also the locus of the “wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23)—that is, of biological death. By neatly placing the head cloth off to the side, Jesus underscores, with great subtlety, a message of hope: sin and death have no hold on him—or us. “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:17–18).
3. A “first communion” of heaven and earth.
But doesn’t this second meaning, too, leave us looking for more? It seems that Jesus could have communicated this same essential truth by leaving the cloths in two wild heaps. Why this activity of rolling up or folding the head cloth? Is it just an “extra” sign of the unique fact of the Resurrection? Or is there perhaps a third meaning here—one that doesn’t move from the act to the truth of the Resurrection, but the other way around?
Imagine the inside of the tomb in that first sacred moment Easter morning. Picture the silence, the darkness, the lingering smell of blood. Suddenly, there he is: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54). The battle is over, and Christ—though still bearing his wounds—is triumphant over all the world’s darkness. The Father gazes at him, and he gazes back. A new world has arrived.
What now? He could immediately roll away the stone and emerge; instead, he lingers. In the tomb, there are only two things: himself and his burial cloths. He is glorified; the cloths are not. He inhabits a new world; they inhabit the old.
Yet rather than change them into something else or even obliterate them, he lovingly folds the head cloth with his pierced hands. He who makes “all things new” (Rev. 21:5) first makes this cloth new. This is, as it were, a “first communion” of heaven and earth post-Resurrection—a first tasting, here and now, of the “first fruits” of what’s to come (1 Cor. 15:20)—and a faint momentum shift after that great inflection point. Though he doesn’t take the cloth with him, he nevertheless claims it for his own by his peaceful action upon it. This is, simultaneously, an exceedingly simple human act—the tiniest sign of good order familiar to anyone who has ever struggled over a laundry pile or bedcover—and sanctified beyond measure by the Lord’s involvement. There is no such thing as too small a matter in his hands. To enter into the life of the pilgrim Church on earth is to enter into this holy work begun in the tomb, gathering with him rather than scattering (Matt. 12:30, Luke 11:23).
Christ’s first act with the burial cloths does indeed provide evidence for the Resurrection and convey its unique meaning. This was no grave-robbing or resuscitation; if it were, the cloths, too, would have been missing. But perhaps we might also see in it a mysterious first enactment, by Christ, of the new creation—and a powerful summation of what it means to live and die a Christian.