All the resurrection texts are assuringly familiar, yet always startlingly fresh. A straightforward revelation - that Jesus had indeed risen from the grave - brings higher levels of insight and deeper layers of meaning with every passing year. Like the act of resurrection itself, reading and re-reading the Scriptures is always transforming, renewing, astonishing.

While the Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was the first to visit the abandoned grave, John's Gospel interrupts her experience with that of two other disciples, Simon Peter and "the Beloved Disciple." Arriving at the tomb in the dark, Mary's sensibilities are wrapped in the shroud of her grief and despair. Seeing the great stone door rolled away only intensifies her anguish and sends her running for the corroborating witness of o…