The empty tomb as a place, a specific place that is historically verifiable. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher had it been moved any direction would have been significantly less of an endeavor to build both in expense and engineering requirements. Further, there is a long history of worship at burial sites in ancient times and into the modern day. It is impossible to remove the particularity of space from the experience. To do so is to lose the meaning of what it is to be crucified and buried and to rise again.
Tombs in ancient times were small rectangular caverns emptied from the rock, where bodies would be laid until such time as they were decomposed. The bones would then be cleaned off and a new body would be housed within the tomb. Notably, Jesus’ tomb is both claimed to be new – never used before. Also notably, the idea of an empty used tomb is not a new one. Tombs were often being found ‘empty’ but not for the reason of resurrection and certainly only after a significant period of time. For the resurrection story then to include the leaving of the linen that had wrapped the body of Jesus in his absence in the tomb is a direct challenge to the idea of either a tomb housing a decomposed ‘wrong body.’
In the linen the presence and reality of the absent Jesus Christ is confirmed and acknowledged. The emptiness is the promise and the reality. The emptiness is the fullness of Christ’s being.
The linen pulls in further connotations. Material is essential to understanding liturgical practices and symbolism. Whether in the form of the ‘Shroud of Turin,’ the cloth covering the Eucharist or liturgical garments, cloth is given a symbolic potency that conveys meaning and transfers truth and power. In the scripture cloth can be witnessed throughout including the parable of the bleeding woman who touches Jesus’ clothes and through them is healed (Matt ??) and in the sheet which descended full of animals for Peter to eat (Acts 11).?? The Russian Orthodox Easter liturgy uses a cloth lowered in front of the door to simulate the crawling into the tomb and the presence of the spirit. That holiness can be transmitted by clothe is a traditional and coherent notion.
Cloth is also related to women just as the story is inescapably related to women. It is the women who watch the death and return to find the empty tomb. Although it might be different women and different messengers of the news, the disciples are not immediately present. The betrayal at Gethsemane was one of unimaginable shame. To sleep and therefore turn over Jesus Christ, who in turn, seeing the approaching authorities from a distance, rather than quickly waking the disciples and retreating, walks out to greet his future head on and protect the disciples in their treachery was an unimaginable trauma of shame. Placing the discovery of the women into this context gives insight both into the depth of the shame and the willingness of God for God’s Grace in the resurrection to fight the resistance in each of us and seemingly the worst of sins – betrayal of God himself.