At this point Jesus had been in the tomb from Friday late afternoon to very early Sunday morning. Remember that Saturday being the Sabbath, nothing was allowed to be done. We don't know precisely when Jesus was raised, it could have been hours before Mary Magdalene visited the tomb and found it open and empty. She was appalled that the huge stone had been rolled away and would have immediately thought that the Jewish religious leaders had taken the body somewhere else or that grave robbers had managed to gain access. Feeling vulnerable, she returned to find Simon Peter and John to tell them the news. In finding that the grave clothes were still in the tomb, they realised that it could not have been the work of robbers or religious leaders. Not only were they there, but they were still in their folds, as if the body they once had enclosed had simply evaporated out of them. In seeing this evidence, John believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that He was the Son of God.
John and Peter then went to tell the other disciples, but Mary Magdalene lingered . She was very upset-she didn't understand as John did-and she looked in the tomb. Two angels sat, one where the head of Jesus would have been, one at where His feet would have been. Now this reminds us of one of John's threaded themes, that Jesus Christ brought the glory of God to earth, He was the living, breathing equivalent of the Temple and the Holy of Holies. John 1 v 14 in the most literal translations states that Jesus 'tabernacled' amongst the people (Young's Literal translation), the references that Jesus was to be the sacrifice, and the story of the wedding at Cana.
So, Jesus has gone ahead of us, both to conquer death and sin and also to show that we too can go through death to find new life. There are differences between what our experience will be and what we see with the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is no body left, whereas ours will rot in the ground or be burned up in the crematorium. We will look more into this in the coming days.