Easter as the New Creation

John doesn't waste words. When he tells us something like this twice, he knows what he's doing. It isn't just that Easter day happened to be a Sunday. John wants his readers to figure out that Easter day is the first day of God's new creation. Easter morning was the birthday of God's new world. On the sixth day of the week, the Friday, God finished all his work; the great shout of /tetelestai/, "It is finished!" in John 19:30 looks all that way back to the sixth day in Genesis 1 when, with the creation of the human beings in his own image, God finished the initial work of creation. Now, says John (19:5), "Behold the Man!" here on Good Friday as the truly human being. John invites us to see the Saturday, the sabbath between Good Friday and Easter day in terms of the sabbath rest of God after creation was done:
On the seventh day God rested
in the darkness of the tomb;
Having finished on the sixth day
all his work of joy and doom.
Now the word had fallen silent,
and the water had run dry,
The bread had all been scattered,
and the light had left the sky.
The flock had lost its shepherd,
and the seed was sadly sown,
The courtiers had betrayed their king,
and nailed him to his throne.
O Sabbath rest by Calvary,
O calm of tomb below,
Where the grave-clothes and the spices
cradle him we did not know!
Rest you well, beloved Jesus,
Caesar's Lord and Israel's King,
In the brooding of the Spirit,
in the darkness of the Spring.
Then on Easter morning it is the first day of the week. Creation is complete; new creation can now begin. The Spirit who brooded over the waters of creation at the beginning broods now over God's world, ready to bring it bursting to springtime life. Mary goes to the tomb while it's still dark and in the morning light meets Jesus in the garden. She thinks he is the gardener, as in one important sense, indeed he is. This is the new creation. This is the new Genesis.
... with the new creation a new order of being has burst upon the startled old world, opening up new possibilities...

(The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering who Jesus was and is, p 175ff)