After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb, (Matthew 28:1).
The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Is it the greatest event in human history…or the greatest fraud? If it is true, life has meaning, purpose, truth, and destiny. If not, “eat, drink, and be merry” because you’re going to die and that’s it! As a university student, I didn’t believe it was true. I actually didn’t think much about it at all, which in retrospect seems unthinkable. Yet, my hunch is that for many, whether the resurrection happened or not – barely crosses their minds. After reaching a point in my thinking where I took a “leap of faith”, my leap was challenged by one o my agnostic professors during my senior year of studies. After deciding WHAT I believed, I began to realize I better also know WHY I believed. With that in mind, it seemed to me that the crux of whether Christianity was true or false rested on the truth or falsehood of the resurrection.
Today, I can point to three reasons why I believe Christ rose from death (and lives today!):
REASON #1: An empty tomb. I believe it is possible to build a case for both the historic existence of Jesus and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate from ancient histories, without even invoking the Bible. But when it comes to the details surrounding his burial, the gospel accounts are critical. They tell us that the body of Jesus was released to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin and secret believer in Jesus. It was prepared for burial by Joseph and Nicodemus, another member of the Sanhedrin who had come to visit Jesus by night (see John 3). Joseph had a new tomb that had never been used before. If you travel to Israel you can still see what such a tomb looked like. They were carved out of solid stone. Inside, a place was created to lay the body of the one who had died. The body was wrapped in linen strips, with each layer of the shroud being laced with aromatic spices. John’s gospel tells us that about 100 pounds of such spices were used in the burial of Jesus. Some scholars believe that as the gummy spices dried, they not only helped preserve the body, but would form something like a cocoon around the body. The tomb would then be sealed by a carved stone, usually flat and circular. The normal stone would weigh between one and two tons. The tombs were often built with a graded trough in front where the stone was placed and rolled down to cover the tomb opening. Under normal circumstances, the tomb of Jesus would have been sealed and the burial would be complete. But the burial of Jesus was not performed under normal circumstances. The Jewish leaders remembered that Jesus predicted that if they killed him, he would rise on the third day. So they went to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and asked him to secure the tomb so that the followers of Jesus would not come and steal the body to fake his resurrection. Pilate responded by sending a Roman guard and having the tomb “sealed” with a Roman seal. Getting past a Roman guard was virtually impossible, and breaking a Roman seal without authority was punishable by death. With all these precautions taken, the countdown to Sunday began. Consider the above scenario compared to what Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of James found when they came to the tomb that first Easter Sunday. The seal was broken. The stone was moved. The guard had fled. The tomb was empty. Something radical had occurred! If a Roman guard left their post without permission, they were put to death (sometimes by being burned alive in a fire started with the clothing they had been stripped of.) Mary rushed back to tell the other disciples that the body was gone. Peter and John rushed to the tomb. Looking in they discovered the tomb was NOT empty. The GRAVECLOTHES were empty! John writes that when he went in the tomb and saw the graveclothes “he believed”! Some scholars believe what he saw resembled a cocoon – without the body in it!!! Who took the body? Not the disciples! They were all hiding in fear for their lives. Not the Romans. They would have been put to death or produced the body to save their lives. Not the Jews. They would have had to get past the Romans without being noticed, moved a 2-ton stone uphill without being heard, unwrapped the body and left the linens. Then when Peter preached that Jesus was risen, they could have hauled out the body and there would be no Easter today (or Christianity at all!)
REASON #2: Eyewitness Testimony. Add to the empty tomb the fact that Jesus began to show up! He first appeared to Mary Magdelene. Then to two men on the road to the nearby village of Emmaus. Then to ten of the eleven disciples in the upper room – without Thomas. Then to the eleven again with Thomas. Then to his brother James. Then to a group of 500 in Galilee. Finally, he appeared to the hostile Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Luke records that these appearances took place over a 40 day period and that they were “convincing”. On two occasions he ate with the disciples to demonstrate they weren’t hallucinating or seeing a ghost. Many of those who were eyewitnesses became leaders in the early church.
REASON #3 – Transformed lives. It was these eyewitness encounters that led to the radical change that we see in the disciples and multitudes of others. Peter was so terrified of the Roman and Jewish authorities that he denied Jesus three times. The other disciples (except for John) fled when Jesus was arrested. They all were hiding in the upper room after the crucifixion. But something happened to transform them. On the day of the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 10 days after the risen Christ ascended, Peter stood in the middle of Jerusalem and proclaimed fearlessly that “You killed him (Jesus), but God raised him from the dead…and we are witnesses!” Eventually, ten of the twelve, plus the Apostle Paul, would die martyr’s deaths for this proclamation. It has been pointed out to me that many men and women are willing to die for a lie they believe to be the truth. But few are willing to die for a lie they know to be a lie. Yet these men and women were willing to die horrendous deaths: crucifixion, flaying (skin alive), stoning, and torture, for claiming that they saw Jesus and he is alive…and he is Lord. N.T. Wright, the esteemed British theologian, comes to the conclusion in his epic work, The New Testament and the People of God, that the only adequate explanation for the existence of the apostolic church was that these were people who encountered the risen Christ. You don’t have to take your brain out to believe in Jesus. You don’t have to be stupid to believe in the resurrection. All you really have to do is examine the evidence. Think about these three reasons to believe: an empty tomb, eyewitness testimony, and radically transformed lives. One of my favorite books in my own journey to know WHY I believe was Frank Morrison’s Who Moved the Stone? Morrison was an unbelieving attorney who set out to write a book that would disprove the resurrection. He took a year sabbatical and moved to Israel to research the project. Who Moved the Stone? was the result of his efforts. The first chapter of the book is titled, “The book that refused to be written.” His research led him to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus was one of the most well attested events in antiquity. He became a believer. Happy Easter!!! Christ is risen!
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