1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
-Acts 26:6-8
The year: AD 60. The place: The palace of Herod Agrippa II in Caesarea by the Sea. The setting: The Apostle Paul has been in jail for two years. He now stands in chains before the mighty Agrippa, great-grandson of Herod the Great. Paul’s case has been referred to Agrippa by Festus who confesses he cannot understand the charges against Paul. With his Roman background Festus cannot comprehend why the Jews hate Paul and why Paul keeps talking about “a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive” as stated in Acts 25:19.
19 but they simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive.
There in that one sentence is the whole problem of Easter. Paul believed it, the Jews didn’t believe it, and the Romans couldn’t understand it and poor Festus doesn’t have a clue. Paul’s explanation to the king is very simple. He asks a question in Acts 26:8 that resonates across the centuries:
Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”
That question for Easter morning! Is it truly incredible. The Greek word means “against belief “, that God should raise the dead? It may interest you to know that this doctrine was troublesome from the beginning.
We read in Acts 4:2,
2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.
Doubt is still a problem today. Unbelief always has a thousand excuses. Some people refuse to believe that Christ rose from the dead because they have never seen it happen and they only believe what they see.
Go to any of the many cemeteries in this area and stroll through them. They are quiet, peaceful, serene, and beautiful. Nothing much happens in the cemeteries except an occasional funeral. And that’s our problem with the idea of the resurrection. Funerals we have aplenty, but not resurrections?
I believe the issue is not fundamentally intellectual or scientific or mechanical or biological, as if we had to somehow understand how the dead could be raised. In the end the problem is a matter of the heart. Many people simply do not believe what God has said. Others worship their own intellect. If they can’t explain something, they assume it can’t be true.
And that brings us back to the New Testament, to the question of what really happened on that first Easter Sunday morning. The accounts vary in their details but the main outline is absolutely clear.
Early on Sunday morning, while it is still dark but just as the sun was about to come up, a group of at least five women led by Mary Magdalene set out for the tomb of Jesus. They intended to anoint his dead body with spices but in the rush to get him to the tomb before sundown on Friday, they had not been able to finish all they wanted to do.
It is clear that they expected to find a tomb guarded by Roman soldiers with a dead body inside. To their shock when they arrived they found the tomb open and Jesus’ body gone. Quickly returning to the other disciples, they spread the news that someone had taken the body of Jesus. John and Peter ran to the tomb. John got there first. Peter arrived seconds later and went inside. What they found surprised them. The body was indeed gone but the grave clothes were lying exactly where they had been placed on Friday just before sundown.
Evidently Peter and John saw the grave clothes lying on a ledge in the tomb. The head covering was still in place as well. It must have looked as if the body has simply vanished, somehow passing through the grave clothes without disturbing them. Not long after that Jesus appeared to Mary, then to the women, then to Peter, then to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Quickly the word spread, “He’s alive!” This became the watchword of the early church. The apostles ended up as martyrs for their faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After 2000 years we can safely say that when the evidence is fairly examined with an unprejudiced mind, the only logical conclusion is that Jesus died on Friday afternoon and that he literally, physically, and bodily rose from the dead on Sunday morning. How wonderful are the words, He is not here, He has risen.