The Resurrection is a Really, Really Big Deal (Part 1)

The sun had not yet risen. The sky was dark. As Mary Magdalene journeyed on foot to the garden tomb, the world was quiet and the mood of humanity seemed distraught, as if a heavy blanket had been laid over the earth. It was Sunday, and Jesus had died on Friday. The one who calmed seas and cleansed lepers had been crucified. His lifeless body had been taken down from that cruel tree, wrapped in linen cloths, and placed in the ground to join the dead. 

But as Mary drew closer to the tomb on that first day of a new week, she noticed something peculiar. The enormous stone put in place by the soldiers to seal the grave’s entrance had been removed. The tomb was open, and what’s more, the body of Jesus was no longer inside. And scarcely had Mary made this discovery when two men appeared before her in dazzling clothes. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” they asked. “He is not here, but has risen.”

The sky was still dark when Mary arrived at the tomb early that Sunday. The sun had not yet risen, but the Savior had. The stone was rolled away, and Jesus had come back to life.

In our time, we have selected the cross as the symbol of Christianity. We wear crosses around our necks and hang them on our walls and mount them on our church buildings. But I have a hunch that the earliest Christians would have selected the empty tomb. Take Paul for instance. When Paul is reminding the Christians in Corinth about what is "of first importance," he places a heavy emphasis on the Resurrection. He spends a little time on Jesus's death, a little time on his burial, and a lot of time on his Resurrection and the appearances He made after coming back to life (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

While the cross represents the death of Jesus, the empty tomb declares Jesus’s victory over death. The empty tomb proclaims that death is not the end of the story. To be clear, I am not trying to diminish the cross, and what God accomplished there. I am simply saying that to the early Christians, the Resurrection authenticated what happened at the Crucifixion. So let’s talk about how. Let’s talk about why the Resurrection was and is a really, really big deal. (To be continued...)

*The reasons (and many of the passages of scripture) that I will discuss in the following posts come from a fantastic lesson on the Resurrection that my friend Brad Costello wrote for our summer camp last year.