After Jesus’ crucifixion, the women came to the tomb carrying their embalming fluids and ointments. Mark 16:1-2 tells us, “When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.” Two things strike me in this verse. First, they waited until the Sabbath was past. According to their religion, they could not do what they wanted to do on the Sabbath. It was a day filled with rules and regulations that Jesus often refuted. Secondly, the need to anoint a dead body was a religious rite laid out similarly in the Jewish religious ritual.
In spite of all that Jesus said about the sabbath laws, the women continued to direct their lives according to religious rituals. But when they got to the tomb, they found the stone had been rolled away, and an angel appeared and asked them a very profound question. It’s recorded for us in Luke 24:5: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Moses, the lawgiver, was dead. We don’t know where he was buried, but we know that he was dead. All the Jewish religious leaders from the time of Moses to this day were dead also. Some were probably buried in this graveyard because it was the tomb of one of the religious leaders, Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus is not like them. The modern movement to find the “historical” Jesus looks for Him amongst the dead. He’s not there. Don’t bother looking for him there. Unlike Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of the religious leaders of the Old Testament, Jesus is not to be found amongst the dead. You’ll never find the real Jesus there. Jesus’ resurrection changes everything. Jesus is not to be found amidst dead religious rituals. He can only be experienced through a living relationship. He doesn’t want us to look for Him in ancient cemeteries but to experience Him every day of our lives. That’s what the resurrection was all about.
It wasn’t the life, miracles, or even the death of Jesus that gave birth to the Christian church, which still exists today in its many and variegated forms. The apostles had gone back to their old ways of life after the crucifixion. Even Peter, James, and John can be found in a fishing boat just a few days after the resurrection. The two disciples who were on their way to Emmaus expressed their disappointment that Jesus wasn’t the one that they hoped he was. They said that he had died. But, when Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, He gave birth to the church as we know it. They all believed it. They believed it so much that the twelve apostles all suffered martyrs’ deaths when all they had to do was deny that Jesus rose from the dead and that they made up the story. They would not do that. They died convinced that Jesus rose from the dead. The evidence was too strong for them to deny it. Wolfgang Pannenberg said, “The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”