By: Obed Pineda
It is unquestionable that the period that follows the death of a loved one is the most difficult in the life of those who mourn them. The powerlessness that one experiences due to the inability to prevent the inevitable, breeds confusion, grief, profound sorrow, and, in some situations, anger and resentment. For the bereaved it seems unfair that time, and life along with it, proceeds, adapting quickly to a world without the loved one. Almost as if suggesting that the grief stricken do the same. Yet, it is accepting that the void left by the deceased is permanent what makes this adaptation process so challenging and painful. The sorrow and disbelief that takes control of the heart, understandably dulls a person’s ability to think clearly. For this reason, it should not come as a surprise that when Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James found the Lord’s tomb empty, that “they were greatly perplexed about this” (Luke 24:1-4). It is highly probable that when they discovered that the stone guarding Christ’s tomb was already removed, their immediate thought was that His body had been removed by His enemies. This unexpected discovery led these women to suspect that the Lord’s grave had perhaps been desecrated, adding sorrow upon sorrow. The beloved disciple, who ran with Peter when they were informed by Mary Magdalene that the Lord’s body was missing, recounts that “Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him’” (John 20:1-13). Mary’s reference to “they” is most likely speaking of the Roman soldiers who had been assigned by Pilate (at the behest of the chief priests and Pharisees) to guard the Savior’s tomb (Matthew 27:62-66). This conclusion is not far fetched considering that she had witnessed how the Roman soldiers enjoyed brutalizing, mocking, and humiliating Jesus publicly (cf. Matthew 27:27-31, Mark 15:16-20, Luke 22:63-65, and John 19:1-5). Yet, all four Gospel amanuenses (directly or implicitly) reveal one crucial detail as to why finding Jesus’ tomb empty brought more pain instead of instant joy: they had forgotten His promise that He would rise again on the third day. Luke scribes that the angels asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’ And they remembered His words” (Luke 24:5b-8). Finding that the body of Jesus was no longer in the grave, and seeing “the linen cloths lying by themselves” (Luke 24:12), would have brought incredible joy and hope, if they would have kept Jesus’ promise firmly in their minds. The adversaries of Jesus were ironically more aware of this promise than His own eleven, saying to Pilate, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise’” (Matthew 27:63). It is curious that for the chief priests and Pharisees, finding out that Jesus’ body was not found in the tomb was suppose to bring terror and anguish to them. This is so because it would confirm that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed whom He claimed to be and that they had rejected Him (cf. Matthew 27:64, 28:11-15). However, where the empty tomb in the garden (cf. John 19:41-42) was to pierce the conscience and produce godly sorrow in the mind of the incredulous, it was to bring great joy and hope to all those who believed in Jesus as the long awaited Messiah; as the Son of the living God. It is imperative to comprehend that for this unspeakable joy to surface from His empty grave to replace the agony that His crucifixion had furrowed in the heart, His promise of resurrection had to have been firmly set in their memory banks first. There is no doubt that had they held on to the hope of Christ’s assurance that He would rise again, hearing the news that His body was not found in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb (cf. Matthew 27:57-60) would have been received as a triumphant confirmation of their faith in Him! Regrettably, the grief of the Lord’s death was deeply ingrained in the hearts of the eleven, to the point that even after they were notified by the women of the glad tidings, that “their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:9-11). As previously noted, their dull hearing and hesitancy to believe, was a product of their profound sadness. Still, this attitude was unjustified and unacceptable for the Bible manifests, “Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen” (Mark 16:14). Lamentably, after the Master had rebuked their unbelief, the apostles found themselves having to do the same repeatedly inside the Church. It was this dreadful denial that sparked the apostle John to pen his account of the Gospel and his first epistle, defending the humanity and the Deity of Jesus Christ. Paul, too, confronted this same group of doubters at Athens (cf. Acts 17:16-32) and Corinth (cf. 1st Corinthians 15:1-58) thoroughly explaining the threat of denigrating the precious sacrifice of the Lamb of God by denying His resurrection from the dead. The apostle warns that “if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1st Corinthians 15:14, 17)! Paul’s lesson illuminates why the emptiness of Christ’s tomb should cultivate hope and joy, and not grief and sorrow. Finding His grave clothing lying empty verifies that He is risen, to never die again. Therefore, those who have accepted His Gospel in baptism “were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Behold, for whom the empty tomb is an emblem of hope! However, for the skeptics who reject His resurrection as true, the empty tomb becomes another witness against them on the Day of Judgment (John 3:18-21, 35-36 and Mark 16:16). Jesus’ vacant tomb, astonishingly, serves as both, foreshadow and warning, to all mankind. For those who believe, it foreshadows their victory over death; for those who do not, it is a warning that they will be filling the empty tomb, eternally.