On the first day of the week, very early in the morning… They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Summary: This mediation is a bit longer than normal. It is a look back at Jesus’ time in the tomb. Many more details could be covered, but I thought it worthwhile to look back at what happened as we ponder the mystery of a God who became man and the Son of Man who became a sacrifice for our sin.
Our modern calendar still counts Sunday as the “first day of the week,” but what has changed from Jesus’ day is how we count the start of the day. Genesis records the first “day” beginning in the evening (Genesis 1:5), so for Jews, their Sunday begins at sundown on Saturday.
Jesus’ last sleep would have been Wednesday night (our time).* Friday, for the Jews, began on Thursday at sunset. During Thursday night (Friday, using the Jewish calendar), Jesus prayed, was arrested, and then hauled before various officials for so-called “trials.”
By Friday midday, he was hanging on the cross, slowly dying.
As the day ended and the sun began to set, Jesus’ body was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (John 19: 38-42). Scripture notes that “The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it.” (Luke 23: 55) At sunset, Friday ended, and Shabbat (also called the Sabbath, our Saturday) began.
Under Jewish law, the Shabbat was a day of rest. No work could be done. The women who had witnessed Jesus’ burial stayed home in accordance with the law (Luke 23:56). From Friday evening at sunset until sometime near dawn Sunday morning, Jesus’ body lay in the cold darkness of the tomb.
On the Sabbath, he rested.
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It is worth pausing for a moment while the body lies in the tomb to ask a couple of questions.
Who was celebrating Jesus’ death and why?
Who was mourning his death and why?
These questions are confusing because at Jesus’ trial before Pilate, it sounds like the whole world was yelling, “Crucify him!” (Matthew 27:21-23) But who would yell such a thing, and why?
Looking back over the events prior to the trial before Pilate, Jesus had been arrested late at night and taken before Annas and later before Caiaphas (both high priests). At dawn Jesus is dragged before Pilate, who then sends him off to Herod (Luke 23:7). Herod returns Jesus to Pilate for his final trial.**
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, he did it before the entire city. (Scholars estimate that anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people would come to Jerusalem for Passover in addition to the fifty to eighty thousand who lived there permanently.)
At the final trial, it is still morning, well before noon. Only a few hundred people are crammed into the courtyard before Pilate. Yet, they were enough. To Pilate’s eye, it probably looked like all of Jerusalem was there.
Where did these people come from?
The crowd who wanted Jesus dead began to gather Thursday night. John records the arrest this way:
“So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.” (John 18:3)
It is not hard to imagine that the “crowd” at this point was already fifty to one hundred fifty people strong. At each stop during the night, it is likely that the crowd grew. More people would be rousted from bed with the whispered news: “We got him!” These people didn’t love Jesus. They feared him and hated the threat to their authority that he represented.
When the crowd finally arrived at Pilate’s residence, it had grown. With every stop, it is probable that more and more of those who had been in on the plot to kill Jesus gathered to watch what would happen. When Pilate finally asked “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” (Matthew 27:22) the answer was clear:
“Crucify him!”
It didn’t take much for the chief priests to stir up the crowd (Mark 15:11). There was no one there to speak for Jesus, so they killed him.
That leaves us with the question, “Who was mourning his death and why?”
If you had been standing on the wall looking down at the Stone Pavement where the trial was being held, you would have been looking at an angry mob of a few hundred people.
Looking up and over the wall at Jerusalem in the morning light, you would see hundreds of thousands of residents and pilgrims. These are the innocents, the believers, and those ignorant of what is happening.
Somewhere in the city, those who knew what had happened to Jesus were hiding.
Many had placed their hope in Jesus. Thousands had heard him speak. Hundreds if not thousands had been healed. The dead had been raised to life. Jesus even fed them, thousands at a time. As Jesus himself said to the disciples of John the Baptist:
“Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Matthew 11: 4-5)
Those who knew Jesus the best and were closest to him mourned the most.
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For Jesus, Sunday came early. Saturday at sundown was the beginning of the third day. At some point in the darkness before dawn Sunday morning, God raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:32).
The Bible gives us very few details on what happened. Matthew records an earthquake. Then an angel rolls away the stone at the opening of the tomb (Matthew 28:2-4). Jesus was there, and then he wasn’t.
When his body was placed in the tomb it was almost totally destroyed. Jesus had been beaten (Mark 14: 65) and brutally flogged with a whip designed to rip the flesh from the body (Mark 15:15). The soldiers had made a “crown” of needle-like thorns, forced it onto Jesus’ head and then beat it into his skull (Matthew 27:28-30). Finally, as if all that were not enough, they nailed his body to a cross of rough wood and to make sure he was dead drove a spear into his side (John 19: 16-18, 34).
When Jesus was seen after the resurrection, people didn’t recognize him. They expected to see a dead body beaten to a pulp. Instead, Jesus was alive, and except for the wounds in his hands, feet, and side, he looked… normal.
Of course, he wasn’t “normal” in the sense that you and I are normal. We don’t walk into locked rooms without opening the door or disappear without warning. Yet it was obvious to those who knew Jesus that he was alive. Eventually, more than five hundred people saw him at the same time (1 Corinthians 15:6).
Then, he was gone again (Luke 24:51). Now he is where he can be with each one of us all the time (Matthew 28:20).
Application: Rejoice! He is Risen!
Food for Thought: What does it mean to you that Jesus Christ overcame death and is alive today?
*Keep in mind that even in Jesus’ day, there were different systems of tracking time. The Roman system of timekeeping counted days beginning at midnight, while the Jewish system started each day at sundown.
**Historical records indicate that Pilate lived in the former palace of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee was visiting Jerusalem for the Passover. It is likely that he was staying in the same complex, so the transition from Pilate to Herod and back again would have required very little time.