A Messy Death, an Empty Tomb, and the Best News Ever

About two millennia back now, someone was tortured and nailed to a cross. Then he died.

No surprises there.

The whole point of crucifixion was to kill someone: slowly and painfully.¹

Sometimes the subject died during the physical abuse that came first.

Anyway, this person died, was taken off the cross, and was buried.

Time passed.

The Roman Empire went through good years, bad years, really bad years, and eventually crumbled. More than a millennium after that, Europe’s warlords gave up trying to re-start the Roman Empire: partly because they were building their own. It’s been about a century since the European empires fractured.

There’ve been some very interesting developments since then: some of then, I think, very hopeful, and that’s another topic or two.

Jesus: Dead and Buried

This particular person’s messy death isn’t what made his execution stand out.

It’s what happened later.

The burial — interment, technically, I suppose — was hasty. Maybe prompt is a better word, since they didn’t have much time, and did what they could with what they had.

“After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took his body.
“Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds.
“They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom.
“Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
“So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by.”
(John 19:38–42)

An Empty Tomb, Meetings, and —

What’s happened so far might be interesting for a few history buffs. If that.

It’s what happened the next Sunday morning that’s had folks like me repeating the story and celebrating ever since.

Exact details vary, depending on which of the Gospel’s writers were describing what happened: which doesn’t bother me, since none of them were Americans, weren’t writing a ‘just the facts ma’am’ report, and that’s a great many more topics.

What matters is that the body was missing. Jesus wasn’t in the tomb.

It took 40 days of meetings, including at least one working lunch, to convince our Lord’s surviving disciples that they weren’t hallucinating, weren’t talking to a ghost: and that Jesus had stopped being dead.

— The Best News Ever

The surviving disciples told anyone who’d listen about Jesus: who he is, what he’s done, and the best news humanity’s ever had.

Those who listened have been passing along what we’ve learned ever since: God loves us, and wants to adopt us. All of us. (Romans 8:15; Ephesians 1:3–5; Peter 2:3–4; Catechism, 1-3, 27-30, 52, 1825, 1996)

I’ve talked about this before:

• “Easter Morning: Mary of Magdala’s Experience”
  (April 9, 2023)
• “‘…When You Come Into Your Kingdom’”
  (April 7, 2023)
• “Just Who is This Jesus Person, and Who Does He Think He is?”
  (October 8, 2022)
• “Jesus, Human on His Mother’s Side: the Incarnation”
  (December 25, 2021)
• “The Best News Ever”
  (April 1, 2018)

¹ Maybe this is why I haven’t run across the ‘Jesus just fainted’ assertion lately:

• “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ”
  William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AM: Special Communication, JAMA, Vol 255, No. 11 (March 21, 1986)
• Wikipedia
  • JAMA