In My Father's House (part 8 of 9)

Not finding Him, “they returned to Jerusalem to look for Him” (Luke 2:45b).  As an attempt is made to continue to connect the events surrounding Jesus at the age of twelve with the always-looked-to “Christ-event,” one can here begin to think of the women that came to the tomb of Jesus.  Naturally, they were not going to look for Jesus, nor were they expecting to find anything but a dead body, as there was no expectation of His Resurrection though He is said to have spoken of it many times.  Rather, they were going to anoint His body with spices, in accordance with standard burial custom and practices, so that they could later collect His bones and place them in an ossuary. 

When did the women go to the tomb?  Luke says that it was after three days.  What is known from Luke about the search conducted by Jesus’ parents?  It was “After three days they found Him in the Temple courts” (2:46a).  To this was added that He was “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46b).  With this, one is compelled to consider the scene at Jesus’ empty tomb, where “two men…in dazzling attire” (24:4) spoke to the women who had come there, saying “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has been raised!  Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (24:5b-7). 

It would be safe to presume that the women were astonished at this turn of events.  When Jesus was lost to His parents, as they were certainly prone to a very natural fear, it is reasonable to suggest that they considered the possibility that He was dead.  This turned out to not be the case.  Not only was He not dead, and not only had no harm at all come to Him, but they found Him in the Temple courts.  Effectively then, He was raised from the dead right before their eyes. 

In those courts, it was said that “all who heard Jesus were astonished at His understanding and His answers” (2:47) and that “His parents…were overwhelmed” (2:48a).  Returning to the story of the empty tomb then, having heard the words of the two men, the women “told these things to the apostles” (24:10b).  The women were met with a rightful skepticism and incredulity, which is more than understandable.  Certainly, as had likely been the case with the women, Jesus’ disciples were astonished at this story these women were telling, reporting a Resurrection.  Because such a thing simply did not take place under normal circumstances, just like the idea of a twelve-year-old boy being allowed to speak with the teachers in the Temple courts, the understandable reaction was that “these words seemed like pure nonsense to them” (24:11a). 

Furthermore, having heard these nonsensical words, “they (the disciples) did not believe them” (24:11b).  However, “Peter got up and ran to the tomb.  He bent down and saw only the strips of linen cloth; then He went home, wondering what had happened” (24:12).  Peter found himself even more astonished, and though wondering what had happened, the way the story unfolds suggests that he was inclined to begin believing the reports of the women.  Like Jesus’ parents after the conclusion of the ordeal of their missing child, Peter, as he began to consider the possibility that Jesus was alive, might very well have been “overwhelmed.”  Because of Jesus actions in allowing Himself to be tortured and crucified, of His putting Peter in the position to deny his Lord, and causing all of His close followers to cower in fear over what was going to happen to them, Peter may very well have been wondering, again like Jesus’ parents, “why have You treated us like this?” (2:28b) 

Pure Nonsense (part 2)

Continuing the report of the experience of these women followers of Jesus, the author reports “But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (Luke 24:3).  As has been indicated, this was completely unexpected.  Again, nobody was expecting a resurrection.  A crucifixion had taken place.  Rome had won.  Jesus had experienced the ultimate shaming.  Now His disciples were likely to find themselves on their own crosses.  He could not have been the messiah.  There was nothing left to do now but dress His dead body with spices, and then sometime in the future, after His body had decomposed, come and collect the bones and place them in an ossuary. 

So naturally “they were perplexed about this” (24:4a).  Perplexed is probably an understatement.  It was then that they are said to have heard the amazing words that “He is not here, but has been raised!” (24:6a)  Raised?  Nonsense!  Along with this report of Jesus being “raised,” the women, there simply to anoint to perform standard burial practices, receive something of a rebuke, as they hear “Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (24:6b-7). 

Upon their hearing this, it is reported that “the women remembered His words” (24:8a).  For the first time then, as they put together the words that they are now being asked to remember with the words that they were hearing, there is a belief in a Resurrection.  Until that point, there was nobody that carried any type of expectation that Jesus was going to rise from the dead.  Yes, there was a general hope in the resurrection of the righteous at the end of the age, which would coincide with the beginning of the messianic age when Israel’s God would reign supreme on earth, among and through His covenant people, but the idea that a single man, and a crucified one at that, was going to be resurrected from the dead and be set forth as the Messiah and the embodiment of Israel’s God, was an idea that was held by very few, if any at all. 

Again, the women went to the tomb, not expecting to find it empty, but rather to find the dead body of Jesus.  Death was well understood.  Then, as now, there was a full and complete knowledge that people, quite simply, do not return from the dead.  That is why, “when they returned from the tomb” and “told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest… these words seemed like pure nonsense to them, and they did not believe them” (24:9,11).  Of course it was taken to be pure nonsense.  Dead people stayed dead.  No one was expecting Jesus to return to life.  For all practical matters, His disciples knew that the new exodus movement that had been begun by John the Baptist and taken up by Jesus, was over.

However, while most likely still considering these words to be nonsense, Peter is reported to have “got up and ran to the tomb” (24:12a).  Apparently this was something that he had to see for himself.  Naturally, he found the tomb empty, just as the women had said.  However, he did not experience what it was that the women had experienced.  There was no messenger there.  Peter, and everybody else for all time, was going to be forced to rely on the report of the women.  Peter is reported to have “bent down and saw only the strips of linen cloth” (24:12b).  Because of his life experience, however, Peter, like the women, also knew that people do not rise from the dead.  Thus the report of the women, undoubtedly, still rang in his ears as nothing more than pure nonsense. 

Veil Of The Temple (part 8 of 9)

Until Jesus’ Resurrection took place, and the power of the Resurrection that came to be understood as the point at which the Creator God had begun to renew and restore a corrupted creation was unleashed into the world, those that had been raised in their tombs at the time of Jesus’ death were not yet allowed to enter into the world in which the Christ was going to become King and in which the creation was going to be renewed. 

This has a number of implications.  Those that have been crucified with Christ, who are those that go down into the curse of death with Him as their representative by casting their allegiance with Him and confessing Him as King, and who were born into a world in which death is understood to have reigned victorious because of the contra-covenant actions of their first representative Adam, have also been raised with the Christ. 

Believing in Jesus, which, because of the crucifixion and the claim to Resurrection, is so improbable that it is generally acknowledged that such belief must come as a gift of God that is made operable by the Holy Spirit, makes the believers alive but waiting in their tombs, ready to enter into His new creation when the final Resurrection takes place and to assist in that project in an effort to show that the kingdom of the Creator God, through Christ, has been established on earth, making those efforts at bringing heaven to earth in conjunction with the ongoing hope for the final and ultimate consummation of the Christ’s kingdom on earth.

Now, one might wonder why it was that only “many saints who had died were raised.”  If the power of Christ’s death truly had the effect of shredding the veil of separation and moving the cherubim aside, signifying that the curse was broken and Eden was once again accessible to man as part of the Creator God’s plan, why only “many”?  Why not all?  This probably has to do with what was then-current burial practice, in which the dead were laid in a tomb until the flesh decomposed from the body. 

Once that decomposition had occurred, the bones of the deceased were then placed in an ossuary (a bone box).  What Matthew may desire to communicate, as He communicates the significance of Jesus’ death and the significance of the Resurrection that those that are familiar with the story know is coming, is that those that were raised at the death of Jesus, which coincided with the rending of the veil, were most likely those that had recently died, but had not decomposed.  They were not given a renewed body suitable for the new creation, as Jesus would receive.  They were not given a Resurrection body, but had been raised in much the same way that Lazarus had been raised, with a body still subject to death and corruption, in the midst of a creation that was still subject to death and corruption. 

So it is for believers in this day.  In another implication, believers can understand that even though they have been raised with Christ, and that they take part in the kingdom of heaven as they call Jesus Lord and King, believing in His Gospel, they are very much subject to death and corruption, still living in a world that is subject to the same, though this world is constantly being re-shaped by the power of the Creator God as He works through His covenant  people to accomplish His good.  They await their new bodies, their glorified bodies, which they hope to receive when Jesus returns, when death is given its final defeat, and when the curse of death is finally and completely removed from this world, which is that for which the entire creation groans.  They experience new life and fellowship with the Creator God through union with His Christ (belief in the Gospel that Jesus is Lord), with the curse broken.