Saturday 8th April
Read John 20:1-10
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!’
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped round Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.” (NIVUK)
So consistently do the gospel writers portray the disciples’ unwillingness to believe that Jesus would rise from the dead that they present the beginning of the resurrection narrative with a stolen body (v2)! And then point out that this is the very accusation the Jews themselves would spread (cf Matthew 28:11-15).
Many people believe that primitive people, who believed in all sorts of nature gods, engaged in practices to manipulate those gods to look favourably upon them, and generally saw spirits behind everything, would naturally believe in the resurrection. They are just not as sophisticated as us. Yet the gospel writers routinely present the key players in the early church as refusing to believe in the resurrection.
CS Lewis describes those who consider primitive people naïve and credulous as suffering from chronological snobbery. Even the empty tomb was not enough to convince Jesus’ two closest disciples that he may be alive (v9) – at the very least they agreed with Mary that the body was missing, perhaps stolen.
We can be comforted in the truth of this eyewitness testimony because even the eyewitnesses don’t want to believe. But on that day Jesus had risen. What a day indeed!
