"Why Wasn't Jesus In The Tomb?"

“Why wasn’t Jesus in the Tomb?”

Rev. Stephen Milton
Lawrence Park Community Church, 

April 20 20225

Today is Easter Sunday, when we celebrate a momentous event in our faith’s history. It is the day our faith was born. It begins with an event that even to this day defies belief for many. A man who was publicly killed -  who took his last breath in front of his friends and enemies -  that man came back to life. It was impossible. No electric paddles to restart his heart, no technological intervention. Just a man who was dead for days. He disappears from his tomb, and then will appear to his disciples and followers. An entire faith that rests on the foundation of this event, which should be flat out impossible.

And it’s not just us who think this should be impossible. His followers thought so, too. On that morning, the women came with spices to the tomb. Normally when someone got buried back then, spices and perfumes were inserted into the strips of linen that covered the body. One last gesture of respect for a loved one. But Jesus was placed in the tomb as the sun went down , as the Sabbath, the day of rest began. There was no time to do a good job, so after Saturday was over, the women came to finish. They arrive with spices because they know the difference between possible and impossible. They know that Jesus is dead. They come to deal with a dead body.

But when they arrive, there’s no sign of him. His body is gone. Only the strips of linen he was wrapped in are still there. The women are shocked. It is possible that someone has broken into the tomb and stolen Jesus’ body. That is fully in accord with common sense. Jesus had predicted that he would be raised after three days. So perhaps this is some cruel trick. Some prank by the Romans. That would be possible - tragic and terrible, but possible.

But there’s a problem with that theory. The gospel says that the tomb still contains the strips of linen Jesus was buried in. Why would someone take off the burial clothes to steal a body? How would you explain carrying a naked dead body through the streets? Someone with holes in his hands and feet? And what for? Who would believe a man had been resurrected if no one ever saw him again? His body’s disappearance could be dismissed as a theft - but with the linens left behind, even that doesn’t make sense.

There’s another possibility, of course. That Jesus wasn’t resurrected at all. That the whole story is just a fiction cooked up by the Gospel writers and the Jesus movement. Never happened at all. Jesus died, and stayed dead. They made the whole thing up. That sounds perfectly plausible, too. 

But if it were as simple as that, why does the Gospel account make the whole episode so weird? If the Bible is fiction, and just wants us to believe that Jesus was resurrected, the story could be much simpler. The women walked up to the tomb in the early morning. The stone had been pushed aside. They looked inside , and there was Jesus, in his burial clothes sitting on the stone slab. “My disciples, I am risen! It is as I predicted! Let us go tell the others!”

If the Bible was sheer fiction, that would be the way to present the resurrection. In fact, since the Bible writers were men, and lived in a sexist society, they could have had the men find Jesus first. Back then, women were second class citizens. They weren’t allowed to serve as witnesses in court trials, they weren’t considered mature enough for that , too weak and emotional. It would be much better if men saw the resurrected Jesus first, that’s a story people could believe. So why not write it up that day. On the third day, Peter and John came to the tomb, rolled back the stone, and were greeted with Jesus in his burial clothes, fully resurrected. That’s what men would have wrote if this was fiction. 

But that’s not the story that any of the Gospels tell. It was women who go to the tomb first. In the three accounts where the resurrected Jesus appears to his followers, in most of them he appears to the women first. This was very embarrassing for the male disciples, and the male writers of the Gospel. Not the story they would choose to tell if it was pure fiction. 

And in not one of these four accounts of the resurrection does Jesus appear in the tomb. That would make the most sense, but that’s not the way the story goes. Instead, angels appear in the tomb. We know they are angels because they gleam brightly. And when they speak, they sounds condescending. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” 

To the angels, Jesus is the Son of God. This Jesus is not just some rabbi from Nazareth. He is the Lord of Life, the one who with God the Father made all life on Earth in the beginning. He is why any living thing exists. He is the difference between dust and bodies, between ashes and a passionate human being. Why would you look for the Lord of Life in the place of the dead?

The women are confused - they saw Jesus die. They had never believed that he could come back to life. That defied all common sense. But the angels are telling them - this isn’t about common sense. Common sense is a kind of shorthand humans use to get through the day, it’s not the whole Truth about how Life and the universe work. On Easter morning, the angels are talking about Life with a capital L. This is about life and death, and the cosmos and the reason anything exists at all. Jesus is risen because death cannot hold down the source of Life itself.

We’re all reasonable people here. We make a living, we pay our taxes, we take care of each other. We obey laws, we can get up on time to go to work, to get to church, to get to dinner parties. We have grown up to become functional people. We get through our days using common sense and our intellect.

But there are questions about really obvious parts of life that common sense ignores. How are we here at all? Why is the universe built so life can exist? Scientists tell us that it would have been just as possible for our universe to have been created with just slightly different values for the laws of nature - a little more gravity, and the universe never escapes the big bang. A little less, and the matter never comes together at all, no stars, no planets, just particles in space spread out too thinly to amount to anything. But instead, we have this universe, with settings that are just right for stars and worlds and people to exist. Why? Common sense and even science can’t explain it. 

And even if we set that aside, how do we exist? We are so vibrantly aware of being alive. Our minds are full of thoughts and feelings every second. Even when we sleep, we have a consciousness, that dreaming state where fantasies live. We are so insistently conscious, so always here and being, every second. But what were we before we were born? We don’t know. We have no memory of that. Were we simply not alive at all? Just, nothing? How could nothing become this? And when we die, is it possible that all this vibrant consciousness simply ceases to be? How can anything like this ever go away? Where did it come from, where does it go?

For questions like that, common sense isn’t much help. It has nothing to say about where we were before were conceived, or where we will be after we die.

My friends, if this universe was based just on common sense, and God wanted us to stay there, then Jesus would have been in that tomb to greet the women who came in. He would have fit this marvellous story into a frame their minds could handle. Jesus, wrapped in linens, sitting on the bench saying hi. That would have made much more sense. But that’s not how you save the world.

When the world starts to crash, when laws are ignored, when greed takes over, when ignorance is promoted and skill is fired or sent to jail, when innocent people are deported; When your world is torn apart when a loved one dies, or a career or marriage falls apart, common sense isn’t what you need. What you need is hope. What you need is an answer that seems impossible, that defies the terrible reality you are facing right now. When it seems like life is just one selfish person after another doing what they want, a war of all against all,  that’s when you need to know that there is a way that is stronger than common sense and self interest. A way that is more real than this grim reality. A Way that defies all expectations, that offers hope when others see darkness, a Way that says that people can be inspired to believe in a better world.

And so, the people who wrote the story of Christ’s resurrection didn’t give us a story devoted to common sense. They gave us something better. What we get is a resurrected Jesus who appears and disappears, who doesn’t even look like himself half the time. In John’s Gospel, Mary thinks he is the Gardener. In Luke’s he walks incognito on the road to Emmaus, in Matthew’s Gospel the angels say he will meet them in Galilee, but instead he meets the women on the road outside the tomb. When the Lord of Life enters your life, don’t expect common sense. Don’t expect the expected. If this world is going to be saved from all its grief and pain, we need to embrace the impossible and the unexpected. We musnt’t look for the living among the dead and predictable. 

Christians are called to embrace the unexpected, to make the impossible possible. 100 years ago when the United Church was founded, there wasn’t a single female minister. Now over half of them are women. When this denomination was founded, there wasn’t a single out gay minister. Trans people wouldn’t have been allowed to sit in the pews. Now, There are women who are chairs of council, treasurers, and our Moderator is a queer Indigenous woman. No one in 1925 saw that coming. That would have defied all common sense in 1925, but our faith isn’t about sticking with the expected. Our Saviour wasn’t in the tomb. 

Think of the most wonderful events in your life. How many of them did you plan? Do any of us choose who we fall in love with? It always comes as a surprise, that’s why we “fall” in love - no one plans to fall, it just happens. Who of us ever accurately predicted what any of our wonderful children would be like? They are surprises, one after another. When you are hiking or sight seeing, the scenes that take your breath away are never planned, they come spontaneously - oh, look at that. And then you are at loss for words.

That’s what the women felt in that tomb. They thought they knew what was going to happen, but they didn’t. Why wasn’t Jesus still in the tomb? Because life cannot be contained in a tomb. Life, holy life, the life force of the universe, the force that makes each one of you alive, that life force defies all common sense, it can’t be held back by prejudice, greed, hatred, or any of the burial clothes we try to wrap life in. Each of us is called to embrace Jesus’ resurrection so we can be open to that holy life force in our own lives. We are Easter people, the people who come alive again believing that love and compassion cannot be held back by any policy, any prejudice or any government. Jesus Christ is risen today, and with Jesus, we rise, too, to better life than we could lead on our own. Jesus was not in the tomb, but calling us to life abundant. So, let us leave our death clothes behind, and live, with Him, outside of the tomb.