Although God made clear first thing Sunday morning—the day of first-fruits—that Jesus had risen from the dead as the first-fruits of the resurrection (cf. Lev 23:10-11), it took time for His disciples to actually believe it. For thinking only in terms of the physical resuscitations from the dead they had seen, they had yet to…
Although we tend to equate the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearance of angels at daybreak on Sunday morning with Jesus’ resurrection, in fact it didn’t immediately add up that way for the women who had come to complete the burial custom for Jesus’ corpse. The singular nature of the angelic vison quickly…
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph were the first to discover the empty tomb, but that didn’t immediately equate for them into our present understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. While they understood from Lazarus’ example that mortal life might be restored to one who had died, it was difficult for them to…
Because of our familiarity with the resurrection of Jesus and its central importance to our faith, as we read the resurrection accounts we tend to focus only on the happy ending and forget that the disciples’ understanding of the resurrection happened in stages and was not what they were expecting at all. Although the tomb…
We might imagine that the visions of angels announcing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead would be so dramatic that the women who had seen them could never come to doubt them. And yet, precisely because their experience was so singular and outside of the normal course of events, that is exactly what they did. For…
Three times John emphasizes Mary weeping outside the tomb of Jesus before He appeared to her, noting that both the angels and Jesus inquired why she was weeping before she came to recognize Him. Why such a question?
In the first written account of Jesus’ resurrection, Matthew highlights the initial discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene and another Mary, the mother of James and Joseph (abbreviated as Joses), and His subsequent resurrection appearance to them; see Mat 28:5-9. However, for his purposes in summarizing the account, he omitted details of the…
Early on Resurrection Sunday, “there yet being darkness”, Mary Magdalene and another Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, arrived at the tomb and discovered it empty. An angel in a vision told them Jesus had risen from the dead (Mat 28;1-8), but like a dream it quickly gave way to the only thing that…
In what has become one of the most enigmatic passages in all of Scripture, John writes that upon entering the tomb of Jesus, Peter “beheld the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth, which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself” (Joh 20:6-7). …
Very early in the morning on Resurrection Sunday, before Jesus appeared to anyone in His glorified, resurrection body, a faith-event occurred to test the faith of His followers. A group of women who had followed Him from Galilee to the Passover in Jerusalem had arranged to meet at the tomb to complete the burial custom…