The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSample

Sunday, April 5, 33 AD

We are now solidly out of the pages of provable history and into the realm of sublime faith. The gospel writers all go into great detail, and for good reason: Without faith, what we are about to read is well and truly unbelievable.

Sunrise in Jerusalem on April 5 is 6:23 a.m. John 20:1 says it is still dark when Mary Magdalene; Aunt Mary, mother of Little James; Herod’s manager’s wife, Joanna; Jesus’s aunt Salome; and at least one other woman make their way to the garden tomb with their spices, their minds set on making this a burial fit for a king.

They discuss their one logistical challenge: who they can find to roll the stone away for them at this early hour (Mark 16:3). The breaking sunrise answers their question, revealing what they could not see in the dark: The stone has been rolled away from the entrance. Mary Magdalene assumes that religionists, Romans, or robbers have stolen the rabbi’s body. There is no thought that perhaps Jesus is alive. After all, she was one of the few who watched him die.

Mary Magdalene, perhaps the youngest of the women, rushes away to find a mourning Simon Peter and John. When she locates them, she breathlessly reports, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2). Not a single one of Jesus’s seventy-odd disciples is expecting a resurrection, including these two. Simon Peter and John sprint for the garden tomb.

Back in the garden, the older women see a holy messenger dressed in white. “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay” (Matthew 28:5–6). The women enter the tomb. They cannot find Jesus’s body, but they see a young man seated to the right, wearing not a tunic nor cloak but an upper-class stolé—a long white robe. The two men in their white robes shine radiantly in the early morning sun.

The women are terrified and lower their gaze, but the seated man echoes the assurance of the first. “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you” (Mark 16:6–7).

It all floods back to the women. Jesus has been telling us this the whole time. The Son of Man had to be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified . . . and on the third day . . . rise. The older women, trembling and bewildered, flee the tomb and are so terrified that they tell no one. But as they stumble out of the garden, it dawns on them. Their terror mixes with joy, and they head into the city to find the apostles and the seventy-odd disciples.

Meanwhile, Simon and John have left Mary Magdalene in their dust. Young John cannot help but report in his gospel that he outruns Simon and beats him to the tomb (John 20:4). As he looks into the open tomb, he sees Joseph of Arimathea’s freshly purchased linen burial cloths lying there, but he can’t bring himself to go in. Simon arrives and goes straight in. He sees the linens, along with a separate folded facecloth. John musters the courage and enters the tomb, and finally understands what his cousin-rabbi has been on about for the past three to five years. John had failed to grasp the resurrection until this very moment. Simon, for his part, is simply puzzled about what has happened.

The older women find the weeping and grieving apostles and disciples and spill the beans, but their story is so farfetched that, like Thomas later, no one believes them at first. Because no one—not Simon, not John, not the apostles, not the seventy-odd disciples—is expecting a resurrection this day.