I was recently asked a question by someone who has no real familiarity with Christianity because they grew up in a country that didn’t have Christianity as an influence. It was a brilliant question that I’ve never had to ask. When you’re raised in the church, it’s easy to miss fundamental points because you simply take them for granted: (child) “If you tell me it happened, I’ll believe you.” Her question proves the importance of having a mix of people in a church group. I needed someone like her to ask such an important question, and she needed someone she could ask. This means if you’re new to a group, you can be more helpful than you realize because you can see things others can’t.
Her question: Why does it matter that they couldn’t find Jesus’ body after the third day of His death (i.e. Easters Sunday)?
The simple answer: It’s everything. Christianity is based on the idea that Jesus rose from the dead. If someone found even a part of Jesus’ dead body, Christianity wouldn’t exist.
This question came up because we had watched a video where the host was excited to say that no one found the dead body of Jesus after His burial. Why was he excited? Because Christianity wouldn’t exist if anyone could’ve produced a body after followers (and non followers like Jesus’ brother, James who then converted) claimed to have seen Jesus alive and well despite having holes in his feet, hands, and side, which were the result of being brutally killed by the Romans, the experts of torture and death. If Jesus didn’t have the holes, it could’ve been argued He didn’t die on the cross; someone died in His place (like the Muslims claim). If it was just Jesus’ “spirit” floating around talking to people, He’d just be a ghost. He wouldn’t have been anything special. He definitely wouldn’t have been worth dying for. No one producing a body proves up to 99% the claim Jesus rose from the dead.
When Jesus was alive, His miracles gave evidence to His claim that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, but by dying and rising from the dead like He claimed He would do, He proved to His followers beyond the fear of their own crucifixion to share this truth. (How strong a belief would you need to be willing to be crucified for it?) Whoever was in charge of the Jewish group who had Jesus murdered must have been fired for that oops because that inadvertently exploded the number of His followers into the biggest religious group in the world: (leader) “How was I supposed to know He was telling the truth about being able to rise from the dead?” (assistant) “Because He helped the blind see and the lame walk again.” (leader) “I thought He was just getting lucky.” (assistant) “So how do we stop this even faster growing group?” (leader) “Why don’t we have His disciples and anyone who follows Him killed? I hear lions enjoy eating people in an arena.” (assistant) “Brilliant! I’ll sell popcorn or the historical equivalent.”
This group of Jewish leaders who had Jesus murdered must have been desperately trying to find a body to prove the claims wrong. The Romans who tortured and killed Jesus also must have wanted to find the body to prove they did their job properly: (the new Roman torture team slogan) “99% success rate!” According to the Bible story, this Jewish group told the Roman guards who ran away from the tomb that was opened by angels to say Jesus’ 12 fishermen disciples stole the body while they slept and in return, the Jewish leaders would prevent them from being killed for not doing their job properly (the penalty for Roman soldiers). Fear of death is definitely a motivator to do your job well, but I’m guessing companies like McDonalds won’t be able to make that rule work nowadays. Even if these soldiers weren’t killed, they’d become the laughing stock of the city: “Did the fishmen threaten to slap you with their fish? Oooooh so scary!” Of course, how the soldiers would know who stole the body if they were all asleep is a detail the Jewish leaders didn’t consider: (soldier) “We were asleep, but awake… yeah.”
What we’re not told is whether anyone went on a detective type search looking for Jesus body or did the Jewish leaders assume Jesus had raised from the dead, but refused to believe because they were too prideful? Did some of them follow the path of Nicodemus who had already become a Jesus follower despite being a prominent Jewish leader?
Here’s the simple truth: All anyone needed was a body part of Jesus and His story would be forgotten forever, but that was never found.
What I haven’t heard is if anyone tried to fake finding the body of Jesus. All the current conspiracy theorists today would want to do something like that – there’d be big money in it. Jesus’ body certainly would’ve been deformed by the brutal murder, but even then, there were too many witnesses of Jesus to fake it (at least back then; today would be different). This connects to one of the important factors in the New Testament books included in the Bible: Each book had to be written by or directly connected to (like Luke) one of the inner 12 disciples of Jesus, which also meant there would be witnesses still alive to corroborate the stories. There are also four Gospels to retell the story of Jesus. The details aren’t all the same in the four books, but the main points remain the same. Historically this makes the message more valid because too many similarities would suggest the writers worked together to make a story.
And how do we know that Jesus wasn’t actually dead after His crucifixion and He didn’t just escape the tomb Himself? I was once told this idea by someone from India who was taught that before Jesus’ ministry, He had travelled there to learn a method of meditation that helped Him trick everyone to think He was dead. Let’s consider a few details. Jesus path to death started with flogging. Roman soldiers used a flagrum, which was a short whip with a handle and multiple leather strips coming out of it. These strips had sharp bone or pieces of metal on them for ripping flesh on top of lead balls being added to make the strips have more force in the shredding of flesh. The Romans might have had questionable fashion choices, but they knew how to hurt people.
The Bible doesn’t say how many times Jesus was whipped, but tradition holds that Jesus was whipped 39 times because that follows a rule from Jewish law written in the Old Testament (Deu 25:3). Of course, I’m guessing this rule didn’t account for a flagrum designed to cause as much damage as possible in one hit. Since Roman soldiers weren’t Jewish or care about Jewish law, they likely just had fun with the number. Considering Jesus wasn’t just being beaten and put in prison to be released later, the soldiers were likely as brutal as possible without causing Him to immediately die – the cross was still to come. I was told the flogging would’ve caused massive blood loss and hypovolemic shock (a term I clearly had to look up). “Hypovolemic shock is a life-threatening medical emergency caused by severe blood or fluid loss, preventing the heart from pumping enough blood to the body. It leads to organ failure due to lack of oxygen and requires rapid treatment, including intravenous fluids and blood transfusions.” (Google) What’s interesting to note is that Jesus being flogged meant he was going to die from blood loss even without having to go on the cross. Thus, there was no way He “faked” His death even if He didn’t make it to the cross. The Romans were very good at causing death.
Here’s another question: Why did the Jewish leaders kill Jesus?
The Jewish leaders weren’t angry that Jesus did miracles… as long as it wasn’t during the Sabbath, which He did. They were definitely angry that Jesus could out smart them in debates despite not even having been taught by a proper rabbi, but that wasn’t why they had Him killed. And sure, the Jewish leaders saw Jesus as a threat to all they knew and was taking away from their power, especially since He specifically called them out for their arrogance and cold hearts. They were also likely jealous of His ability to heal and gather massive crowds to flock to see Him, but the main reason why the Jewish leaders would’ve wanted Jesus dead was because He claimed to be God. That was the most blasphemous claim a human could have. It was so bad, according to Jewish law, it was punishable by death… at least it would be if it wasn’t true.
What’s crazy is this claim that Jesus is God is still a major debate in the world today. Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God while also being God… a concept I admit is hard to grasp: If Jesus is God, then why did He pray to God the Father? Yes, the details can be a bit hard to grasp, but Jesus had to role model how we should pray and act. It was also taught that He humbled Himself down to human form to meet us where we’re at. To make matters more complicated, how is Jesus both a man and God? This has been a theological debate since the early theologians, but I don’t see why Jesus can’t simply be “human enough”. This means He was above simple hormone temptations like a typical man, but He was still human. It’s claimed He saw the world created and He had a full-on conversation with the devil that He won, so He definitely wasn’t human as we are (I’m never winning a battle with the devil on my own), but despite all He knew, He was “human enough”.
According to Christians there is One God divided into three Parts, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I was once told this is like H20 being either liquid, gas, or solid. Either way, there are some things our human brains can’t grasp that Jesus can (another reason why He’s “human enough”).
Believing Jesus is the Son of God and God at the same time is what makes a Christian a Christian. It’s why Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestant believers are called Christian whereas Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons aren’t; they believe Jesus is a distinct being from the Father. Current traditional Jews don’t believe Jesus was anything more than an interesting person Christians have made into the Messiah figure (whereas the earliest Christians were all Jewish converts and currently there are groups like Jews for Jesus). Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, but they don’t believe He even died on the cross like is claimed (someone died in His place), and to believe He is God is a reason to be kept out of paradise.
Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God (and God), which is why there wasn’t a body after the resurrection on the third day. He defeated death by rising again. Where Jews at that time had to do animal sacrifice, Jesus was considered the perfect lamb to be sacrificed, and the final blood sacrifice that needed to be made. I know animal sacrifice can be considered terrible (especially by vegans), but this is how I look at it: God is perfect. Imperfect beings cannot be in His presence because perfect and imperfect cannot mix. Through the blood of Jesus, we are washed of our sin, and able to be in God’s presence in heaven when we die. It’s a simple, yet complicated idea.
Ultimately, it comes down to how I like to put it: God gives us what we want. If we want Him in our lives now, He will welcome us into His presence when we pass. If we don’t want Him in our lives, He will give us that as well. Jesus makes this possible. How it all works? My human brain can’t fully understand it because I don’t fully understand how the world works – no human can. That’s where we need faith. Yes, there are things I don’t understand, but I can still accept them as true, which is why God calls us to faith and He doesn’t make Himself undeniably real to everyone in the world. God created the world and provided Jesus and the Holy Spirit; our role is to have faith that He did those two things.
(Gal 3:11, 13a) “So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life” …But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing.
This week may you consider the true power of Easter.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
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