The Bible tells us that Jesus was crucified and buried just before sunset on the Sabbath. The finality of the sealed stone must have been an unimaginable gut-punch of disappointment for everyone who had placed hopes and dreams in the one they called Messiah. Perhaps even the angels–who “long to look into these things” (1 Pet. 1:12)–were on edge as they waited for what was to come.
Then, “toward the dawn of the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1), a handful of Jesus’ disciples entered the empty tomb and encountered their Risen Lord. In the days that followed, many others met Jesus alive; on one occasion, the Apostle Paul says there were “more than 500 at one time” (1 Cor. 15:6).
And so out of despair and discouragement came a vibrant movement of people so convinced of Jesus’ resurrection that their faith reverberates through the centuries even to our own day.
This Easter, I have been thinking about a very simple question: what if we actually believed in the resurrection?