To say there was a lot of confusion on the very first Easter morning would be to understate the facts dramatically.
After two-thousand plus years of history, we have gotten used to the idea of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In many ways, we have lost the awe and wonder that we should feel when we think about it.
That was not, however, the case on the very first Easter. The apostles, and the women who loved Jesus, had witnessed his brutal murder. Jesus was dead. The Romans had seen to that most cruelly and brutally. It was undeniable. His lifeless body was laid in a tomb. That tomb was closed.
The finality of death, up to that point, was not in question. It is part of the human condition. The dead stay dead. The only exception to that rule, in the apostle's experience, was when Jesus said otherwise. But he was gone.
Mary Magdalen did not go to the tomb on Easter morning to celebrate. She went to weep and to anoint Jesus' corpse. So, when Mary went to the tomb and saw that it had been laid open, she was not excited. She was horrified. Her words to Peter and John make that clear.
They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him.
Peter and John did not run to the tomb that morning to celebrate the Ressurection. They were shocked by what Mary had told them, so they went to see it for themselves. When John looked into the tomb, scripture tells us, "he believed."
It might be tempting to think the believed in the Resurrection, but that was not the case. The next line makes that clear. It says,
they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
So, even after seeing the evidence of Christ's Ressurection, they still didn't get it. The believed, like Mary Magdalen, that Jesus' body was gone. They missed the miracle.
There are a lot of us who are in the same situation. I am talking about people raised in the Church, maybe even attending Mass regularly, who missing the miracle of new life.
Peter, John, and Mary saw all the evidence, but they were not joyful. How many of us live out our faith that way? Do we live as if Jesus is alive? Do we live as if we have been given new life in him? Or do we act like he is still in the tomb?
Jesus died for us. He bore our sins to the cross and offered in life as a for our sins. But that is not the end of the story. He also rose from the dead, so that we could have new life in Him. We cannot miss that miracle. We cannot see the empty tomb and miss what God has done.
Lord, this Easter, turn our hearts to your Ressurection. Call us into new life in you. Let us see past the empty tomb to the new life you have made possible, and let out hearts rejoice.