Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-21 (day three)
“They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.”
Three years ago, these disciples were workaday peasants in an occupied corner of the sprawling Roman Empire—law abiding citizens existing in a politically and spiritually totalitarian state with little-to-no civil rights, trying their best to live at peace with however much of God their religious teachers deemed they were fit to understand. But that was then. Now they were intimately connected to a capital criminal branded an enemy of the state, summarily executed. But it was worse than that. They loved him. This empty tomb meant, apparently, that the state, with the cynical support of religious leaders, was now sealing the disciples’ doom by its power to extinguish all dignity and hope. Suddenly, Jesus, dead no more, shifted their understanding of history with one word: “Mary.”
Thanks for this vivid depiction of the disciples’ world, Bryan! Very thought-provoking.
The empty tomb that was first witnessed by women of that era is an important truth and indicator of Jesus’ physical resurrection. It is evidence that supports Jesus is alive and He is the son of God.
Jesus is alive!!