The sun is setting, the start of the Sabbath is at hand. On Friday, Jesus had been executed by the Romans, and buried according to the requirements of Jewish Law in a tomb located nearby, presumably there to accomodate the corpses of criminals executed on the site.
Did any of Jesus’ followers try to rectify the situation? Did they hang around Jerusalem, courageous enough to try to take the body and give it the honorable burial it deserved? Or when they fled Gethsemane, did most of them head towards Bethany, and from there directly to Galilee?
We know Peter lagged behind, not getting close enough to hear, but close enough to be confronted because of his accent and to deny Jesus. But where did he go from there? Were he and the others conscientious enough to observe the Sabbath rather than leave town as quickly as possible?
Back in Galilee, some time later, the disciples had dreams, visions, encounters that persuaded them that Jesus was alive, that God had taken this individual who mistakenly thought the dawn of the Kingdom of God was imminent, and had made him Lord of that very Kingdom, which was yet to dawn fully.
That was Easter. When it occurred, and how it relates to the conviction that something monumental happened “on the third day”, is hard to discern through the tensions and obscurities in the evidence.
Those experiences, rather than anything to do with the tomb, are at the heart of the Christian faith. While the events of the days that followed the crucifixion are shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, the Easter experiences continue to be part of human experience from then until today. And for those of us who have had such experiences, they do not prove anything about what happened to Jesus’ body, or an empty tomb. But they do shine light on our existence, and the fact that we inhabit a universe where such experiences are possible fills us with awe, and wonder, and reverence. And it leads us to spend our lives seeking to do justice to the character of the universe and of human existence such experiences hint at.
What happened to Jesus’ body is a historical question, and it is shrouded in mystery much as the body itself was shrouded in a linen sheet that may or may not have been clean. The experience of a new birth does not allow one to short-circuit or bypass historical investigation. It ‘merely’ changes the way one views life forever.
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