Luke 24

Due to the haste in which Jesus had to be buried, there was apparently only time to wrap the body (verse 12), but not enough time to round up the spices and perfumes needed to complete the job. The women from Galilee gather these before the sunset Friday night, but are unable to apply them due to the Sabbath. As soon as the Sabbath is over, early Sunday morning, they return to the tomb, but do not find the body. What has happened?

As they are wondering what was going on, they are surprised by two angels. Luke begins with angel visits, and now the last chapter begins with an angelic appearance. They declare that Jesus is still alive, and seem surprised that they hadn't realized what would happen. When the angels mention about the third day, they remembered what Jesus said about rising again.

Not only had the women and the disciples not understood what Jesus had said about rising from the dead, but the Eleven (the Twelve Disciples minus Judas) had obviously not learned what Jesus had been trying to teach them about women. Throughout the history of humans, women have been looked down upon as inferior and unreliable. They were obviously hysterical. (If that misogynistic term had existed in the first century, they probably would have used it.)

Peter, however, wants to see for himself. He runs to the tomb, sees the linen cloths laid out with no body, and walks away, wondering. At least part of what the women said was true, but Peter does not believe the part about the angels. It was just some kind of vision (See verse 23). Jesus couldn't possibly be alive.

At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, I am thinking Heaven must have been watching this whole scene with a chuckle. I can hear it in the voices of the angels as they question the women why they are looking in a tomb for someone they should have know was alive. I hear it in Jesus' voice as the disciples on the Emmaus road are told how foolish they were for not believing the Prophets. He explains how the scriptures were pointing to Jesus and what He would do. Why are they so slow to believe? Doesn't it make sense that if Jesus was the Messiah that He would have to be alive?

The two finally recognize who they had been walking with when Jesus breaks bread after they stop at their destination. Apparently Jesus had a very unique way of breaking bread, and this was probably still Passover week, so it would have been unleavened bread He broke. Perhaps these two were part of the group Jesus had just celebrated the beginning of Passover with. As soon as they recognize Jesus, He disappears. They look at each other and express how their "hearts burned" in Jesus presence. Have you ever felt anything like that? I have had times when I felt that God was doing special, and only realized later, as all the details came together, what He was trying to tell me. Yes, I am slow to believe like the two were.

The pair make their way back to Jerusalem, and talking with the Eleven and the other disciples, they found out that Peter had also seen Him. Yes, Jesus was indeed alive. And just to put the Capstone on it, Jesus appears in the midst of them. He offers them a greeting of peace, but they are frightened, thinking He is a ghost. No, this is not just a spirit they are seeing, but an actual resurrected body. He demonstrates this by showing His wounds and by eating a piece of fish.

When we talk about Jesus being alive today, it does not just mean His spirit has gone back to Heaven. He has an actual body, and the hope of the resurrection is that we will have bodies like His someday. Our hope is more than going to Heaven when we die and floating around on a cloud in some sort of ethereal existence. It's being physically raised from the dead to live a real, physical life on the New Earth as Heaven and Earth are forever joined.

Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God. (52-53 NIV) May we know that same joy as we praise our God this Easter Day.

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...do not let us be fooled.

The idea that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing - one huge organism, like a tree - must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that real people, Tom and Nobby and Kate, are somehow less important than collective things like classes, races, and so forth. Indeed the two ideas are opposites. Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different from one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike; my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life.

Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand when you are tempted not to bother about someone else’s troubles because they are ‘no business of yours,’ remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.

I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me-which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, note 2 to chapter 28

"The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: 'I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust it will emerge as I write.' Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving." —Henri Nouwen