Empty Tomb: A Myth or Reality?

Fr. Tshiamo S Takongwa

Chaplain, Francistown

Easter holidays are so special especially for Christians. It is not just time for eating and drinking or traveling for leisure but we celebrate the climax of our faith which is the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is testified when Jesus said, “We are now on our way to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses. They will sentence him to death…..But on the third day he will rise from the death” (Mt 20:18).

It is more than two thousand years and his gospel is still spreading to all ends of the world. If Christ did not rise from the dead would we still be talking about Him even now? Not at all. He would be totally forgotten, having been written off as a deluded failure long ago. If Christ did not rise it should be easy to find His dead body. All one would need to do is catch one of His disciples and torture him until he talked. That never happened nor was it even tried. Even though they were slow to believe about the resurrection – people like Thomas for example. They eventually believed that they ate with him, walked with him and spoke with him. No debate about such facts.

Some scholars debated Jesus resurrection and they wanted to discredit the doctrine. Some argue that the apostles stole the body while all of the guard of Roman soldiers were asleep! Impossible, because the penalty for such failure by Roman soldiers was death.  Another theory is that the soldiers stole the body so that the apostles could say He was risen? But why would they give support to the story of a man being alive whom they had deliberately put to death themselves?  Then there’s the story that He was buried in a different grave so that the apostles went to the wrong grave? But how can one say that one grave is wrong until one finds the right grave later, something that never happened! Then the theory that He merely fainted or went into a coma for a few days. The centurion’s spear stuck into His side puts and end to that. All of these theories give rise to so many ridiculous complications that the story that He did actually rise is far more plausible to anyone who has an open mind. Furthermore, scholars have applied the rules of evidence of good barristers to the accounts of the resurrection and find that they stand up well.

So if it is true that Christ rose from the dead then we can say that His claim to be God is also true, and if He was God at all it was from the beginning of His existence in the womb of His mother Mary. It follows then that the gospels are being historical and factual when they tell us that He was God the Son made man. In other words, our religion is not about a man who became God but a God who became man, God the Son the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word, being made flesh and dwelling amongst us as St John puts it. So the gospels are not a bit of history with the slant or bias or ideology of the church added on. No: they are true accounts of what happened so that there is no need to try separating an imagined Jesus of history for an imagined Christ of faith. The Jesus of history is exactly what the gospels teach about Him: the Son of God, the Christ of faith.

His death was no accident. He could have escaped His enemies easily. But He took on the terrible suffering and death of crucifixion to deliver us from our sins by paying the penalty for us. That He rose means He was successful in this, that the Father accepted His sacrifice as perfect, and that we can indeed be cleansed of the burden of our guilt if only we turn to Him in the mass because the mass makes that sacrifice of the cross present to us everyday, and with a sincere confession so that His forgiving grace flows to us individually from His sacrifice.  To think about these things during Easter should give us great joy and provide occasion for true celebration.

Nonetheless Christian faith is at least partly exposed and vulnerable to historical enquiry. The roots of Christianity are not immune to critical historical investigation. Such investigations fit the nature of Christian belief, which is that God works not unambiguously or like a juggernaut, but precisely in and through human beings. Thus there is a necessary continuity between Jesus as known by historians and Jesus as the Christ of believers. The evidence of Jesus resurrection goes beyond the discussion of source documents and historical records. It is evident that even now some people still testify about their experience of a changed life due to the resurrection.

Jesus death was not an accident. It was part and parcel of his mission to in this world that he gave his life as an atonement for sin. The Good News is that the Messiah willingly stood in our place and by dying took the penalty which rightfully belongs to each one of us. ‘But he did remain dead in the tomb but rose again and defeated the power of sin and death and enabled each one of us to have a new relationship with God”. And this is the power of the resurrection which is available to those who believe. This power has changed a lot of people life’s since the first century.

A scholar by the name Hugh Schoenfeld in his best-selling book The Passover Plot said Jesus plan was to pretend to be the Messiah and that he attempted to fake his death by taking a drug which would have made him swoon, giving the appearance of death. This plan was thwarted when a Roman solider struck a spear into his side which caused death.

The claims of Jesus stand alone, even when compared with the sayings of other religious leaders. And to punctuate his claims, there is a historical event which stands as a challenge. The New Testament does not present the resurrection of Jesus as merely one part of a creed that must be followed by insiders. It is presented to all people as a historical fact, and there are only two possible responses to it. Either it happened or it didn’t.

What do you think? Will your conclusion be determined by reflecting on tradition? Will you dismiss the issue because of twenty-first century presuppositions? Or will you choose to explore an ancient tomb—where all too few have dared to look?

Something caused the disciples to move from despair to belief in the days after Jesus’ death. Their discouragement was replaced by conviction that He was, indeed, the risen Savior. The tomb remained empty, Jesus’ dead body was never again seen, and those who saw and believed were forever changed. The most believable explanation for this is that Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form, just as He said He would.

If Jesus did not exist as a real historical figure, then there can be no faith in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.