Food For Your Soul
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Why do you look for the living among the dead?
– (Luke 24 : 5. Read verses 1 thru 12)
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
(Luke 24 : 5. Read verses 1 thru 12)
In the last week of February, the unbelievers put Jesus in the spotlight again. It seems that the ill-deserved financial success of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (book and motion picture) has encouraged authors, film and documentary producers to attack the person of Jesus Christ, taking advantage of people’s credulity, their intellectual laziness, and their eagerness for sensationalism. Create a media phenomenon, with the objective to demean Jesus Christ, seems to have become a new means of making easy money. So, after Dan Brown, came James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici who announced that they have found the bones of Jesus. At their news conference, they promoted their Discovery Channel special presentation “The Lost tomb of Jesus” that was aired on March 4th. At the same time they promoted the book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino entitled The Jesus’ Family Tomb: The Discovery, The Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History.
It is the never-ceasing resurgence of unbelief that tries to look for Jesus among the dead, that is, to consider him as a mere mortal like us, and not the Son of the living God, the Prince of life. Surprisingly enough, Dan Brown, James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici are not the first to look for Jesus among the dead. In our passage, it’s the very disciples of Jesus – in this case the “women” – that were confronted with the question of the angels: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
These women – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (Mark 16:1) – were going to the tomb very early in the morning of the first day of the week to render to the mortal remains of their master a service that they did not have time to perform because of the Sabbath that was about to begin. To these women, Jesus was lying dead in the cold tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Their only preoccupation, according to the Gospel of Mark (16:3), was to find someone strong enough to roll away the huge and heavy stone giving access to the tomb. But imagine their surprise when they arrived at the gravesite: they found that the stone had been rolled away; and when they entered the tomb, they did not find the body of Jesus. Bewildered, confused, puzzled, they were searching for an explanation, when two men – certainly two angels – tenderly reproached them for looking for Jesus at the wrong place, that is, “among the dead” for “He is not here; He has risen!”
This message of the angels is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions. If one could stand in a cemetery and call the names of the founders of the religions of the world, Mohamed, from the depths of his tomb, would answer, “Here!” Buddha would answer, “Here!” Confucius would answer, “Here!” But to the calling of the name of Jesus of Nazareth, an angel would assuredly answer: “He is not here! He has risen from the dead!”
The Christian is one who has in his or her heart this deep-seated conviction expressed by Alfred H. Ackley in his song: “I serve a risen Savior. He’s in the world today. I know that He is living whatever men may say.” What a marvelous thing it is, when we are burying a loved one, to know that our Savior “is not here”; that “He has risen!” In other words, that He has conquered death, which is now causing us to shed so many tears.
The tomb of our Savior is empty! The evidence for that fact is incontrovertible. The empty tomb is like a fishbone stuck in the throat of the unbeliever: the more he moves about to try to get rid of it, the deeper it goes in. It is not haphazardly that James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici have tried to discredit the fact of the empty tomb. They know – and they are right! – that if one could prove that Jesus’ tomb is not empty, one would strike a fatal blow to Christianity. But the irrefutable fact is that it is empty!
I will conclude with the last strophe of a poem attributed to John Clifford. (Allow me only to replace the words “God’s Word” by “Jesus’ resurrection.”)
“And so, I thought, the Anvil of Jesus’ resurrection
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The Anvil is unharmed, the hammers gone.”
The empty tomb is the anvil; the efforts of the unbelievers to refute it are the hammers. The latter are doomed to break on the anvil, which will remain undamaged for ever; for it is in the empty tomb that God “has given proof to all men” that “He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed,” namely Jesus Christ. (Acts 17: 31)
Pasteur Hubermann Larose
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