Maundy Thursday

Have you heard of the Talpiot tomb? It's the one that has caused some hoopla in the media and the one Discovery Channel did a special on. You know, the one Jesus was supposedly buried in. Well, I'm not writing to debate the possibility of this, but to relay a discussion I recently had.

I was talking with a little girl the other day. Her parents are believers. She is home schooled (like my own children), so any ideas she has formulated aren't the result of influences in public school. She told me that they had found the tomb that Jesus was buried in. I didn't really want to get into this discussion with her, since I was tutoring her in reading, not theology. But she was insistent. She said that they found His bones and everything. At that point I asked her if she believes that Jesus was resurrected. She nodded her head. I told her, then the bones couldn't be His; His tomb was empty. She said that maybe he was resurrected as a ghost. We talked about the discussion Christ had with Thomas, and how He invited His disciple to put his hand into his Master's side. This was a fleshly body.

So that was that. But what saddened me was that I think this child must have heard about the tomb from her parents. (She really isn't old enough to glean much from the internet or the news. Nor is it a likely topic with playmates...the few that she has given the somewhat isolated area that she lives in). My question is, how many professed Christians entertain the idea that maybe this is Christ's tomb? And do they understand what this means to their faith?

If those bones are His, then He is dead. It's as simple as that.

But those bones are not His. His borrowed tomb is empty.

Today marks the day the early disciples' world began to fall apart. They celebrated the Passover together with Jesus, only to learn that one of them would betray Him. After a long discussion with them and prayers and encouragement, they saw the result of His anguish in the garden. They were with Him as He was bound and taken. Their hope for the restoration of Israel began to quickly crumble.

But in a few days, they would learn first hand that His borrowed tomb is empty. And they, with the the filling of the Spirit, would be a force that Satan, with all his power, had not the strength to bring down.