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Luke 24:1-12 Give this a read here if you haven’t yet: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024%3A1-12&version=NLT
The Sabbath came and went. I doubt anyone slept much, so it’s not hard to imagine these faithful women assembling as the Sabbath ends with the first light of dawn. If I had to guess I’d assume the spices and ointments were kept at Joanna’s house. We know her husband had an influential position, so their house would have been a secure place to keep costly things like burial spices. In their culture women rarely had influence or importance. They weren’t even considered reliable witnesses in court. Jesus had spoken with them as equals, had valued them and given them respect. Fear that they might be guilty by association with him could not prevent them from honouring him with a proper burial. Joseph’s tomb would have been more like a cave with carved out benches for the corpses to rest on. It would be sealed by rolling a massive stone across the entryway. They had followed Joseph there and watched him lay Jesus’ body inside, so they knew where to go.
Luke tells us that when they arrived the stone was already rolled away from the entrance. I’m sure they wondered who had already come to begin the burial preparations. Perhaps Joseph? Their curiosity would have quickly turned to alarm when they stepped into the tomb and found it empty! Had someone added insult to injury by stealing the body? Before they could begin to speculate, the tomb was full of blinding light. The way Luke recalls this part of the story, there were two men from whom the light came and the women just hit the ground in terror. The men, whom we can only assume are some kind of angels, tell them not to look for living people in tombs. And then in case they are still a little uncertain the angels say, “He’s not here; he has risen! He did tell you this was going to happen.” And as they speak the women recall Jesus’ words and finally understand what he had told them over and over.
He had said he would be handed over to evil people, he would be crucified and on the third day he would be raised from the dead. Just because it didn’t really make sense to them didn’t mean he hadn’t said it. And as it begins to make sense they run back inside the city to find the eleven remaining disciples.
Like I said, Jesus treated these women as intelligent equals, but the disciples were still stuck in a culture that assumed women were too emotional to be reliable witnesses, so they just think the women must be having some kind of grief induced hallucination. Peter, have I mentioned I love this guy, isn’t prepared to totally write off the women’s story. He runs to the tomb and finds it open and empty, except that the linen used to wrap the body was lying there. Unlike the women who got an angelic explanation, he is not connecting the dots, so as he leaves he is wracking his brain to imagine what might have happened.
