What was that first Easter Day really like? Many of us are so familiar with the story and the biblical accounts make it sound straightforward. In fact, it was a day of surprises, of confusing stories and conflicting emotions, a day in which faith and doubt, fear and hope alternated. 

Mary and other women had seen where Joseph and Nicodemus had placed the body (Mark 15:47). Early on the Sunday morning they come with heavy hearts to pay their last respects, only to find the tomb empty. For John, there is the beginning of faith (v 8), but it is not complete. None of them grasps the full significance (v 9) or understands what God has planned all along, although the body has gone, and the arrangement of the linen does not suggest a body stolen. (Had the body been moved by human hands, the graveclothes would have been taken or left discarded on the floor.) Full certainty came later, based on the facts they observed and their meetings with the risen Lord. On the basis of their testimony we can have every confidence that Jesus is alive. We can see this as a day of great joy, a day to celebrate the defeat of death and the gift of new life. Things will never be the same again.

Using Romans 8:38 and 39, pray for those known to you who are burdened by grief, disappointment or struggles. Ask for Easter joy to renew them.

Grief and loss demand that we reverence the remains of our loved ones. Mary’s first witness is that the body’s gone – that they don’t know who’s taken it or where they’ve put it. Adding this spiteful indignity to Friday’s cruelty drives Peter and John to get there as fast as they can. As they pelted along, panting, leaving Mary in their wake, anger and fear must have been mingling in them.

John arrives first – I love the fact that he puts it on record that he was a faster runner than Peter, an incidental detail that feels utterly real. He looks through the entrance but doesn’t enter. Peter arrives later and boldly steps into the tomb.

Whatever they were expecting as they were tearing along, it wasn’t this. Far from a desecrated grave, they find an ordered scene, with linen lying there (this could mean placed rather than dropped) and the face cloth rolled up by itself, off to the side. This doesn’t look like a robbed grave. Although John starts to grasp that much more has happened here than they understand and that God may be involved (v 8), neither conclude that Jesus has risen from the dead (v 9). Unwilling to risk staying in the open, as they legitimately fear arrest, they return to their lodgings.

The first witness is to an unexpected and unexplained absence, not to resurrection – just one factor that reminds us that the disciples have no possible motive for staging this and that none of them profited from it in any way. An absence that perplexes has yet to give way to a presence that stirs inextinguishable hope.

Bring the questions perplexing you to the Father. List them somewhere precious and commit to praying for answers and for God’s sovereignty to be revealed between now and next Easter.