Jesus Christ is Risen Today! That is truth. And it is also truth to say that every day – Jesus Christ is Risen. The tomb is empty.
Luke 24:1-12 gives one of the accounts of that wonderful first Resurrection Sunday morning. It contained what may be my favorite question ever uttered, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
Then it gives the best answer ever heard, “He is not here, but is risen!”
That announcement was given to a group of women. Luke tells us just who they were and that when they went back and told the disciples that the tomb was empty, the disciples failed to believe them: “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles. And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them.” [v10-11 NKJV]
“Idle Tales.” Those same attitudes, disbelief and doubt, have traveled down through the centuries. They exist quite well in the human spirit. How could someone rise from the dead? How could Jesus be who He said He was, God’s Son? It all sounds so “out of this world.”
And yet, “out of this world” is something for which we are all longing. This world doesn’t have the answers to the hopelessness and helplessness that life presents us. It doesn’t relieve the shame or the guilt or the perversions that are resident deep with us. We need something “out of this world.” We long for something greater, something higher and deeper than what the world has to offer.
God, who knows the deepest cries of our heart, gave us what we need most – He gave us Himself. The Christmas Story becomes the Easter Story. The tomb is empty. Salvation is ours. It is really real … I know, because He gave it to me.
Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
