Do you ever wonder how different things would have been if we had reached the tomb a little earlier? What if we had reached the tomb in time to witness the detail of what happened next? Would witnessing what happened next have changed the way we live? We are told that the empty tomb gives our life purpose.   Belief in the resurrection means we can live life boldly and well, looking forward to eternal life. The empty tomb gives us a means to deal with pain and suffering, it means that death is not a meaningless end of life, but the door to the fullness of life with the risen Christ. So given that the resurrection is essential to our faith, is it a little disappointing that this bit of the Bible does not give us more detail? Are we left feeling as confused as the original  disciples?

We are not at of course required to solve the unwritten details of  something that happened over two thousand years ago. In our   human search for certainty all we can do at his point is put the resurrection into the context of the rest of Jesus’ life and teachings. We have to trust that everything Jesus has told us is true, and that the resurrection is not just an invention to give a tragic story a    happy ending, but the realisation of the promises Jesus made all along. Jesus promised all along that death couldn’t contain us, and the empty tomb points to this not necessarily as proof, but as truth. Scientists teach us that something has to be proven repeatedly   before we can call it a truth, but as Christians, we know that truth abounds all around us whether anyone has proved it or not. Truth does not wait to be proven.

We are not of course, asked to leave our brains at the church door, but we are asked to approach Easter with a broad mind and an open heart, and not to see ‘truth’ as something we can only find with a textbook and a microscope.