The apostle Paul writes in First Corinthians 15:17: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” That entire chapter is Paul’s explanation of the importance of the Resurrection to our salvation.
Without the resurrected Christ, there is no Easter, no salvation, no hope. For us, there would be no heaven, no glory, and no redemption—just death and an eternity of separation from God.
And we should remember that when Paul’s letters were written, as well as the Gospels, the people hearing them included thousands of people with first-hand knowledge of Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion, so they would have been right there to contradict any claims that were untrue about his death and resurrection. Yet history records no factual arguments against it, and Christianity spread throughout the entire Roman Empire despite persecution.
As important as the resurrection is, it would not have happened without Jesus’ acceptance of his own slaughter. Through his agonizing death on the cross, our sins are forgiven and our relationship with our Heavenly Father is restored.
Yet many people don’t believe Christ’s death on the cross atones for our sins. And many also don’t believe Jesus was really crucified.
Many of the theories that deny Christ’s death and resurrection rely on our ignorance of what crucifixion really entailed. The Bible doesn’t describe the act of crucifixion in great detail, not because of a lack of evidence—but rather the opposite. Everyone in the Roman Empire at region at that time was personally familiar with crucifixion.
Pontius Pilate had thousands of protestors crucified when he arrived just a few years before.
The Gospel writers had no need to describe crucifixions to their readers. We, on the other hand, are generally uninformed and therefore easy prey for goofball theories about fake deaths or missing bodies.
Crucifixion is a cruel and horrific method of execution. It maximizes the agony the victim suffers for the longest possible time. Death usually took about 3 to 4 days of excruciating pain. In fact, the word “excruciating” comes from the Latin words “ex” meaning “from,” and “cruciate” meaning “cross,” translating literally as “from the cross.”
It involved first flogging the condemned man with a whip made of leather strands with pieces of bone and metal tied to them. The victims often died just from the flogging. After that, the victim carried a hundred-pound crossbar to his crucifixion site. Jesus was nailed to his crossbar. Ever hit your funny bone? That’s the ulna nerve. Now imagine someone driving a nine-inch spike through it. After being raised onto the supporting beam, the condemned man would die from suffocation after a few days in that painful position. The Roman soldiers were very good at their job. The penalties for failure were extreme. If a condemned prisoner escaped his execution, the soldier
would be killed in his place. No one left the cross alive. Many theories exist about the exact cause of Jesus’ death—whether it was a ruptured heart, suffocation, etc., but the important fact is that modern medical evidence shows that there can be no doubt that Jesus did in fact die a physical death on the cross.
This is very important because the first argument used against the resurrection is that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Since you can’t have a resurrection without a death, convincing people that Christ didn’t actually die eliminates the need for any more discussion about his resurrection.
This is the approach taken by Mohammed in the Koran, 600 years after the crucifixion. Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet, but claims he never actually died on the cross. Thus, they deny any resurrection.
Since Jesus did in fact die on the cross, however, we can move to the next step: His burial.
The Bible says Jesus was buried in a tomb owned by the Pharisee, Joseph of Arimethea. Tombs were very expensive, having to be carved into the rock face, and only family members could be buried in the same tomb. A dead body of a non-family member would defile the tomb, and it could not be used by anyone else. And tombs are usually not temporary. By giving Jesus his own tomb, Joseph removed any possibility of he or his family ever using it themselves.
If the Gospel account were not true, Joseph of Arimethea—or his family—would definitely have come forward and dismissed the crazy claim that Joseph’s tomb had been used by some itinerant preacher. But they didn’t. If you were going to make up a story, you wouldn’t use a prominent, powerful person as a key part of it; you’d use some guy that no one could check on, or someone who didn’t even exist. But they didn’t. Instead, they named a major religious leader, a Pharisee. So, we can be sure that Jesus was indeed buried.
This is where the story ended on Good Friday. The Apostles didn’t have Easter yet. The crucifixion and burial passages we read on Passion Sunday move us forward to Good Friday, in anticipation of Easter. On Palm/Passion Sunday we see Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with crowds cheering his arrival and clergy plotting
his demise. The cheers change to chides quite quickly as Jesus is betrayed by Judas and condemned, executed, and buried before the end of the week.
We are meant to feel that same turmoil in our souls this Sunday as we read the welcoming Scripture passages and wave our palm fronds in the air just before hearing the Gospel’s depiction of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and torturous death. We celebrate the resurrection next Sunday, but on this one we endure the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf. Crucifixion did not shorten Jesus’ ministry; it was his plan all along. Christ’s incarnation leads to the cross, and without the crucifixion there would be no reason for Christmas.
The Passion gives us an understanding of the hopelessness Jesus’ disciples felt—what life without Jesus is like. We know Easter is coming; they didn’t.
Next week we celebrate Christ’s victory over death; but this week we mourn the loss of hope, if only for a moment. Rejoicing is sweeter having tasted sorrow.
In His Grace,
Fr. Austin