The empty tomb is at the very heart of the Jesus story and the Christian faith. It is evidence that Jesus was no mere mortal and is the completion of Jesus’ death on the cross for human sin. Scripture teaches that without Jesus’ resurrection we are still in our sins. And a dead Jesus is hardly worth following in life.

Neither life nor death would have given contemporaries the impression that Jesus would impact world history. After all, Jesus was born of a poor young mother in a smelly barn and executed as a criminal. In between, he preached about the justice of God’s Kingdom in the barrios and the ghettos of Palestine. In the end, he was arrested when a paid informant singled him out.