Jesus’ death was not a plot twist. Neither was His resurrection.
Multiple times He foretold the exact circumstances of His crucifixion and the timing of His resurrection.
“Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you,” Jesus urged His disciples.1
And yet they were not able to understand His words; the meaning was hidden from them, and for whatever reason, no one asked Jesus to explain further. Even so, it is perplexing that in the fatal hours leading to Jesus’ death on the Cross and the mourning period before His resurrection, no disciple is reported to have recalled what the Lord had plainly spoken.
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life,” Jesus previously told them.2
What we witness among Jesus’ closest followers, in the shock, grief, and aftermath of His death, is the tension of faith we all likely experience at times. We want to make belief logical, whereas Jesus teaches us to see any moment as an opportunity for God’s glorious Word to prevail. So, the disciples understandably dropped into despair, perhaps their faith clouded by a finite understanding or temporal expectation of what a reign of righteousness would look like.
But what about the women who followed Jesus, who had participated in His ministry and cared for His needs as He traveled and taught? Each gospel narrative describes their distinct presence at the Cross and the empty tomb.3
These women looked on carefully from a distance, as Jesus hung in daytime darkness, and they followed Him after His death, sitting opposite the tomb and watching how their Lord’s body was laid.
At dawn on the first day of the week – what we now celebrate as Easter Sunday – they returned to the tomb with the spices they had prepared to anoint His body. Seeing that the stone had been rolled away, they entered the tomb, and heaven’s messengers declared:
“He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you while He was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.’”4
Then they remembered His words.
The women themselves might not have exactly understood what made them so attentive at the Cross and the tomb, what they were drawn to ponder and discern, why they couldn’t look away – a mysterious memory, something they had heard, something Jesus had said they couldn’t quite place.
Sometimes the sensations of our faith are like that. A stirring, a heaviness pushing down, working within, to awaken the seeds of truth already spoken into us. And then the Lord’s Spirit moves us at just the right time.
For what did they do in between His death and stone being rolled away? Surely they prayed, cried, and held vigil.
The women waited, and then they went. On the third day.
They took those uneasy steps of faith, ready to touch a cold corpse and steadied by Christ’s still-hidden words.
Raised again.
Fervent prayers are effective and who knows if those faithful women and their prayerful early morning steps didn’t help nudge a tectonic shift that rolled away the stone. Because unbeknownst to them at the time, the women who followed Jesus were the first to experience the living hope granted to us all in Christ’s resurrection, the sense that tells you there is always an eternal truth being cultivated.
Perhaps they perceived an infinite reign of righteousness. Or were the women more willing to simply believe and follow Jesus because of the truth they felt – the paradise of His presence worth more than any palace?
If nothing else, as they had cared for His needs in this life, they went to serve Jesus again after His death, to tend to His body with spices, not unlike how He had washed the disciples’ feet just days before.
And by following His example, the women met a miracle.
