Jesus’ embodied presence was the medium of his ministry – he willfully operated within the confines of human experience and connected with people in this way. Often, he offended the deeply held beliefs of many through matter and physicality: eating and drinking with those who were rejected by society (Matthew 9:10-13, for example), healing people on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17, Luke 14:1-6, etc.), and interacting with the natural world in disturbingly miraculous ways – he fed over five-thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14:13-21), turned water into wine to celebrate a wedding (John 2:1-11), and walked on water (Matthew 14:22-33).
Then Jesus told his disciples he would die and rise again, and did so (Mark 9:31, Luke 24, Matthew 28:1-10, John 16:16, 20:11-29). While Jesus had told his disciples he would do this, they were still shocked and overwhelmed when they realized Jesus’ tomb, which they knew his body had been placed inside, was actually empty (John 20:1-10). I think Jesus’ ministry of abundant presence is one thing that makes his absence from the tomb especially jarring. While it might be at first easy to overlook Mary Magdalene’s distress at finding his body missing (John 20:1-2, 20:11-15) because Jesus appears and identifies himself to her shortly afterward (John 20:16), I think one reason Mary was so upset is that she thought someone among the Roman or Jewish authorities had, with malicious intent, moved his body, making a situation she thought had hit rock bottom even worse. Since his body had been moved by an unknown entity to an unknown location, now she could not even grieve his death properly. She may have found some consolation in the fact that at least she could honor him by properly taking care of the body he had left behind when he died. And now that one thing she felt she could do was taken away.
Jesus could have come down from the cross and healed himself, or prevented the cross altogether, rising gloriously to heaven in front of everyone, but he chose neither of these things. Because of this, whether we are followers of Jesus or not, we are left to grapple with the physical existence of this empty tomb. Theories alternative to his resurrection emerged immediately: Jewish leaders accused the disciples of removing Jesus’ body themselves, but that very accusation relies on the understanding that the tomb was empty – they could not have surmised Jesus’ body was stolen if it was still there (Matthew 28:12-13). This theory also loses power in light of the lives of Jesus’ disciples, most of whom were tortured and ultimately killed for telling the world they had seen him raised to life.
And so, paradoxically, Jesus’ ministry of embodied, abundant presence is seared into history in images devoid of him – the empty cross, the empty tomb – a reminder that death could not have the last word; it could not hold him (Acts 2:24).