Luke 23:50-24:12 Bereavemant & Amazement

Luke 23:50-56 Jesus is buried. Parallel passages Matthew 27:57-61; Mark 15:42-47; John 19:38-42. Two principle events. First, Joseph of Arimathea obtains permission to take Jesus' body and then buries it in his own tomb. Second, the women camp followers watch where Jesus' body is buried. Probably, if Joseph had not stepped forward, Jesus would have been buried in a common grave for paupers. It seems unlikely that His disciples would have had the nerve to step forward. And how would anyone have been able to prove or dispute Jesus' resurrection if His body had been in a common grave? He only needed to borrow it for three days.

          Luke does not mention, but Matthew 27:62-66 records that the chief priests asked for permission to put a guard on the tomb to prevent Jesus' body from being stolen by His disciples.  Why the priests thought that the disciples would have the nerve to do something like that is unknowable, given their state of fright. They based their request solely on Jesus' statement before His death that He would rise from the grave. Since in their view (being Sadducees apparently) it was impossible for someone to rise from the dead (despite Jesus having raised several people during His ministry), their only concern was that someone would try to fake it.

Luke 24:1-12 The disciples visit the empty tomb looking for Jesus' body. Parallel passages Matthew 28:1-7, Mark 16:1-8 , John 20:1-18.  John's account includes some details not present in the others.  We don't have any account of the actual event of Jesus rising from the dead. But when the Sabbath was over, Jesus' disciples, starting with the women camp-followers, worked up the courage to go to His grave. The body of Jesus was gone, the stone was rolled away, and then an angel appeared to them and asked, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" The reference to Galilee varies among the accounts. Matthew & Mark report that the angel told them that He would go and meet them in Galilee while Luke's account has the angel telling them to remember what Jesus had told them while they were still in Galilee.

          Sometimes, when God acts in power, it is so far outside of our experience or expectations that we don't know what to make of it. When someone tells us that they have seen a miracle, and an angel has spoken to them, most of us would be pretty skeptical. The women's words appeared to the disciples to be nonsense, and they did not believe. And, in Peter's case, because of his denial of Christ before the crucifixion, and then seeing Jesus die on the cross, it seems likely that he was totally drained. He had no hope of seeing Jesus again. Even if it were true that He had risen from the dead, would He even want to see Peter again?  In any event, after the women told the disciples what had happened, Peter went to check it for himself. He did not see the angel, but did find the empty tomb, and he was amazed.