Summary
See the Place
When the women came to the tomb that first Easter morning, they were not expecting a resurrection. Matthew 28:1 tells us Mary Magdalene and the other Mary—the mother of James and Joseph—came at dawn carrying spices, intending to finish the burial they had witnessed two days earlier. Mark records their worry along the way: who would roll the stone away? It was massive, far beyond what two grieving women could move.
Their problem was solved before they arrived. An angel descended, the earth quaked, and the stone was rolled back. This was the third earthquake in the Passion narrative: one when Christ died and the temple curtain tore from top to bottom, one when the stone was moved, and one of terror that struck the guards, who shook and became like dead men. The same Greek root for trembling runs through all three—an earth-shattering event that splits history in two.
The crucial point, drawn out in “See the Place” 4-9-23, is that the angel did not roll the stone away to let Jesus out. Jesus had already risen. He needed no help to leave the grave any more than He needed a door opened to enter the locked upper room in John 20:19, or a hand to steady Him when He vanished from sight at Emmaus. He had said plainly in John 10:18, "I lay down my life... No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again." The stone was rolled back not to release the Lord, but so that we could look in. "Come, see the place where he lay" Matthew 28:6.
This vantage point matters everything. Paul makes the stakes brutally clear in 1 Corinthians 15:14-19: if Christ has not been raised, preaching is empty, faith is futile, the apostles are liars about God, sins are unforgiven, the dead in Christ have perished, and Christians are of all people most to be pitied. The empty tomb is not a sentimental detail. It is the hinge on which the gospel hangs.
And so the empty tomb preaches. It preaches that every word of Scripture is true, and every promise of God finds its yes in Jesus Christ. It preaches what the Lord declared in John 11:25-26: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live." It preaches that death holds no terror for the Christian, for the appointed end of our days here is simply transition into the presence of God. It preaches that no sin remains unatoned—the words we wish we had not spoken, the deeds we wish we had not done, the duties we left undone—all of it covered by the blood of the spotless Lamb who bore the wrath of God in our place.
The empty tomb preaches, finally, that the world is not spinning out of control. God remains on His throne, sovereign still. And the baptized child of God has been claimed: washed in the promises of the cross and the open grave, grasped by a Father who will not let go. The stone has been rolled away—not to free the Lord, but to free our sight, so that we now see all of life, and all of eternity, through the empty tomb of Christ.
Video citations
- "See the Place" 4-9-23 — What you open your Bibles, please, with me, to the gospel of St. Matthew 28th, chapter if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you'll find that on page 29 in the New Testament. Matthew…