After some fifteen years or so since I purchased it at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem in the first of my three visits to Israel, I finally got around to reading “The Weekend that Changed the World” by Peter Walker.
This book is grounded in the Christian faith, but still does some interesting analyses about what happened that weekend so long ago, starting from the last supper through Jesus’ arrest, trial, and persecution, then through his execution, and then ultimately to his resurrection.
I’ve heard that, without the resurrection, the message of Christ loses validity. I rejected that the first time I heard it thinking it was too fast to reject the rest of Jesus’ teaching and his miracles, but this book takes a similar perspective of the importance of the resurrection. It gave Jesus’ ministry and his identity a validity that nothing else could have done. The resurrection was truly an inexplicable act of God and, in addition, a mixture of the real and the supernatural that, at least in Western thought, we generally segregate as separate threads of reality at best or as incompatible with each other at worst. The tomb was empty. And it wasn’t a purely spiritual resurrection, because Jesus’ body accompanied his spirit in his visits with his followers over the days following his resurrection. It was physical and natural, therefore, but it was so much more than a resuscitation or even so much more than, for example, Lazarus being raised from the dead. Jesus was made whole and it serves as a promise and as a source of hope that God’s creation will be renewed and restored in its time.
The resurrection also serves as an exclamation point on the power, judgement, and love of God. God transformed the worst permutation of evil that could be manifested in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ into a path for salvation for Jesus’ followers. And, in doing that, provided an avenue for us to be restored through him as, without Jesus, we cannot deserve to approach God. Only Jesus can provide us with that pathway and only his sacrifice can be acceptable as payment for our sins, as he was pure. He was righteous.
The book also explores the evidence of the resurrection. The behavior of the initial witnesses provides evidence, which is accompanied by the very absence of the body in the tomb and the eyewitness accounts by literally hundreds of people in the days following the resurrection. The resurrection changed everything, including the lives of the witnesses. They didn’t act then or later as if they had hidden the body. Or as if someone else had hidden the body and then declined to expose it once the testimony about the resurrection had begun. They rejoiced and, indeed, only the resurrection of Jesus could bring one to rejoice in his crucifixion. It gave the series of events a different meaning.
There are two sites potentially accepted as the actual location of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the traditional site and that tradition spans back into the second century A.D. The Garden Tomb was located in the late 1800’s, but has merits of its own. Analysis is done of the pros and cons of the two sites….each one is believable. Ultimately, each person needs to weigh the facts and evidence and decide if they favor one or the other or whether they want to maintain an open mind. The book also notes, though, that it doesn’t really matter where it happened. It's the fact that it happened and that Jesus is alive, even still, even today, that provides Christianity with its message of hope and of salvation for those who believe.
For what it’s worth, I mildly favor the Garden Tomb as the actual location of the resurrection. I think its location with respect to the city walls at Jesus’ time and its proximity to a main gate, the Damascus Gate, gives it some strong credibility. That said, if that is the location, then the location of Jesus’ crucifixion is currently the site of a bus stop next to the Garden Tomb, which is unfortunate, but, again, as with the resurrection, it isn’t the place of the event that carries weight for believers. It is the living Christ and the path to salvation that he provides.
We had some good and bad experiences in our third and most recent trip to Israel, when I was actually able to bring my family. For my first two trips, I had gone for work and, indeed, didn’t even have a family of my own at the time. On this third trip, my son was blessed to be baptized in the Jordan river. My wife captured it on video using her phone. Later that day, on our way to the Garden Tomb, her phone was stolen. I was initially angry about it but got over it timely. Additionally, on that same trip, I had inadvertently overpaid by literally hundreds of dollars worth of shekels for a dinner and, noticing my error, the waiter took me aside, explained what I had done wrong, and handed over the difference. I don’t know whether the thief or the restaurant owner were Christians or not. I do know that they were human, though, and so am I. I have done both good and bad even on that same trip. Jesus wasn’t only rejected by those contemporaries who had a hand in his execution, though, he is rejected by each of us daily.
That is one of the things that make his sacrifice and resurrection so incredible…despite who we are, he loves us and provides us with grace. It is my faith journey that I am a steward of, and energies are better spent on studying and following Jesus than on focusing on wrongs or rights that others mete to us along the way. Jesus is right and he is the truth.
I’ll leave you with this. I too am a witness to Christ and the redemption he offers. I am a beneficiary of it. Indeed, I am alive because of his forgiveness and his mercy. Long story, but I have a fundamental certainty that this is true. That said, my faith journey isn’t over and I still have a long and occasionally arduous way to go. This book helped me to reflect on who Jesus was, what happened at the end of his life and afterwards, and why. The ‘where,’ which is interesting but of secondary importance, is discussed as well. The reader is then tasked with following through on their own journey of faith given what has happened and what it means.
I’m glad I spent some time with “The Weekend that Changed the World” and it has given me a lot to think about. I endeavor to read other books on matters of faith throughout the year. Not because I have to or because I feel that I’ll be rewarded for it, but because I want to and because that additional learning and consideration can only help provide a firmer foundation for my moving forward.
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