But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.  They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.  While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.  The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.  Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again."  Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

Does it not seem that Jesus created the resurrection by rising from the dead?  It did not exist before him and is not possible without him.  We tend, as post-resurrection people, to have the mindset that people rise after death - it's simply what they do.  Yet with Christ's resurrection do we not have the origin of resurrection itself, the birth of the entire mystery, its creation?  Furthermore Christ says "see, I am making all things new" (Revelation 21.5) as well as "I am the Resurrection." (John 11.25)  We also read that "in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead" (Acts 4.2).  When Paul was in Athens "he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection" (Acts 17.18).  That Christ is the resurrection from the dead we read in 1 Corinthians 15.21: "for since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."

The difficulty in appreciating the radical depth of mystery which the resurrection brings lies in the fact that among pious Jews it was a long-held hope that in fact there would be a resurrection.  "Many... shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12.2-3).  In Acts we hear Paul say "the Jews also accept that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous" (Acts 24.15).  In the letter to the Hebrews Paul spoke of the saints of old: "others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection" (Hebrews 11.35).  In the Gospels the Sadducees spoke to Jesus in an almost conversational manner: "in the resurrection whose wife will she be?"  (Matthew 22.23-30)  So the pre-existing hope and expectation of a resurrection anyway may seem to dampen somewhat the idea that Christ ushered in something completely new when he rose from the dead.

There is another potential objection to this thought - the fact that others before Christ were brought back from the dead.  Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain were all dead and were all brought back to life.  Even as far back as Elijah's time people were rising from the dead.  Elijah himself raised two people from the dead (see 1 Kings 17.17-24, 2 Kings 4.32-37).  So the apparent fact that Christ was not the first to return from the dead may make us less willing to meditate anew on Christ's resurrection as profoundly unique and new.

Let us reply to the first objection: that the idea of resurrection was virtually common knowledge among many.  To this there is no greater reply possible than Jesus' response to Martha prior to raising Lazarus from the dead.  "Your brother will rise again," Jesus said.  Martha replied "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."  Jesus said to her "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (John 11.23-25)  This resurrection is not the fulfillment of hope in life after death as it had been conceived by countless souls prior to Christ but something radically different and vastly more promising.  For the resurrection of each of us is Christ himself; it is not a future act but a present person.  We enter into resurrection and life now, today, in this very moment through belief in Christ, the Resurrection.  "He who believes has eternal life" (John 5.24) - now, in the moment of believing.  This does not mean we won't suffer physical death but rather promises that physical death will not end the continuous new life in Christ we now enjoy through belief.  "Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live."  (John 11.25)  Our hope in the resurrection, then, is not the same kind of hope as those before and up to the time of Christ, or at least shouldn't be.  Our hope has already begun to manifest itself in the new life in Christ we now enjoy and is informed and enlightened by the historical reality of Christ's resurrection.  In fact Christ's resurrection is the origin of all hope in an afterlife that was ever conceived in man's heart, but that is an entirely different reflection for another time.

Finally, let us reply to those "other resurrections" which preceded Christ's and would seem to cast doubt on Christ's resurrection as the agent for the shattering of deaths power.  Quite simply, they weren't resurrections, they were miraculous resuscitations.  "Jesus' own resurrection is of a higher order, eschatologically anticipating God's raising of the dead in the last days.  Resuscitation restores ordinary life; resurrection involves eternal life."  (An Introduction to the New Testament, Raymond Brown, p349)  In each Gospel story of the raising of the dead, the return to ordinary life is demonstrated.  When Lazarus emerges from the tomb he is still bound in his burial clothes and face cloth, a symbol that he will need them again at a future date.  Contrast that with the burial clothes and face cloth left behind in the tomb by Christ.

Jesus passed through death and went out the other side with a glorified body and a radically new mode of existence (demonstrated in the Gospels by his appearing and disappearing at will).  All others came back from death, to die yet again.

It would be a great mistake to believe we are adopting the same hope in a resurrection as our pre-Christian ancestors had and it would be equally mistaken to not continually dwell on Christ's resurrection as a radical new act unlike anything before, into which we ourselves can enter even now.