I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 23-24.

    When Jesus was brought before Pilate for trial, Pilate could find no reason to crucify Him. However, because of the crowd threatening to riot he sentenced Jesus to death. This should be a warning to every political figure, and to us as ordinary citizens. When the crowd is crying for blood, it is usually innocent blood they are crying for. It is also worth noting that Pilate’s attempt to appease the crowd only served to rile them up more.

    When Jesus was hanging on the cross, those who had dismissed His many miracles pretended as if they would believe if only He performed one more and came down off of the cross. They were the sort of people who demand proof of God’s existence, yet have a reason to dismiss any that is offered them. The crowd which had come out to see the spectacle of a crucifixion went home disappointed.

    I think that Luke’s Gospel brings to the forefront of the strangeness of the Resurrection story. All of the accounts record that it was women who first discovered that Jesus had risen. Here Luke points out that the men, the Apostles, did not believe the women. They thought they were speaking nonsense when they told them what they had seen at the tomb. Even when the women recounted what the angels had told them, including the part about Jesus predicting this very thing, they were not believed. The two men who walked home to Emmaus were baffled, but did not believe that Jesus had risen. Again, even as Jesus showed them from Scripture what had happened they did not see. They could not believe that the women were right. If the story was made up, it would have been Peter, or one of the other prominent Apostles who discovered the empty tomb.