Recently, I was watching a television documentary called, The Real Face of Jesus? in which computer artists generated the possible face and body of Jesus. They used advanced 3D computer technology and forensic data based upon impressions made on the Shroud of Turin to master this. The team’s investigators were not able to determine what exactly made the image on the cloth, but said they could tell us how it wasn’t made. The image was not produced by any type of dye, ink, paint, or photograph; in fact there had been nothing applied to the surface of the cloth to make the image, rather the image had been somehow embedded in the cloth by no known process.
Although there has been much debate among Christians for centuries over the Shroud regarding its authenticity and how it was created, Christians do agree on one thing: that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. We take this on faith, as well as the Biblical accounts of his appearance with his disciples that followed his death and burial in the tomb; it is the cornerstone of Christian teachings. As I watched this documentary, I found it quite inspiring and began to consider more deeply Jesus’ three days in the tomb. What could have occurred, what does it mean, and just how does it relate to us?
In her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy explains the impossibility of the burial of life in matter: “Life is neither in nor of matter. What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, which includes in itself all substance and is Life eternal. . . . Death and finiteness are unknown to Life” (p. 469). This is what Jesus innately knew and practiced throughout his earthly career. He healed the masses, regenerated the sick and dying, and raised the dead on the basis of this metaphysical law, that Life is spiritual and not material.
