Figure 1. Trivulzio panel, ca. 400 CE, ivory, 12 1/8 × 5 1/4 inches (30.7 × 13.4 cm). Museo d’Arte Antica, Milan. Photograph provided by Raccolte d’Arte Applicata del Castello Sforzesco, © Comune di Milano, all rights reserved.

I would like us to reflect on the glories of Easter by looking together at one of the earliest surviving depictions of Easter morning in visual art (fig. 1). About 370 years after that morning in Jerusalem when women disciples of Jesus came to his tomb and found it empty, someone in Italy was thinking about that event and decided to commission a work of art that would enable viewers to “see” and contemplate the events of the Resurrection for themselves. So this person, one of our spiritual ancestors of ancient Christianity, hired a skilled artist who carved a beautiful relief on an ivory panel. It measures a little over twelve inches tall and five inches wide (30.7 cm x 13.4 cm) and is now held in the Museo d’Arte Antica in Milan.[1]

Figure 2. Consular diptych of Justin, Constantinople, ca. AD 540. Bode Museum. Photo: Daderot, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Figure 3. Consular Diptych of Rufius Gennadius Probus Orestes, ca. AD 530, Victoria and Albert Museum. Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen (2012), Wikimedia Commons.

We can see drill holes along the right side; originally this was the left-hand leaf of a diptych—one of two panels connected with hinges (fig. 2) so the panels could be folded together or opened like a book. The right-hand panel is lost. There is uncertainty about how diptychs were used in late antiquity. The nonfigured sides could have been recessed and filled with wax to serve as a writing tablet, or diptychs might have been used for display, like an inverted birthday card or Christmas card that you set on your mantle (fig. 3).[2] In that case, this panel would have been the left panel in a two-scene display.

In the lower half of this panel, two women are bowing down before a seated young man who is making a gesture of speech. Behind them is the empty tomb, depicted as a brick or stone structure with two doors, “typical of mausolea in late antiquity.”[3] One of the tomb doors stands partly open, and above the doors the panel’s decorated frame becomes the eave of the tomb’s roof, which slopes upward and is surmounted by a round, dome-topped structure. This architecture probably alludes to the Anastasis Rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built in the fourth century over what was believed to be the tomb of Christ (fig. 4). The scene invites us to consider both the first-century events of Easter morning and the practice of Christians from the fourth century forward who flocked to the Holy Land on pilgrimage to visit places connected to the events of Christ’s life.

On the roof of the tomb, two Roman guards with spears have fallen to their knees; the guard on the left wears a cloak that is billowing upward, suggesting the power and drama of the scene below. In the Gospel narratives, the guards were positioned at the tomb entrance, and when an angel appeared, they trembled and fainted (Matthew 28:4). Another ivory panel carved about twenty to thirty years after the Milan diptych—one of four surviving sides of a small box now held in the British Museum—shows the guards unconscious as two women stand in the background to either side of the tomb (which again is represented as a rectangular structure with an open door, surmounted by a domed rotunda) (fig. 5). By contrast, on the Milan diptych, the guards have been moved up to the roof to make room for the scene of the women and the male figure below. As one art historian wrote, it is as if the guards have been “literally blown away” by the event.[4]

Figure 4. Artist’s reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as it would have appeared in the latter fourth century AD. The rotunda is pictured at far left. Photo: תמר הירדני. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 5. Women at the empty tomb (left) and the incredulity of Thomas (right), two of four panels of the Maskell Passion ivories, ca. 420–40 CE, ivory, ca. 3 × 3 7⁄8 × 5⁄8 in. (7.5 × 9.9 × 1.8 cm), British Museum, London. Photo ART439041 (cropped): © The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY.

Above the tomb, we see in the clouds a winged ox and a winged man, symbols of the evangelists Luke and Matthew. Presumably the other panel of the diptych would have featured the lion and eagle symbolizing Mark and John above a companion scene. I suspect that scene might have included the risen Christ appearing to a group of men including the Apostle Thomas reaching to touch the wound in Christ’s side. That very scene was joined to the panel with the women at the tomb on the ivory box in the British Museum (fig. 5). Additionally, the same two scenes were paired in carved reliefs on two late fourth-century sarcophagi in Milan and Brescia—the earliest examples of these Easter images (fig. 6).[5] From the time this iconography appeared, these two scenes seem to have been linked.

Figure 6. Women at the tomb + the incredulity of Thomas, detail, relief carvings on a stone sarcophagus, late fourth century, Milan. Photo: © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Rom.

If the Milan diptych did pair the women at the tomb with the appearance to Thomas and other Apostles, viewers reading the panels left to right would have seen, first, the women at the tomb, and then the appearance to the men. Like the four Gospels, this diptych preserves a memory that women were the first to witness the empty tomb and the risen Christ. Some ancient sources disallowed women from serving as legal witnesses.[6] By contrast, the Gospels insist that women are essential witnesses of Jesus Christ. As Latter-day Saint biblical scholar Julie M. Smith states, “One literally cannot be a Christian without accepting [the women’s] witness because their testimony is crucial to the story of Jesus’ death; it is how the story was preserved since all of the male disciples had fled.”[7] Faithful women witnessed Christ’s death on the cross, his burial, and his resurrection. Luke tells us that when the women who had seen the empty tomb told the male disciples, “their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not” (Luke 24:11).[8] The reader is meant to feel the irony and frustration of that moment and recognize that if we want to be disciples of Christ, we must take seriously the experiences and witness of women. Otherwise, we are incomplete, just as this ivory panel is missing its companion piece. The kingdom needs us all, because as Paul said, the social divisions that had separated Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female were no longer to prevail, “for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

On our surviving panel, the symbols of Luke and Matthew at the top and the guards on the roof all look to the scene below, where the women are bowing in adoration of the seated young man, so let’s follow their lead and look at him. Whom do you see? Art historians have different opinions about him. One interpretation is that this is the angel who appeared to “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” as recounted in Matthew 28: “an angel of the Lord . . . came and . . . sat on [the stone] . . . . The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised’” (Matthew 28:1–2, 5–6 NRSVue).

However, the man has also been interpreted as Jesus himself, who is often depicted in early Christian art as a young man, without a beard, with flowing hair, a halo encircling his head, and holding a rolled scroll symbolizing his knowledge, message, and authority as the Word of God.[9] He also matches the appearance and posture of figures of Christ depicted on the tomb doors in the background. Additionally, the women are bowing to him, and one of them even reaches out to hold Jesus’s feet—details that match the next verses in Matthew when the women see the risen Christ: “So [the women] left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me’” (Matthew 28:8–10 NRSVue).

Are we seeing the risen Christ, or an angel? Intriguingly, some of the disciples wondered the same thing on that first Easter day. When Christ appeared to them, Luke’s account says that “they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:37 NKJV). Perhaps the ivory conflates two moments from Matthew’s narrative, inviting us into an experience like that of the first disciples who wondered what it was they were seeing. In early Christian art, biblical images are often intentionally ambiguous in the manner of this ivory, presenting a composite of multiple details that beckons viewers into deeper consideration of the scene and more than one passage of scripture.

Figure 7. Tomb doors depicted on a Roman marble sarcophagus, ca. 240-250 CE. Vatican Museums. Photo (cropped): Gary Lee Todd, public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Looking more deeply into the scene, let’s turn our attention to the doors of the tomb. Instead of a rock-cut tomb with a stone that could be placed over the entranceway,[10] as the Gospels describe, the ivory depicts a built structure and an entrance with doors, reflecting what the tomb of Christ might have looked like in the fourth-century Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Though the imagery doesn’t represent the original tomb, it does convey beautiful symbolism about the meanings of the Resurrection. In Roman funerary art, sarcophagus reliefs sometimes included a depiction of doors (fig. 7), suggesting the liminality of the tomb as a threshold between this world and the next. Sometimes the doors were shown slightly open, hinting that the boundaries between life and afterlife were not entirely rigid and arousing curiosity about what lies beyond.[11] Here on the Milan ivory, the open door might call to mind how Easter opens to us a new reality, with all its new possibilities—the defeat of death and sin, redemption, restoration, healing, a new creation. The open door also seems to echo the detail in the Gospels that when Christ breathed his last breath on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:37–38). A torn veil, an open door—former barriers now removed. Death is not the end. The way to God is not barred to humanity. As John saw in his vision, “a door stood open!” (Revelation 4:1 NRSVue).

The tomb doors are carved with three rectangular panels depicting scenes from the Gospels. These delightful bits of art within a larger work of art are an example of mise en abyme, a self-referential strategy in which images placed within an image enhance an artwork’s symbolism and aesthetic impact.[12]

On the left tomb door, the top panel depicts Christ standing and making a gesture of speech toward the right door, where Lazarus stands at the entrance to his own tomb, wrapped in graveclothes, moments after Jesus has said, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43–44). This was one of the most popular subjects in the earliest Christian funerary art such as catacomb paintings (fig. 8) and sarcophagus reliefs, where it could express hope in the Resurrection at the very graves of Christian believers.[13]

Figure 8. Christ raising Lazarus, wall painting, Catacombs Marcellinus and Peter, Rome, first half of the fourth century CE. Josef Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg: Herder, 1903), Taf. 159a. Public domain.

Here on this ivory panel it evokes meanings of Easter. Just before raising Lazarus, Jesus had told his sister Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (John 11:25 NRSVue).[14] The Gospel of John frames the raising of Lazarus between two references to threats to Jesus’s life—as Jesus plans to go raise Lazarus, the disciples object that people in Judea had recently tried to stone Jesus and returning now would lead to his death (John 11:7–16); after the raising of Lazarus, leaders in Jerusalem begin to plot against Jesus (John 11:45–53). So John depicts Jesus willingly going into danger, consciously stepping through the door that would lead to his death, in order to restore a friend to life. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This is the whole Atonement story in miniature.

Figure 9. Zacchaeus and Christ panels on the tomb doors behind Christ and the women, detail, Trivulzio ivory, Museo d’Arte Antica, Milan. Photograph provided by Raccolte d’Arte Applicata del Castello Sforzesco, © Comune di Milano, all rights reserved.

The lowest panels on the doors depict Christ, at left, speaking to a kneeling woman to the right. She is partly obscured by the women bowing in the foreground, but we can see that her posture mirrors theirs. She may represent Mary, the other sister of Lazarus. John says that when Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was buried, Mary went quickly to Jesus, “fell down at his feet,” and wept (John 11:32–33).[15] Even though the foregrounded scene at the empty tomb is much larger, as if to suggest “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54), this ivory also presents Mary’s crushing grief in the background, reminding us that celebrating Christ’s victory over death doesn’t mean disregarding the reality of human suffering, trauma, and loss. Jesus wept with Mary, even though her brother would return to life in mere minutes (John 11:35); the happy ending didn’t mean that he would not be fully present with his friends in their hour of sorrow. The woman in the lower right panel might also depict one of the other women whom the Gospels describe kneeling at Jesus’s feet—perhaps the woman who was healed when she touched Jesus’s cloak (Mark 5:33)[16] or the Syrophoenician woman who begged Jesus to heal her daughter (Mark 7:25). In this case, the kneeling woman might prompt us to reflect more broadly on the many individuals whose lives were changed forever by their interactions with Jesus.

That brings us to the middle panels on the tomb doors. At left, we see Zacchaeus, the short tax collector, in the tree he climbed to be able to see Jesus, and on the facing panel to the right, Jesus speaking to him (fig. 9). Luke 19 states, “When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today’” (Luke 19:5 NRSVue). Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus happily as onlookers grumble that Jesus is going to dine with a sinner. Zacchaeus then stands and announces either that he has reformed his life, or that starting at that moment he will reform his life (the verbs could be translated either way).[17] “Behold, Lord,” he says, “the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:8).

We can easily understand why the images of Lazarus and Mary might appear on the tomb doors, with their theme of death and resurrection, but why the story of Zacchaeus? What does Zacchaeus have to do with Easter? One consideration is that the dinner with Zacchaeus and the raising of Lazarus both occurred as Jesus approached Jerusalem in the final days of his life, so both are closely associated with the coming of salvation. Starting in the early fourth century, carved reliefs of Christ’s entry to Jerusalem portrayed Jesus riding on a donkey while people reverentially spread clothing over the path before him and a man climbs a tree (fig. 10)—perhaps illustrating the detail in the Gospels that people “spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees” (Matthew 21:8 NRSVue; compare Mark 11:8; John 12:13) or perhaps presenting another composite image that invites us to connect the Savior’s arrival to the recent episode with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10, 29–40).

Figure 10. Relief of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, detail from the right front panel of a frieze sarcophagus, ca. AD 300–325, Museo Pio Cristiano inv. no. 31537, Vatican Museums. Photo copyright © Governorate of the Vatican City State-Directorate of the Vatican Museums..

Another consideration is what Jesus said to everyone about Zacchaeus: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9 NRSVue). Even people who seem unsavable can be saved. A tax collector who had enriched himself by exploiting others, a traitor to his people, a corrupt person to be despised and rejected—even he could embrace the message of the kingdom, change his life, experience fellowship with Jesus, and be a full-fledged member of the family of faith, “a child of Abraham”—included, welcomed, valued. One of my students recently mentioned to me, “I love the story of Zacchaeus because sometimes I feel like an outsider, like I don’t belong in the Church. But the way Jesus treated Zacchaeus gives me hope.” This too is part of the message of Easter. Because Christ emerged from the tomb, a door stands open. If we have been socially ostracized, Jesus comes to us and says, this day I must dine with you, I will be in fellowship with you. If sin has distanced us from God, we like Zacchaeus can leave it behind, dying to sin and rising to newness of life.[18] If we have been too little in our thinking, we like Zacchaeus can come to see more clearly and let it change us—or like Zacchaeus’s neighbors, we can recognize that people we may regard as lost are children of God, made in God’s image, and capable of reflecting that divine image. Easter morning announces to every one of us, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

All three vignettes—Lazarus, Zacchaeus, and the kneeling woman—help us see multiple facets of the meaning of Easter. Like the scene in the foreground, where the Savior’s eyes meet the woman’s eyes (fig. 9), the images present a theme of seeing and being seen while receiving the Lord’s gracious words.

Stepping back from our close look at the tomb doors and taking in the doors as a whole, we see that they mirror the diptych itself. When the owner of the original two panels would open them like a book, the action would replicate on a small scale the opening of the tomb door; the object enabled its owner to reenact an element from the depicted narrative.[19] For us too, the simple act of opening our scriptures can open for us a whole world of new possibilities; the door of Christ’s redemptive love swings open once again and we are invited to contemplate the vision of a transforming world and to play our own role in that transformation.

I often emphasize to my students that when we open our scriptures, an important part of the reading task is to try to understand the text in its historical context. We practice reading exegetically, stepping into the world of the ancient author and the original reading audience, to the extent we can, seeking to understand as they would have. Then once we’ve understood the text historically, we’re in a position where we can think in an informed, responsible way about its relevance to a life of faith today—its application in our own lives.

Yet there is something else that happens, too, and the imagery on this ivory helps us see it. Notice Jesus’s foot at the bottom of the panel—it extends beyond the frame. So does his back, and the feet of the women, and the kneeling woman’s arm, leg, and clothing. Above, a guard’s foot and the other guard’s leg and spear jut out of the scene. The image is not staying put within its frame; it is protruding into the viewer’s space. Jesus is stepping into our world; Easter is reaching out to us! It reminds me of the beginning of C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when a painting of a ship at sea suddenly comes to life and the children looking at it feel the Narnian ocean spray hitting them in the face, or the movie Jumanji, when the magical board game intrudes dramatically into the reality of the children playing the game. In its own subtle way, this image of Easter morning at the empty tomb is projecting itself out of its frame and into our reality. Easter does that. Christ does that. Scripture does that. We look at this work of art or read scripture, and we step imaginatively into its world, but at the same time it is reaching into our world and beginning to interact with us and change us.[20] Jesus says, “Lazarus, come forth,” and we feel ourselves called to step into the light of new life, shedding the graveclothes that have bound us. Jesus tells the women at the tomb to deliver the message of his Resurrection, and we sense the same invitation to share our witness of Christ. Scripture and art both work in this way, connecting past and present, joining memory to our lived experience here and now, crossing the threshold of open doors and open books, beckoning to our hearts and minds.

“As Easter arrives once again, what threshold will we choose to cross, that we may tell what we have seen?”[21] So asks writer, artist, and Methodist minister Jan Richardson. What have we seen in this panel and in Christ our Savior? In Jesus we see God more clearly.[22] We see him because he first sees us.[23] Back at the beginning of Israel’s story, when the children of Israel were enslaved, the Lord spoke to Moses and in four clauses revealed what kind of Lord he is:

I have observed

the misery of my people who are in Egypt;

I have heard

their cry on account of their taskmasters.

Indeed,

I know

their sufferings, and

I have come down

to deliver them. (Exodus 3:7–8 NRSVue; emphasis added)

He sees his people, hears their cries, knows their suffering, and comes down to deliver. Jesus embodies this. His own mission was one of deliverance, a new Exodus, a new liberation.[24] In his ministry he saw, heard, understood, and came down to deliver. He saw Nathanael under the fig tree, and that changed Nathanael’s life (John 1:43–51). He saw the widow of Nain and had compassion on her (Luke 7:11–17). He saw the woman who loved much where Simon the Pharisee saw only a category, “sinner” (Luke 7:39). He saw the rich young man and “beholding him loved him” (Mark 10:21) even when the young man did not yet feel able or willing to follow Jesus fully.[25] He saw Zacchaeus in the tree and wanted to be in fellowship with him. On Easter morning he saw Mary Magdalene and the other women, blessed them, and sent them forth with a message to change the world.[26] To be seen by Jesus, to feel so truly acknowledged and understood, to recognize that he has come down to deliver us—that changes us forever. It has changed me forever.

We are seen by him, and we see him. This is Easter. With the women at the empty tomb, we bow before the risen Lord, and he blesses us and sends us forth with a message to share. In the words of Jan Richardson’s poetic blessing for Easter:

You have seen,
and so you are
already blessed.

You have been seen,
and so you are the blessing.[27]

May Easter in all its wonder be carved in our hearts; may its doors open wide for us; may we see Christ and tell what we have seen.

Notes

[1] Known as the Trivulzio Panel, as it was owned by the Trivulzio family before the Municipality of Milan acquired it as part of a collection in 1935; Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, 3rd ed. (Mainz am Rhein: Von Zabern, 1976), no. 111; Niamh Bhalla, “Christian Ivories: Containment, Manipulation, and the Creation of Meaning,” in The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, ed. Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018), 209–13. Earlier references to the Resurrection in visual art include the crux invicta iconography on fourth-century “Passion sarcophagi,” but the late fourth- to early fifth-century depictions of the women at the tomb (and the incredulity of Thomas) represent the earliest portrayals of the Resurrection in narrative art.

[2] Bhalla, “Christian Ivories,” 208.

[3] Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), 162–63.

[4] Bhalla, “Christian Ivories,” 210.

[5] Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, zweiter Band: Italien mit einem Nachtrag Rom und Ostia, Dalmatien, Museen der Welt (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998), 87–89, nos. 249 (Brescia) and 250 (Milan), Taf. 84.1–4.

[6] Julie M. Smith, The Gospel According to Mark (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2018), 812; Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 518–19; see Mishnah Shevuot 4.1; Mishnah Rosh Hashannah 1.8; Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15; for a discussion of the ancient Jewish sources, see Ilan Fuchs, “Women’s Testimony in Jewish Law: A Historical Survey,” Hebrew Union College Annual 82–83 (2011–12): 119–59. With thanks to Avram Shannon for directing me to the ancient Jewish sources.

[7] Smith, The Gospel According to Mark, 812.

[8] Scripture quotations from the KJV except where indicated otherwise.

[9] See Bhalla, “Christian Ivories,” 209; Kurt Weitzmann, “Eine vorikonoklastische Ikone des Sinai mit der Darstellung des Chairete,” in Tortulae: Studien zu altchristlichen und byzantinischen Monumenten, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, 30, Supplementheft (Rome: Herder, 1966), 317–25, at 321ff.

[10] See Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of the Holy Land from the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 230–55.

[11] Verity Platt, “Framing the Dead on Roman Sarcophagi,” in The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History, ed. Verity Platt and Michael Squire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 353–81.

[12] For discussion of mise en abyme and the ivory box in the British Museum (the Maskell Passion ivories), see Niamh Bhalla, “Containing the Uncontainable: Kinaestehtic Analogies and an Early Christian Box,” The Art Bulletin 104, no. 3 (2022): 17.

[13] Violaine Malineau, “Lazarus, Raising of,” in The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, ed. Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 2:49.

[14] NRSVue stands for New International Version updated edition. For current analysis of the earliest manuscript of John 11–12 (P66) suggesting that the text originally referred only to Mary (Magdalene?), rather than to Mary and Martha of Bethany, see Elizabeth Schrader, “Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century?,” Harvard Theological Review 110, no. 3 (2017): 360–92. Even if that textual alteration did occur sometime in the second century, by the time this ivory was created around the beginning of the fifth century, Christians would have been familiar with the version of the story of Lazarus including his sisters Martha and Mary.

[15] Compare the miniature depictions of Mary and Martha at the bottom of the tomb doors in the Maskell Passion ivories: Bhalla, “Containing the Uncontainable,” 9 (fig. 5), 16.

[16] Proposed by Bente Kiilerich, “Women at the Tomb,” in The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, ed. Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 2:706–7.

[17] See, for example, the discussion in Richard Bolling Vinson, Luke, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2008), 591–92.

[18] See Romans 6:3–4. Luke 3:12–13 and 7:29 open the possibility that Zacchaeus might have been among the tax collectors baptized by John the Baptist, and his repentance may have occurred around that time.

[19] This is one example of an “analogical hermeneutic” that governed some works of Christian art in late antiquity; for discussion of an analogical hermeneutic and the Maskell ivory box, see Bhalla, “Containing the Uncontainable,” 9.

[20] See the discussion in Bhalla, “Christian Ivories,” 211.

[21] Jan Richardson, “Easter Sunday: Where Resurrection Begins,” paintedprayerbook.com/2019/04/21/easter-sunday-where-resurrection-begins/

[22] See John 1:18; Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Grandeur of God,” Ensign or Liahona, November 2003, 70–72.

[23] Compare 1 John 4:19; on our gradual development of spiritual sight, see Mark 8:22–33.

[24] See the discussion of these ideas in N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 2^nd ed. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2015).

[25] See the discussions in Eric D. Huntsman, “Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces: Making Room for Struggle as Well as Faith,” speeches.byu.edu; and S. Mark Palmer, “Then Jesus Beholding Him Loved Him,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2017, 114–16.

[26] Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–7; Luke 23:55–24:11; John 20:11–18.

[27] Jan Richardson, “Seen,” in Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons (Orlando, FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, 2015), 154–55.