{"id":5280,"date":"2026-03-10T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5280"},"modified":"2026-03-10T09:00:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T13:00:25","slug":"dead-and-buried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/10\/dead-and-buried\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead and Buried"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.<\/em>
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William Goldman (1931-2018) was one of America\u2019s most cherished storytellers.
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Two of his movie screenplays, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/em> and All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>, won Academy Awards. He went on to capture audiences with The Stepford Wives<\/em> and A Bridge Too Far<\/em>, and put the finishing touches on the screenplay of A Few Good Men<\/em>.
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But his favorite story by far was a romantic romp he dreamed up for his two young daughters.\u00a0One wanted a story about a princess.\u00a0The other asked for a tale of adventure.\u00a0
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The result was The Princess Bride<\/em>, a book (and ultimately a 1987 film) that defies easy categorization.\u00a0Adults and children have been equally enchanted by the story of Princess Buttercup and Westley, her true love.\u00a0
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As he wrote the original story, Goldman found himself fully engaged emotionally.
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In fact, when he chose to let Westley be captured and tortured to death, he began to sob over his typewriter. He realized that he had been rooting for Westley.\u00a0And now his hero was dead.\u00a0What could he do?
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If you happen to be the author of the story, you can figure out a way to bring someone back to life.
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Enter Miracle Max, the wizard with an attitude played in the movie by Billy Crystal. Director Rob Reiner, whom we tragically lost just three months ago, wisely decided to let Crystal, an improvisational genius, run wild with the part.\u00a0
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The comic decided to portray Max as a cross between Casey Stengel, the gruff manager of the New York Yankees in the 1950s, and his Jewish grandmother.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Even though Max is on the screen for less than four-and-a-half minutes, Crystal made the most of the opportunity. Reiner filmed dozens of takes inside the wizard\u2019s cabin.\u00a0Every one of them was different.
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When Max acknowledges, \u201cTrue love is the greatest thing in the world,\u201d he immediately goes off-script and adds, \u201cExcept for an MLT \u2013 a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, when the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomatoes are red, it\u2019s so perky\u2026\u201d
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Reiner loved that line so much that he left it in. Cary Elwes, portraying Westley, had the overwhelming challenge of pretending to be dead during all of Crystal\u2019s improvisations. His sudden bursts of laughter, needless to say, erased a number of decent takes.
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Here\u2019s what finally ended up<\/a> in the movie.\u00a0
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Miracle Max has the seemingly impossible job of bringing Westley back to life.\u00a0But, as he points out, Westley is only mostly dead, <\/em>and, \u201cthere\u2019s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.\u201d\u00a0
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In the story of the Bible, the hero also dies.\u00a0Now what?
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If you happen to be the author of the Greatest Story Ever Told, you can figure out a way to bring someone back to life \u2013 even when the hero is not just \u201cmostly dead,\u201d but certifiably \u201call dead.\u201d
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That seems to be the point of the three words in the Apostles\u2019 Creed that appear, at first glance, to be not particularly important: \u201cdead and buried.\u201d Coming immediately on the heels of the word \u201ccrucified,\u201d we would expect nothing less. Right?\u00a0
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Not so fast.
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The Christian claims associated with Jesus\u2019 Last Weekend are so extraordinary \u2013 that he, as Messiah, sacrificed himself for the sins of the whole world, a history-transforming event validated by rising from the dead \u2013 that skeptics have pursued alternative explanations with unusual creativity.
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What if Jesus never died?
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A British Bible scholar named Hugh Schonfeld suggested in 1965 that Jesus actually conspired with a few trusted allies (including Joseph of Arimathea) to survive the crucifixion. According to The Passover<\/em> Plot,<\/em> Jesus intended to fulfill Old Testament prophecy and masquerade as the Messiah.
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In order to numb his pain, he arranged to sip a narcotic-spiked drink while hanging on the cross. Jesus\u2019 \u201cplot,\u201d unfortunately, was foiled when a Roman soldier plunged a spear into his side.
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Schonfeld was content to conclude that Jesus was merely a sincerely deluded imposter whose dreams came crashing to an end on Good Friday.
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Others, however \u2013 advocates of the so-called Swoon Theory \u2013 have suggested that Jesus somehow survived the horrors of the Roman scourging, impaling by iron nails, and exposure for six hours on a wooden stake, fooled the Roman execution squad into thinking he was dead, \u201ccame to\u201d in the coolness of the tomb, miraculously managed to push aside the boulder covering the entrance, and then appeared triumphantly to his friends, who concluded he had conquered Death and launched God\u2019s new creation.
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That string of events is so unlikely that the vast majority of historians, including hard-boiled skeptics, have concluded that the Swoon Theory can be safely set aside.
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What if Jesus was never buried?
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Victims of crucifixion \u2013 whether traitors, slaves, or brigands \u2013 were typically thrown into unmarked graves. Sometimes their bodies were surrendered to wild animals or roving dogs.
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The Gospel accounts go out of their way to insist that Jesus\u2019 body was, in fact, quite lifeless \u2013 and that it was respectfully retrieved by the aforementioned Joseph, a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin who secretly admired Jesus. The body was wrapped in burial cloths and placed in Joseph\u2019s own tomb.
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One of the most telling details of the Jesus Movement\u2019s earliest days is that Jesus\u2019 tomb never became a holy site, a place of pilgrimage for devoted followers.
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The church at large actually lost track of where Jesus was buried. To this day, doubt remains as to the specific site.
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Of course, one of the reasons that Jesus\u2019 tomb never became a Must-See Destination for his followers is that there was nothing to see there. Jesus\u2019 remains were no longer behind that large stone.
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A few days from now, we\u2019ll be considering the Creed\u2019s assertion that Jesus was, and still is, alive and well on the other side of the first Easter.
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Not only that, he is considerably more gifted than Miracle Max \u2013 someone who can resurrect dead relationships, dead hopes, dead dreams, and dead hearts.\u00a0
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Inconceivable?<\/em>
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Those who trust Christ have discovered over the centuries that such miracles may actually be said to be inevitable.\u00a0<\/em>

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.\u00a0William Goldman (1931-2018) was one of America\u2019s most cherished storytellers.\u00a0Two of his movie screenplays, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President\u2019s… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1080,583,450],"class_list":["post-5280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apostles-creed","tag-crucifixion","tag-death"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5282,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280\/revisions\/5282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}