The macabre and resurrection

I happened upon the origin of the word macabre the other day, and I'm amazed by how it apparently came about.

According to dictionaries, the most commonly accepted tale is during the horrors of Black Death, monks wanted to help the populace understand the inevitability of death for all persons. They created these, well, macabre, morality plays something like Tetzel used to sell indulgences as depicted in the movie Luther.

Evidently one of the originals portrayed the torture and ritual execution of the seven brothers and their mother in 2 Maccabees. This was known in Old French as "danse macabre," the dance of death, or perhaps the dance of the Maccabees. Throughout the Middle Ages, this kind of reminder of death cropped up often. It may have even been used on feast days honoring the deceased. (Think Día de los Muertos.) The theme entered the decor of places such as ossuaries and sarcophagi as skulls and skeletons.

What I find so interesting is while the Maccabean martyrs were being dismembered, they were talking about resurrection, almost mocking their torturers. They weren't the slightest bit concerned about the inevitability of death. But they were certain of the inevitability of resurrection. How would life be different if we saw it (and death) this way? We don't seem too concerned with skullish representations of death in America, but we seem to be even less aware of resurrection. What would it take to come up with an iconography of resurrection, rather than skulls and skeletons?